I’ve been working on a personal banner for my blog since it first properly propagated on the Interwebz, and today it is finally complete.

The finished product!

This is a serious accomplishment for me on a number of levels.  One, I’m not visually artistic, so to create something that looks decent is on par with a miracle.  Two, I used Adobe Illustrator to do this–I have Adobe Creative Suite 5, and I’ve been wanting to put the programs to good use.  However, they have a strong learning curve, and so I watched a couple hours worth of tutorials (the most useful was this one) and searched a bunch of documentation before having the smallest idea how to begin.

I’m more familiar with Photoshop, but after reading more about each program I went with Illustrator.  I think I’ll also use Illustrator for a comic strip I plan on doing in the future.

The “leelzebub devil” design has been around for about a year now, so the only problem was translating it onto Illustrator.  That ended up being a huge problem.  Hours and hours of a problem.  I have so much respect for artists after this project; the patience required is impressive.

I suppose the last issue I faced was choosing a font-type.  I have a few friends who have convinced me of “the importance of the font,” so I spent a moment inspecting the hundreds offered before settling on Cooper Black.  I don’t know the significance of Cooper Black, what it means to choose that over Helvetica or Modern or Arial, but I know that it struck a chord with me on some level and I will probably continue to pair it with other “leelzebub” works.

If anyone wants more info about the more technical stuff, I’d be happy to expound.

The leelzebub devil.