by Ben Toalson | Jun 30, 2014 | In The Boat
Playing Tetris With My Time
I have a habit (one that I think is a pretty healthy one) of sitting down periodically and taking stock of how I’m using my time during the week. My goal when I do this is to squeeze as much work time into my schedule as possible without compromising on family time and “me time” while allowing margin for all of the logistical stuff we have to do from day to day. It’s a lot like packing my minivan for a vacation. If I don’t pack everything in the right sequence, I end up running out of room a lot sooner. I treat it like playing Tetris, or putting together a puzzle. Placing the pieces in the right order allows me the room to make more time for the work that I need to do.
Going On Another Binge
Another thing I do is to look at where I might be wasting my time. There’s nothing wrong with keeping up with a favorite tv show or catching a movie, but when I see those things in my schedule I have to ask, “Did this accomplish something valuable for me that enriched other parts of my life?” Keeping up with a tv show, though it does not contribute directly to your work, may be a good way for you to wind down and enjoy a break so that you are relaxed and have a fresh mind when you return to your work. On the other hand, binge watching a tv show may not be as valuable or enriching to other areas of your life. Sometimes in this process I find things that I can give up to make more time for work.
Not the Most Time, but the Most of Your Time
While I find it very helpful to seek out more time and to use strategy to maximize the amount of time I am able to dedicate to work, there is an aspect of my work even more valuable that, if I ignore it, leaves me short of doing my best work. I am talking about the efficiency with which I work. It’s all well and good to make more time for work, but ultimately it is what you do with that time, how efficiently you work that really matters. I could have all the time in the world, but if my work efficiency is poor, I’m not going to get much done.
In his book “The One Thing” Gary Keller says “The people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work.” This idea made me realize that, not only should I zoom out every once in a while to see how I can make more time for my work, but I should regularly look for ways to grow more efficient in my work.
Time Well Spent, Not Overspent
As a side note, I realize that the practice of zooming out takes time. Growing in your efficiency also takes time. From reviewing your work habits to get a basic sense of how you are using your work time, to implementing a new major strategy for maximizing your efficiency, focusing on these things will take time away from your work. Be strategic about when and how often you do this. It is possible to spend so much time trying to become more efficient that you neglect the actual work you need to be doing.
Practice 1: Break Distraction Habits
Though I’m still learning about what I can do to become more efficient with my work time, I’m already implementing a couple strategies that have proven to be effective. The most obvious and simultaneously most difficult, is breaking distraction habits.
I can potentially become distracted by a myriad of things, but the two most common are social media sites and distractions in my environment. Both are social in nature and being an extrovert I naturally seek out social interaction.
Knowing what the distractions are and knowing what causes the distractions are two different things however… If I’m being honest, I don’t go look at Facebook because I’m so intrigued by what I will find there. I go look at Facebook because I’m looking for a distraction and there are a few reasons why I would actually go looking for a distraction instead of continuing in my work. I either don’t have a plan for what I’m doing, in which case I need to schedule some tasks for myself, I feel bored with what I’m doing, in which case I need to either shift to something else or find a way to make the boring task a little more engaging, or I don’t quite know how to do what I’m doing, in which case I should either focus on some aspect of the project with which I am more familiar, or learn what I need to learn in order to move on in the project.
Practice 2: Invest in Building a Better Process
Another thing I’ve done to make the most of my working time is invest some time building a better process and workflow. An example of this is in my web development. As I was developing websites, I was finding that I would spend a lot of time doing many of the same things for each site, so rather than repeat those tasks over and over with each new project, I saved and notated a more complete version of a template that I use regularly that gives me a better baseline from which to start the development process, while still allowing me to provide a unique and effective design.
Notice that I said “invest.” It took me about 5 hours or so to create, notate and organize something that usually only takes me about an hour to do each time I build a website. That’s four hours of work time that I lost while creating this. But, having done this I will save an hour on each website that I build which will save me loads of time in the long run. Also, this solution might be valuable to someone else, and if I publish it I might be able to recoup my investment in other ways.
