43/52: Orlando's

4/14/18 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on April 15, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Pizza and Pixels

Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 43.

When I was a kid in the 1980s, we frequently ate at a neighborhood pizza place called Orlando’s Pizza. I don’t really remember that much about the pizza, but we always wanted to go there so the food must have been good.

In the back of the restaurant was a small arcade. “Arcade” is a little generous. It was at most four or five machines. After I finished my pizza I’d head to the back of the restaurant. If I had a quarter, I’d play. Or just watch the machines cycle through their demo screens. I played Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Galaga for the first time at the pizza joint.

It’s hard to imagine now, when the phone that we carry in our pockets play an endless selection of infinitely more complex games, but those arcade games were my first real exposure to computers. Our family eventually bought several Commodore computers, but my love of video games and technology can probably be tracked back to Orlando’s.

The restaurant is long gone, but I wanted to commemorate it with a redesign, renaming Orlando’s Pizza to Orlando’s Pizza and Pixels. And it was an excuse to turn a slice of pizza into an apostrophe.

You can purchase “Orlando’s” from my Threadless store.

Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.

42/52: Dingbot

4/7/18 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on April 8, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Ten years of Fontstruct

Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 42.

Ten years ago, I came across a web app called Fontstruct that allowed me to build modular type. I signed up and produced my first typeface, Pixa, which must have been terrible because I deleted it. But I blogged about Fontstruct and Pixa on April 6, so considering the site launched on April 1, I must have been one of the first wave of users.

Since then, I’ve released dozens of typefaces through Fontstruct. Some of these designs have been selected as Top Picks and some are pretty bad. Fontstruct designs have served as prototypes for several of my commercial designs. I don’t create much on Fontstruct anymore, but every so often, I’ll show up and enter one of their contests or knock out a quick idea that’s rolling around in my head. I love creating type, and Fontstruct is absolutely fun to create in. I really do need to find time to build more on Fontstruct.

It’s really amazing how the tool and the community has evolved over the last ten years. Users are building increasingly complex typefaces and now with the Google Fonts integration, the better designs might get a wider audience.

To commemorate joining the Fontstruct community ten years ago, I wanted to make a shirt featuring one of my glyphs… but which one? One of my pixel art designs seemed like a good idea, so I settled on my favorite robot from the original “Dingbots and Monsters.”

You can buy “Dingbot” on my Threadless store.

Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.

41/52: Empty Tomb

3/31/18 • 1 min read

This post was originally posted on April 1, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

Exit only

Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 41.

I love Easter Sunday. The sunrise service. The hymns. The special music. The flowers. But most of all, I love the joy and the excitement. After the reflection of the Lenten season and Holy Week, we celebrate — we rejoice — that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.

The release date for this week’s shirt falls on Easter. The stone is rolled back and our savior exits the tomb.

You can purchase Empty Tomb on my Threadless store.

Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.

40/52: Kudzu Palace

3/23/18 • 2 min read

This post was originally posted on March 24, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

No one ever wants to eat there…

Each week for a year, I’m designing a shirt and releasing it on my Threadless store. This is the design for week 40.

When I was little, we lived in Stanley, North Carolina. Every so often on the weekend, we’d make the trek over to Gastonia to have dinner, go shopping or catch a movie. We’d drive along a road where every tree seemed to be covered in kudzu. If you aren’t familiar with kudzu, it’s a vine that grows relatively uncontrolled across the southeastern United States. It’s legendarily impossible to kill.

At some point on the trip, my dad would ask us where we wanted to eat. He’d give us three options, but the third option was always “Kudzu Palace.” Kudzu Palace didn’t exist, of course, but every time, my siblings and I would yell “Not Kudzu Palace!”

Now that I have kids, I often offer up Kudzu Palace as a dining option. Surprisingly, they never pick it either.

When I started this project, I actually planned to do a bunch of fake restaurants and brands. Kudzu Palace was one of the original ideas from my first set of sketches. The project has taken a different direction and the designs have been more conceptual, but I’m glad I finally got around to creating a shirt for my favorite fictional restaurant. Now, I’m wondering what’s on the menu.

You can purchase “Kudzu Palace” from my Threadless store.

Bob Wertz writes about design, technology and pop culture at Sketchbook B. Bob is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director, college instructor, husband and dad. He’s particularly obsessed with typography, the creative process and the tools we use to create. He’s currently in the middle of a project to design a new shirt a week for an entire year.