Finished Illustration
Here is the finished illustration (left). The finished illustration was scanned at 1200 pixels per inch, in 1-bit and saved in TIF format. A duplicate was made from the TIF file and converted to a low resolution JPG which was emailed to the client for approval. Once the illustration was approved, I emailed the high resolution TIF file to the client. The compressed TIF was about 2 megabytes.

While I am very pleased with the illustration itself, I was knocked out by the way Deborah incorporated it into her designs. Especially clever is the way she used enlarged sections of the illustration to make brightly colored backgrounds that have an organic feel. You can see the designs for yourself at the Quaker Coffee or wfour design group websites.

While much of the communication and preparations for creating this drawing were propelled by 21st Century technology (it could have come out of Tom Friedman's book "The World Is Flat"), the actual rendering was done much the same as 19th century drawing methods. The drawing was rendered by hand on scratchboard and drawn to look like a wood engraving—both scratchboard and wood engraving were made popular in the 19th Century. However, the 21st Century graphic designer need not worry about my 19th Century drawing methods — they will get a high quality digital file that can be placed in Quark, InDesign, Illustrator or any graphics program, and it will print wickedly grand! —at nearly any size.

Attention! Last minute update from wfour design group:

Michael,…Quaker Coffee won one First Place in 2005 OSR/Foodservice Packaging Awards for Brand Delivery - Family of Packaging Category, and in 2007 won Third Place in the same Category for new material.