Ask yourself the question, “What is something that I can build that, though it may take time away from my work today, will save me time in the long run and help me to work more efficiently?” Be strategic about when you build this solution. In the middle of a big project under deadline is probably not the best time to work on something like this, but build it in your margins or between projects, using time that you are willing to invest.
Your Time is too Valuable to Not Make the Most of It.
I certainly don’t want to dismiss the importance of making time for work. For those of us whose available work time is scarce, this is a vital practice, but just as vital is ensuring that we are able to do our best, most efficient work with the time we do have.
by Ben Toalson | Jun 9, 2014 | In The Boat
Stay-cation!
A few weekends ago, Rachel and I sent the boys away to the grandparents for a few days, something we try to do quarterly, so we could spend some time hanging out just the two of us. We call it our “stay-cation” because our house is actually a fun place to stay and is not too far away from many of the things we enjoy doing. As an aside, can I just say how refreshing it is from time to time to be able to just get in your car and go somewhere without spending ten minutes looking for shoes?
Typically we spend the time doing some fun stuff around town, catch a movie or two, grab some meals out, and at some point we do a little dreaming out loud, talking about our dreams and business goals and evaluating where we are.
Dreaming Out-Loud
This particular weekend we decided to make the “dreaming out loud” activity a much bigger part of the weekend. After dropping off the boys we took a trip to Hobby Lobby and got a big whiteboard to match the one we’ve already got. We tidied up all of the clutter in our room (helps our minds to feel less cluttered), opened up the blinds to let in some natural light, set our whiteboards on their stands and got to work.
The Overlap Technique
We talked about book ideas, writing schedules, pod-casting, and everything else that we want to do. We ended up having to photograph our whiteboard scribbles and erase a few times because there was so much. At one point we were talking about our finances and about SeanWes’ Overlap Technique, (if you’re not familiar with the concept, you owe it to yourself to listen to this podcast episode where my good friend Sean McCabe explains it in-depth) and I had written down all of the different ideas I was working on. One of them, a business venture that I had decided was going to be my main focus, had a lot of words like “start” and “begin” in the task list. As we were standing back and looking at the board, my wife pointed to the “Ben Toalson Design” section and said, “You’ve already got all of this stuff built. You’ve got a website, you’ve got the blog going, you have an audience… why wouldn’t you just focus your time and energy on that?”
A Welcome Slap in the Face
BOOM. She was right. Here I was prepared to sink my time into something that I was essentially having to build from scratch when I already have a platform that, were I to spend the same amount of time and care further developing it, would be a much better tool for accomplishing my goals. Had we not taken the time to zoom out and evaluate all of these things, I don’t know if I would have seen it.
If you are building your own freelance business or pursuing your passion, it is vital to zoom out periodically and look at the bigger picture. If you’re like me, you may tend to feel a little lost in the details of what you’re doing. It’s much like wandering through a forest on your way to a mountain. Sometimes you’ve got to climb up and get above the treeline to make sure you’re still heading in the right direction.
Frequency
The frequency at which you do this is important. Too seldom and you may find yourself wildly off course. Too often and you will steal time away from the journey. If we zoom out to often, sometimes we find ourselves addicted to this activity which, though it feels productive, is not meant to be on our task list, but is meant to be a catalyst propelling us toward our goals. For my wife and me, once a quarter is really good. It causes us to set more targeted goals, to see what we are capable of accomplishing within each 3 month period.
What does zooming out look like? Zooming out effectively requires the following conditions:
A New Environment
This could look like going to a place where you don’t normally spend your time. It could be getting out in nature, going to an abandoned warehouse, a cabin in the woods, a lakehouse, etc. It could even be your own home, like in our example, the room felt new to us because it was clean, there was natural sunlight, and there weren’t children threatening to interrupt us at any given moment.
Seclusion
A coffee shop, though often a fine place to work, is not a great environment for a “dreaming” session. You need a place where you can be alone, away from the presence, voices, thoughts and eyes of other people. It’s okay to bring a fellow dreamer along if you are working on things together, but keep it to that. If you have children, you’ve got to get away from them or get them away from you for some period of time. I’ll address this challenge in next week’s article (I started writing down the ideas today and it was getting pretty lengthy, so I’m going to split it off). You will feel much greater clarity when not faced with the potential for interruption or distraction that comes from being around others.
