Saavy's Downtown Sweets
I had the good fortune to work on this pin-up style illustration to accompany the logo for Saavy’s Downtown Sweets, a new vintage style soda fountain and ice cream parlor to open in Gilroy, CA spring of 2024. They will be offering outside seating that is dog friendly, and will feature live music. It was just the excuse I needed to suggest adding my dog Waffles to the image! If you are ever in Gilroy, this will be the place to hang out.
Early Sketches and Research
I admit I am no expert on pin-up style illustrations, but I was very eager to come up with something for this project! I started by collecting as much pin-up reference I could that would be relevant. The client wanted the girl to have a vintage look, either late 1940s or 1950s. The client quickly chose the second sketch on the top row for its playful sassy attitude.
There were several rounds of revising and refining the sketches to figure out what would work best. This was about when I took the opportunity to sneak in my dog!
Further Refining the Sketch
Along the way, the client decided the girl in the logo should be her. Nice to know she trusted me with her likeness for something this important. We were still working out what to do with her left hand, but I went ahead and did a tight rendering of her face and hair to assure her it was going to be OK!
Once I had the go ahead, I rendered out the rest of the illustration in black and white to be sure my values worked well, then added color and other small details to the final art.
With the final color added, I kept the dog and girl on separate layers. At this point I didn't know how the logo designer planned on combining everything together. I wasn't even sure they would keep the dog. I created a circular background element on another layer as a suggestion for pulling everything together, creating a stronger graphic element. This led to the use of a circular background for the final logo.
