Hello friends,

Welcome to another edition of Toriaezu Tuesday. This week I've decided to reflect on some of the music I've been listening to over the past couple months as I prepare for the JLPT(Japanese Language Proficiency Test). As that is the case, this list will be dedicated to exploring Japanese music exclusively. Now, I'm not sure what your impression of Japanese music is, but the production isn't tailored for everyone when considering the pop or rock aspect of the music industry. These 2 genres are by far the most popular among the general population, but fortunately for you guys, I have no horse in that race. 

What do you all think? Are you interested in other genres of music? What would you like to hear next time? Perhaps more of the same artist? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, dont forget to like and share this post~
Until next time,
​Peace

Hello friends,
​
Long time, no see. Last month was extraordinarily busy between moving house, vacationing in Barcelona, accommodating my grandparent's first visit to Japan, and of course, work. October was joyful overall and I'm kinda sad to see it fade into the past as we move into the end of the year. Hopefully, 2020 will be just as eventful. In any case, I have a backlog of things to share with you all, so I aim to publish the content that has slowly been building up in my sketchbook over the past few weeks. Lets start with a long overdue, WIP Wednesday.
Not too long ago, I was commissioned to create a logo that could merchandise the image of an upcoming rap artist. I've worked on logos for bakers, business consultants, student organizations, pod-casters, Twitch Streamers, cannabis marketers, and others; but never a rapper. I thought taking on this project would be an exciting opportunity that would continue to prove my flexibility at challenging different markets; often requiring different artistic styles and techniques.

As always, I discussed the use-purpose of the logo, the message my client want associated with it, as well as stylistic options to be considered throughout its development. After concentrating our meeting to a few notes, later translated as keywords, I created a Pinterest board full of reference photos to help focus the vision of the final design.

​Its rare that I have a client with a vision simple enough to be distilled into a few basic ideas, but I think it worked out in the best interest of the overall design as I managed to fly through the sketch process with little resistance.

​However, due to the nature of the line-work and my ideas for how to approach rendering in the future, assigning the appropriate values in the correct order, in the right places was by far the most challenging part of the process. I think most people would not be so considerate in attributing so much time to this part of the production, but finding values that elevated and maintained the integrity of the design is paramount in how readable the work is. My exercises focused on no more than 6 values, with varying proportions over 20 different sketches. If you look closely at the images below, you can read some of the notes critiquing some the flaws and points of interest to maintain in each consecutive iteration.

​From here on, the next stages require a few color iterations to ensure the accuracy of my vision. Perhaps you can grasp what I'm going for by the references I've collected through Pinterest. Otherwise, you all can look forward to the final design in the coming weeks. What do you think so far? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. As always, don't forget to like and share this post. 
Until next time,
Peace