A Big Writing Space
I am a huge proponent of writing by hand for dreaming sessions. There is scientific data that supports the idea that when we write our ideas as opposed to typing, speaking or thinking them, it fires in a unique part of our brains and actually carves a deeper memory path for those things. This is why many experts encourage you to write your goals down. For this reason, get something like a huge whiteboard, chalkboard, a large blank wall, whatever you can get your hands on that you can write on and is big and blank. This space will allow you to express your ideas freely without worrying about whether or not you are keeping within the margins. I find that my mind often reflects the writing space, in that my thoughts feel less constrained and I can think and dream more freely.
Constraints
Okay, so I just said that it’s good to not have constraints when it comes to dreaming, and certainly you should try to remove as many constraints from your environment as possible, but I find that having the right kind of time constraints actually causes me to think and dream more efficiently and gives me a boundary to break through from time to time. For us, we have the natural constraint of the length of the weekend, but we also build into our time little breaks here and there. If you’ve even gone to a creative conference you know that they don’t just have you sit in a chair and listen to speakers all day. The good conferences break up the day, put things on a schedule and offer different activities at different times. This allows the things your are hearing and experiencing to “breathe” a little bit before you dive into the next topic. Similarly, you want to have good, concentrated dreaming sessions, with occasional breaks or changes in activity, so that your thoughts and dreams can breathe a little bit. You’ll find often that you come back to the dreaming with a fresh mind. Also, sometimes knowing that you’ve only got 10-15 minutes left before you are supposed to take a break adds an excitement and energy to the process that you might not otherwise experience.
Hopefully this gives you some ideas for instituting or continuing your practice of zooming out periodically. I can’t overstate the importance of this practice. The world needs your ideas and solutions. Zooming out is the best way to ensure that you are staying on course so that you can reach your goals and realize your dreams! If you have any thoughts or ideas to share you can leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!
by Ben Toalson | Jun 2, 2014 | In The Boat
During the past few weeks I’ve experienced both the pull from family away from my work, and from my work away from my family. I try really hard to keep family time and work time very separate, but these past few weeks have been somewhat of an exception. I found myself often feeling that yucky feeling of stealing time away from one or the other.
The Night Shift
A few weeks ago I instituted a night-time work shift in order to catch up on some personal projects that have been dragging along. I sat down, looked at my schedule, and decided that the only way I was going to make meaningful progress was to work for a couple of hours four nights per week. When I made the case to my wife, a conversation which was much shorter than it should have been, she tentatively agreed and I jumped right into my work.
Now, I wanted to make sure I was still getting plenty of sleep, so I started right after we put the boys down to bed. If you have young kids, you know that putting the kids in their bed is only half a quarter of the battle. My wife ended up being the one who had to endure several interruptions and remind them 30 times about bed-time rules. Regardless of how much “agreed upon” freedom I had to work during that time, the feeling, that I should be sharing the responsibility that my wife was carrying on her own, kept growing and seeping into my attention.
Okay Dear, You Talk, I’ll Pretend to Listen
There were other distractions… Over the years we’ve found the great value in those last few hours after the kids are down, before we go to bed, to “catch up” and get on the same page. It’s amazing how much time you can spend in a house with another person and not have a meaningful conversation. We’d gotten into the healthy habit of talking about our days, talking about our calendars, etc. as we went about our night-time routines. Having not discussed very specific rules about my newly instituted work time, my wife expected at least to be able to get a few sentences in with me.
When I’m working, doesn’t really matter what it is, I have trouble focusing on anything else. For things like writing and developing this is especially true, but even for drawing and illustrating and things like that, I get so sucked in that I have a difficult time engaging the world around me. My wife, rightfully so because we hadn’t talked about it before hand, began to feel increasingly frustrated when she was not able to get even a fraction of meaningful attention from me.
Abandon Ship
It wasn’t too long before I abandon the night hours realizing that we hadn’t established it as a sustainable work practice, even on a temporary basis.
