Happy Birthday Half Marathon: Part II

A little background and insight to my thought process for the HBHM (Happy Birthday Half Marathon) creations...

Staring at my black slate (or my blank Illustrator pasteboard, rather), I knew I wanted to incorporate a handful of items: 13.1, Happy Birthday, the city, running. I did some preliminary sketching but ultimately went to my trusty pen tool in Illustrator creating a simple square city with a line "running" through it. You'll see the initial 'city and line' in gray.  This evolved to the green city with a more conceptually appropriate line running "through" the city. And lastly, for a bit of birthday flare, the addition of candles made the city look a little bit like a birthday cake! 

As for the Happy Birthday Half Marathon text. The 13.1 pretty much transformed itself into a "B" and "I" as I was writing out 'birthday' on my sketchpad. (To make a B, you first you draw a vertical line and then you draw a "3" to finish it off! How convenient!)  The trick to making it work was finding the right font. You'll see not many were friendly, but ultimately "Still Time" was the perfect fit. 

Concept Collage

The #1 Button

The Front of the Mug

The finished products...

On the day of both the birthday and the race, we adorned ourselves in the HBHM buttons - and even met another birthday runner along the way! It was an amazing race, and a Happy (Birthday) Half Marathon!

lusb.