Harry Potter Quote
Lettering Illustration for Social Media Campaign
Role: Illustrator
Timeline: March 2021
Client: Penguin Random House Audio
Background
Penguin Random House Audio asked me to letter a quote from the Harry Potter books for a social media campaign…so fun! The goal was to create an aged feeling (like old spell books) but make sure it coordinated with the other campaign materials.
Process
(click images to enlarge)
This project was right up my (Diagon) Alley. I love antiques and I love Harry Potter!
First, I made a ton of rough lockups of the quote itself. I spent a lot of time establishing the overall hierarchy of the piece before moving on to the decorative part later. Even at this early stage, I referenced ephemera from many moons ago. Special shout out to one of my favorite Instagram accounts…Keith Tatum showcases the most beautiful vintage typography finds.
More Process
After a direction was chosen from my rough sketches, I worked out the details and lettering styles. I’m a sucker for a beautiful serif so I really enjoyed incorporating fun flourishes in the bottom portion of the quote. I also have a soft spot for the wonky letterforms found within sentence or title case phrases, seen here in the top portion.
The social media campaign already had an established color scheme, so I just had to play with exactly which colors went where.
We decided the quote was better suited for a rougher vibe rather than clean vector forms. So I kept everything perfectly imperfect by retaining the hand drawn look and adding a bit of texture at the end.
Conclusion
I was so giddy to be able to nerd out on antiques for subject matter that is also near and dear to my heart. Some challenges for this project were the tight timeline and a few of the background swirls that gave me some trouble. I was also a little nervous about the intimacy of sharing my entire process from start to finish — it’s not pretty at the beginning! But I’m so pleased with how this turned out. It was truly a magical project.