There are times when we become too relaxed about managing these exceptions in our schedules, and we need to snap back into being intentional about scheduling, communicating and defining work time and family time expectations. The reality is that sometimes our work load will require us to work extra hours from time to time. Rather than be surprised by these occurrences and let them cause undue stress, expect them and make a plan for managing and implementing exceptional work time.
Here are some intentional steps you can take when planning for extra work time:
Identify Your Exceptions
The first and most important thing you can do is to define your exceptions. For work time, it’s generally a temporary scheduling of work that falls outside of the normal working hours. If you don’t have a clearly defined work schedule, one of the best ways to identify exception hours is to ask the question, ‘Could I sustain these as regularly scheduled hours indefinitely?’
Define the Purpose
Exceptions in our working hours are not meant to be arbitrary. There has to be some goal or purpose for the exception. Ask the question, ‘What do I want to have accomplished by the time I’m done working these extra hours?’ This goes back to not being able to sustain it indefinitely. Without having a goal and a purpose in mind, there is nothing to drive that time and it opens you up to the risk of utilizing that time indefinitely or until you or your family becomes burned out.
Set an End Date
This is an important part of your exit strategy. Having a deadline on your goals and knowing that this exception is going to end, provides ample motivation for using the time wisely and effectively. It also provides reassurance to our family that they will not have to endure the potential burden of your extra working time forever.
Make a Strong Case
Before implementing exception work time, it is obviously important that you have a thorough and meaningful conversation with all those who will be affected by it. Maybe that’s just your spouse, or maybe it’s your spouse and kids. Before you go to them, have all of the previous points already in mind. You may even want to make a presentation that you can share with them in an official family meeting, including graphs and charts representing your investments and projections. It sounds silly to be “overly prepared” but the more informed you are, the more informed your family feels, the more you will all be on the same page when it comes to protecting that extra work time.
Gain Consensus From Everyone
Having everyone on board is vital. Even a decision not to have the extra work time causes the responsibility for the consequence of that decision (good or bad) to shift from only you to everyone involved in the decision. If everyone is on board with the decision to institute the exceptional work time, not only does it allow the responsibility of the outcome to be shared, but it provides greater accountability for the person doing the work.
Make the Rules
This is also a very important step. You must clearly outline the parameters. It’s easier to ask questions here and make arguments for or against certain rules, than it will be to work out those details when you’re in the middle of your work. This also serves to help everyone feel more on the same page and more on board with the decision.
Stick to the Plan
Once you’ve set goals and deadlines and made rules for your work, stick to the plan. In the hopefully rare case you need to do something like this again, it will help immensely if the people in the boat with you feel like they can count on you to follow what you agreed upon. If you need to change the rules, deadlines or goals, rather than make an executive decision (unless power has been granted to you to do so) have another meeting and make a case for those changes.
Nowhere are the lines between work and family more blurred, than in situations where we work for ourselves or from home. Allowing your family to be a part of the process of managing some of the work logistics can open the door to a better understanding of the role your work plays in your family’s life and well being, and ultimately serves to protect both.
by Ben Toalson | May 19, 2014 | In The Boat
The Daily Struggle
Today is a struggle. I get up early most days because if I don’t get a jump on the day I end up losing more time and productivity because of all of the noise in my world. Most of this noise comes from my wonderful children, playing, laughing and fighting downstairs, and my inner struggle to stay focused when I want to go rescue my wife from a stand-off with the kids. Five in the morning is a sleepy hour, but the kids are still asleep and the house is nice and quiet. We don’t have the kids in childcare, so my wife and I split the kid duties. She takes care of them in the morning and I take care of them in the afternoon. By six the kids are up and I can hear the noise of them outside my bedroom door, stomping around looking for shoes (we are constantly looking for shoes in this house), and I am working away.
Morning Workflow Interruptions
Something I left undone during the weekend becomes my first distraction of the morning, as I walk away from my work to take care of something that would have taken me 5 minutes to do the day before, but takes me 15 minutes this morning because my brain is still upstairs at my computer. I return and stare at the screen for a few seconds before reorienting myself around whatever it was I was doing before I left.
