Design With a Drawl.
Carolyn Sewell describes herself as “a potty-mouthed doodler from the Deep South.” Having met her, we can confirm this top to bottom. For the past twelve years, she’s been living and working as an illustrator in the DC area, where as she recalls, “Early on, it was difficult to be taken seriously.”
“I had a solid portfolio of work, but folks couldn’t get past my accent or the fact that I went to college in Mississippi. The stereotypes made me a better and more determined designer, though, and eventually the work spoke louder than my extra syllables.”
Carolyn and her drawl stuck around, and for the past seven years she’s been freelancing, specializing in hand-drawn typography. Even when she’s not working on client projects, she’s creating type. A few years back, she went as far as to design and mail handmade, type-heavy cards to her parents every day for an entire year.
Going Against Type.
When it came time to concept for her ARTCRANK poster, it seemed like the obvious choice to go type-heavy. Carolyn sketched out a few PSA-style designs that played off Washington DC being both a top 10 worst traffic cities and top 10 best cycling city, but later decided to go type-free with something more autobiographical, paying homage to her love for riding.
Carolyn admitted that a design without type is outside of her wheelhouse. In fact, she couldn’t recall the last time she created a design without the stuff. But she embraced the challenge, and it shows in the final product.
“I had two requirements: my cyclist had to be a girl, and she had to wear a helmet,” she explains. “The minute I added her ponytail and heart lips, I just started smiling. I knew I was headed in the right direction.”
A Local’s-Eye View of The District.
After getting her poster’s protagonist sorted out, Carolyn was faced with how to best represent DC in the environment around her. She started with monuments and cherry blossoms, but decided that as long as she was changing up her style, she didn’t want to be conventional with the setting.
“I wanted to show my DC, not a visitor’s DC,” explains Carolyn. “I kept going back to my original sketch of the bridges and realized those bridges are my DC. Those bridges are what connect all of metro DC, what connect me to the District.”
Carolyn decided to depict her favorite bridge, the Key Bridge, which she rides every day during her commute. The bridge is named after Francis Scott Key, the writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” so Carolyn added some stars in the bike’s basket. Three stars, the number on the DC flag, to be exact.
“Call me a romantic, but I feel like I ride through a postcard every day,” says Carolyn. “On any given day I could have Georgetown rowers beneath me on the Key Bridge, or the President’s helicopter above me. It’s a dreamy place to ride, and I hope people take that away from this poster.”
For the past four years, ARTCRANK has worked with Neenah Paper to offer our artists access to new choices in fine papers for screen-printed and letterpress posters. In 2014 we’re following four artists from each of our U.S. shows as they develop their ideas and print them on a Neenah Paper stock. We’ll post these behind-the-scenes poster stories after each event, and share more exclusive content on Neenah Paper’s Against The Grain blog.