Illustration/Design/Copywriting

50 Days of Illustrated Regrets

A weird personal odyssey

Timeframe: January-May 2020
Solo Project

Roles:

• Illustration
• Layout Design
• Graphic Designer
• Copywriting

Skills:

• Procreate
• Adobe InDesign
• Creative Thinking
• Time management
• Commitment

Challenge/Problem

Sometimes we make mistakes or bad decisions. Sometimes it is something that is totally in our control and we just biffed it; other times an outside influence just ruined our day. Regardless of how they began, all of us have a lot of REGRETS. Anyone who doesn’t is either a liar or comes from such a background of privilege that I regret their existence.

Background

50 Regrets was actually the product of a regret in the making. Ok, I have a little story: I started a freelance project rebranding my friends’ business, and used it as my winter quarter Special Project. I thought I was being clever and could triple dip for class credit, internship credit, and money. Things went sideways, and 4 weeks into the quarter I needed a new project. After a couple panicked calls/texts to some alumni, I brainstormed for a bit, and then in the shower trying to destress I found it: 50 Days of Illustrated Regrets.

Project Goals

The initial goal was to create an illustration of a regret (most were mine, some were sourced from friends and family, others are global regrets) every day for 50 days.

After the 50 days/illustrations were over I made the following secondary goal to create a printed compilation of these regrets, which was:

• Pick the best 24 (based mostly on what was funniest/better illustrations, other factors). I came up with 24 as the quantity mostly because it was in my budget, and 50 is a significantly larger zine (physically and emotionally)
• Bring them into a consistent art direction
• Create a compilation with a background for the regrets
• Make it real!

The soft skill goal of the was really to push my mind to find 50 regrets! I honestly thought I would have had hundreds. Turns out it's about 40ish, and there were about a dozen sourced from my friends.

Process

I brainstormed many regrettable things I have done or have happened to me. I asked other folks for their regrets, opinions on mine. Created some more regrets. Then illustrated one a day, every night before going to bed. Oh no! Run out of regrets? Ask a friend if there’s anything they regret lately! Or drink a bunch and make a new one, and draw it out. Then added a caption with an explanation or backstory.

Solution

For building the zine. I put everything into the orange, black, green, and white color palette (that is also used on this site, and my business card, etc) and used the black outline style art direction. It meant redoing a LOT of the illustrations, but it was worth it for quality and consistency. The food is a little less appealing now, but I liked the challenge of it.
Some illustrations I had done earlier were bad. Like, really bad, and were also kind of lazy. I used this as an opportunity to repent for my crimes against illustration.

Reflections

This was a fun and incredibly personal project for me. It kind of evolved from a problem looking for a solution, into a solution looking for a problem, and then turning into an identity project. I had fun, I feel emotionally rewarded. I MADE STICKERS. 
It’s done.
And I want to do it all over again.