Not too long after I am given the choice to walk my oldest to school or stay home with the 4 younger. I choose the former which takes just as long, but is mentally a little less challenging.
“Working” Through Naptime
I get home, go upstairs and dive back into my work. It’s nice for a few hours. Then lunchtime hits and I can sense the chaos downstairs. Lunch is followed by a nap-time routine that sometimes resembles a mini-circus. Nap-time begins at 11am and here I know that I have and hour and a half before my shift begins and I am responsible for the kids, and maybe, just maybe they’ll sleep until 2pm.
My Turn
Once the kids are “down” my wife enters the room and begins her work. The remainder of her shift is spent going back and forth between our home office and the boys’ rooms, trying to settle them down. Then it’s my turn to watch the boys. This usually means I’m done working for the day, but if I have deadlines I didn’t meet or people that I need to follow up with, those things become distractions against watching the boys.
And Repeat… And Repeat… And Repeat
Watching the kids for the afternoon, cooking dinner, spending time together as a family, the night-time routine… all of these are wonderful things we get to do every day, but leave us exhausted. We make the most of the time we have once the kids are down for the night, trying to spend a little time together, getting the house ready for the following day, getting some work done, then we retire for the night so we can do it all over the next day. And the next day, and the next…
Working from home with kids is hard. Getting momentum and traction for our businesses AND maintaining a healthy home life don’t seem to want to work together. Is it always going to be this difficult? Are we just stuck?
Is It Going to Be Like This Forever?
Sometimes what we are experiencing today feels permanent. We know that it’s not permanent. We know that things change and that our future will look different and our past experience proves this to us, but what we are experience today is most immediate in our minds and tends to drown out everything else. At best, the feeling of permanence is a nagging annoyance in the back of our minds, at worst, it can feel like the walls are closing in and leave us crippled. Whatever your circumstances, navigating through these feelings can be challenging and can keep us from our best work.
Here are some of the things I do to manage these emotions so I can get back to work:
Let Your Mind Time-Travel
Daydreaming is a good word here. Making a regular practice of imagining our future and recalling our past is a good way to condition our minds to hold our present reality more loosely. When you think about the past, ask yourself: What has changed? What did I want then that I have now? What was difficult then that is easy now? When you imagine your future, ask: What is difficult about today that will look completely different tomorrow? What are some things that I want now that I will have in the future? You’ve got to be careful with this one though. You can build a great deal of discontentment for your present circumstances if you look at your past or future in the wrong light.
Plan for the Pivot Points
Pivot points are the little moments in your timeline that add up to equal a big change in your circumstances. Your kids starting school or getting involved in extra-curricular activities, a new client or product for your business, your children growing more capable of handling certain types of responsibility, growth in your income. What pivot points do you foresee? Make a plan for these pivot points. Ask questions like: What am I going to do with the extra time this change might give me? or, Where am I going to make up the time that I’m losing from this change? or, What tasks might I begin to delegate or pay someone else to take care of to free up more of my time? Just thinking on these things is beneficial, and having a plan for how you will manage these changes further reinforces the idea that things WILL change.
Change What You Can Today
Is there something you can change or sacrifice today to make your present circumstances more livable? I feel the most grief in the areas where I’ve built bad habits and have poor discipline. One example (something I’m doing right now, in fact) is waiting until the last minute to work on my writing. This is not only stressful, but doesn’t lead me to my best work. I’m usually racing against the clock to get it done and end up doing it on the most inconvenient day at the most inconvenient time. So I’m sacrificing some of the things I enjoy doing at night, so that I can get up early and write every day. Building a daily writing habit will not only put me ahead on my writing schedule, but will also allow my ideas to flow more freely.
Embrace Your Current Season
Amidst all of the struggle of working from home with kids, I LOVE that I can stop what I’m doing at any time and see them. I love that I make my own schedule, so I can be present when they need me most. I love that I don’t have to clock in somewhere and spend my time building someone else’s dream. Can you find something that you love about your current circumstances? Can you look back at your past situation, or at others’ present situations for some perspective? Are there little things about your routine, your daily cup (or pot) of coffee, the random interruption of children, that you find endearing? Let these things help you to mentally and emotionally re-frame the season that you’re in today.
by Ben Toalson | May 12, 2014 | In The Boat
How Important is Belief?
I’ve often heard and even spoken a lot about how important belief is for accomplishing goals. For this reason I have practiced self-belief, visualization, writing down and carrying my goals with me, etc. But, as helpful as those things can be, I don’t know if I can truly attribute my accomplishments to the belief that I could actually do them.
The Two Types of Belief
For my purposes I’m creating a distinction between two types of belief that come into play when trying to accomplish a goal. I’m going to define them here so I can bring them in later:
1. Experiential Belief: I believe I can do this because I know I’ve done it before and I am an expert. If you are among the fortunate group of adults who knows how to tie your shoes, you probably don’t wake up in the morning wondering whether or not you’re going to be able to tie your shoes that day. It’s a given. This is the type of belief that comes from a repeated experience of your own capability to accomplish a goal.
2. Speculative Belief: I believe I can do this because, though I’ve never done it before, I’ve demonstrated the skills and the expertise necessary in areas similar to this goal. For example, if you can tie your shoe, you can probably tie a bow for a gift package. Or, if you’re really good at drawing pictures of cats, you can probably draw a picture of a tiger. This is a belief that the “stuff” you need to accomplish a goal is inside of you, though you do not have the experiential proof.
These types of belief are great motivators. Believing that you can and will accomplish a goal…
But what if you don’t have that knowing belief? What if the question ‘can I do this?’ returns a huge question mark, or a ‘maybe’, or an ‘I don’t know’?
“I Can’t Believe I Just Did That”
I have this experience often where I look back at a project I finished and wonder to myself how I did it. Most recently I spent nearly 20 hours working on an artistic piece for a client. It was a huge project and to be honest, when I look at it, when I watch the time lapse video I made of the final piece, I almost can’t imagine that was ME doing it. It’s like it was someone else.
Another example of this is some of the home improvement projects I’ve taken on. We redesigned our kitchen, installing tile floors, tile backsplash on the walls, sanded and stained the cabinets, installed new cabinets, installed can lights… when I walk into that kitchen it’s hard to believe that I did all of that.
Probably the strongest example is the children. How they are still alive today is a mystery to me. After the birth of our first and those preliminary days in the hospital, the nurse came in and said, ‘Ok, it’s time to send you guys home.’ And even though I knew we were supposed to take this little human baby home to live with us, I almost said out-loud, ‘wait… don’t we need some kind of certification or something? I think he’d be safer here. We should just leave him here with you and we will just come visit.’ But here we are 7 years later and I really couldn’t tell you how we got here.
Despite Belief…
Except that we just did. I couldn’t tell you that I had experiential or even speculative belief that I could help raise another human being, but I just did. If I waited until I had an unwavering belief or could be convinced that I would be successful in raising a child before I would let them send a baby home with me, we’d still probably be in the hospital… seven years later. The bill would be astronomical.
It makes me wonder, what am I not doing today because I’m holding out for belief?
Disproving Disbelief
Now I want to contrast this with disbelief. There is a huge difference between saying ‘I don’t know if I can do that’ and ‘I know I can’t do that.’ The voice that says that you cannot do something is a liar. Here’s why:
1. You don’t know everything.
That’s it. You have no idea what you might be capable of if you practiced, over and over, that thing you believe you cannot do. You have no idea what technological or scientific breakthroughs might be on the horizon that will make what seems impossible today possible tomorrow. You have no idea what might change in your circumstances. You don’t know what the future holds. You don’t know everything. So, though you may not be able to say, ‘Yes, I can certainly do that!’, you certainly cannot say, ‘No, I cannot do that.’ At the very worst there is a low probability of success, but there’s still a chance!
Believe If You Can, But Try!
It’s great to have belief. Belief can be a very helpful ally, but if you don’t allow yourself to work toward or even set goals unless you believe you can accomplish them; if you don’t make it about the doing, even in the face of doubt, the world will miss out on the amazing things that you never knew or couldn’t have guessed you have inside of you. Because maybe there is greatness in you. Maybe there is a masterpiece in you. As long as there is a chance, I say go for it!
by Ben Toalson | May 5, 2014 | Case Studies, In The Boat, portfolio
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Commissioned Hand Lettering Piece
I was recently commissioned to do an art piece in a style I am growing very fond of which combines illustration with a form of lettering that uses negative space to form the letters. I was asked to use the picture below of Claudio Sanchez, front-man for Coheed And Cambria, as inspiration and to hand-letter on this image the following lyrics from four of their songs:
“Good Eye, Sniper. I’ll shoot, you run”
“Would you run down past the fence? FBI!”
“Your father’s dead, he passed in his sleep”
“One Eighty Four, lets burn it down”
Gathering Inspiration
The first thing I do is to take some time to study my subject. I listen to the songs, imagining how the style might manifest itself into a unique expression of each word. I learn about the band, their origins and the music they’ve produced over the years. I learn about the fans and the culture that has grown around this band and the stories and messages of their music. I spend about a week doing this before I even put pencil to paper.
Writing Out The Lyrics
Simply writing out the lines that I will be lettering helps to clear my mind of any preconceived ideas I might have about how the words should be arranged or what styles the words should take. In this step I make marks and boxes, sometimes combining words or matching words I feel should have equal emphasis.
After getting a feel for the pacing of the words, I write them out again, this time making line breaks to separate the words and word combinations, further defining the hierarchy. I am careful not to think too far ahead to how the words might be arranged in the image, so that the hierarchy remains intact.
Preliminary Word Placement
This is actually one of the places where I can tend to get a little stuck. The question bounces around in my head, “What if I put the words in the wrong place?” I could sit and stare at that outline all day long, but instead I accept that my first attempt at placing the words is probably not going to look anything like the end product and that sets me free to just draw. I sketch, erase, sketch, erase, mark out, etc. until I feel like I’ve got something close to what I imagine the finished project will look like.
More Placement Work
Now I’ve got a better idea of where the words fit into the composition and my goal is to continue working until I’ve come as close to what will be on the final draft as possible.
Half Size Drafts
These drafts are much closer to the final version. They are 12″ x 12″, half the size of what the final version will be.
1st Draft
This draft focuses specifically on the letter styles and further hones in on the word placement. I only use pencil so that I can make erasures and discover more quickly what the final layout will look like. This is the last step in which I might make placement and style decisions. After this one, they are set.
2nd Draft
This draft is meant to basically be a smaller version of the final. I focus on every detail and ink it as I will the final. This draft is great for helping me to work through my jitters and get the mistakes out of my system, as well as helping me become even more familiar with the styles and placement.
Final Piece
Using the 2nd draft as a reference I use a grid system to transfer and lightly sketch the half size image to the full size page.
As I did with the 2nd draft, I take the following steps:
1. Draw grid/guide lines
2. Lightly sketch the outline and basic details
3. Write the words more or less where they will appear
4. Go back phrase by phrase and draw each letter
5. Make final adjustments, erasures and re-sketches before going to the inking phase
6. Slowly and meticulously outline each letter, just on the outside edge of the letter. Here I also line the outline and other drawn elements
7. Erase the pencil lines leaving only the ink
8. Slowly and meticulously outline each letter with a thicker line that will serve as a buffer for the filling that I also do in this step
9. Draw the face detail and fill in shapes and lines
10. Make any minor necessary adjustments and final erasures
11. Sign it
Here is a time-lapse video that condenses the 7.5 hours I spent on this draft alone into 5 minutes. I also composed an original instrumental song to accompany the video. The song is called “Falling Through the Center.”
Package and Ship It
I include the 1st and 2nd drafts, the final piece, and a hand-written note, wrap it up carefully with edge protectors, bubble wrap and packing peanuts to ensure that the contents make it to the client unharmed. As a bonus for the client, I create and send an HD wallpaper along with the final message and invoice.
I Can’t Wait to Do This Again
I will continue to work on personal projects in this same style and already have several in mind, some for which I will make case studies like this.
For more content like this you can check out my process page that talks about the process I use for designing logos or websites, or you can check out another case study from a logo project I took on a few months ago.
