DAILY 365 | 2018

365 Days of Making Stuff

On January 1st, 2018, I decided that I was going to dedicate all of 2018 to creating one thing per day for a challenge called the Daily 365. I’ve attempted doing this twice before in 2009 and 2012 with photography and hand-lettering, respectively. Needless to say, I was unable to follow through both times.

This time around, I wasn’t even entirely sure if I was going to fully commit to it and finish it. But in my head I kept picturing what the end product would look like. Seeing an entire year’s worth of work in front of me was something I imagined would be and feel incredible. And I was right. This was 100% worth it.

That being said, I don’t recommend anyone take on this project. It’s a TON of work. But if you do try to attempt doing a Daily 365, just know that reaching the end is so incredibly worth it. The commitment you have to make to see a year-long project through to the end is huge. I’ve had to put lots of things on hold to keep up this project and finish it. But as a result, I’ve learned a ton of new things about myself and most importantly, I’ve proven it to myself that I can reach goals that I set for myself if I just use the finish line as my North Star.

A WHOLE YEAR? LET’S DO THIS!

The Journey Begins

January 1st started out like any other New Years Day for me; I woke up early to watch the Rose Parade and then lounged around the house and did a whole lot of nothing. The day came and went and I started thinking about what projects I wanted to work on for the rest of the year. I had just pulled out a sketchbook and a bunch of pens and pencils when suddenly I heard that little voice that makes its presence known on the first day of every year saying that I should consider making another attempt at taking on the Daily 365 challenge again.

I sat there and stared at the page and considered it. My logical mind is telling me not to do it because my life is a lot different since I last attempted it. I have a lot more obligations and responsibilities. Doing one new thing every single day for a whole year is a lot of work.

But then my inspired mind starts thinking about how cool it would be to say that I did it and to see 365 things I made in front of me. So I decided at 5pm that I was going to just start and then see where it goes.

ONE MONTH DOWN, NOT SO BAD

Switching Things Up

As January progressed, I began second-guessing my decision to continue with it. I knew it was still early on and maybe nobody would notice or even care if I just stopped posting stuff every day. Getting bored and showing early signs of burn-out was not something I was unfamiliar with but to have it show up this early in the process made me realize I was setting myself up for failure.

So as February was fast approaching, I decided that to avoid burn-out, instead of only doing hand-lettering all year-long, I would instead choose a different theme each month. That way I could keep things fresh and not get bored with something which would ultimately lead me to quit the project altogether.

One thing I enjoyed doing before I started the project was drawing fractal geometric shapes. So I decided that February’s theme would be something I was familiar with and enjoyed doing that way I would continue the project with a decent amount of motivation.

ENOUGH WITH THE MANUAL STUFF

Shoot Your Shot

For as much as I enjoyed doing those fractal illustrations, I ended up wanting that month to be over so bad. About halfway through the month I was having trouble with coming up with shapes and finding the time to manually create every fractal pattern. Who knew that there were only so many shape combinations one could create?

February was the first of many times throughout the year I came really close to abandoning this entire project altogether. But I knew I had to push through. This whole thing started to become more than just a project at this point but more of a test of will. What would it say about me if I quit when things started to get tough? I know I’ve quit twice before but I’ve matured a lot more since then and knew that the disappointment would hit me harder.

So I decided to pick myself up and went back to basics by dedicating all of March to photography. The very medium I used when I attempted the Daily 365 challenge for the first time in 2009.

PICKING UP THE PEN AGAIN…

Recognizing Patterns

After sailing through March with ease, I found myself wanting to do some cool illustrated stuff. I had purchased an iPad Pro in early February and I wanted to finally put it to good use.

The cool thing about the iPad Pro is that there is a large number of drawing apps that are available for it. One app in particular that I found to be incredibly fun to use was Amaziograph. It allowed you to draw things in a large range of symmetry options. With it you could do things like draw symmetrically in x-axis or y-axis or both, as well as seamless patterns that span the entire canvas.

I found I had the most fun creating seamless patterns so I decided that the theme for April would be illustrated patterns.

SWISS, LIKE THE CHEESE

My Old Stomping Grounds

April came and went and on the first day of May I still had yet to come up with a theme. I knew that I didn’t want to do anything drawing related for a while so I got to thinking about other things I enjoyed doing.

That’s when I had the idea to go way back to the early days of when I first got into typography and graphic design as a whole. I was incredibly inspired by Swiss graphic design and typography and my intense curiosity led me to research this stuff for hours on end when I was first starting out.

I hadn’t done this sort of stuff in a long time but I knew way more about form and color theory than I did before. I used shapes and typography as the main focal points and as the month went on, I turned these into mini motivational/work ethic posters while writing long captions with excerpts from an old book about mindset and practicality that I started writing in 2014 but never finished.

I should probably finish writing that book.

IT’S LIKE MATH BUT WITHOUT NUMBERS

Geometry for Dummies

If there’s any constant theme you should be picking up by now, it’s that I really enjoy geometry and symmetry. But like geometry that I can draw with a mouse and not the solve for x kind. I enjoy geometry and symmetry so much that in 2017 I actually created my very own symmetry tool for Adobe Illustrator called LiveSymmetry for Adobe Illustrator.

It was a tool I created out of necessity for myself to help with creating symmetrical geometric shapes with ease. I developed it to the point that I decided to package it up and put it up for sale on my Creative Market shop (creativemarket.com/EsquivelType).

But enough about that. The reason I brought that up is because I used that tool to create geometric line art for the month of June. And to illustrate to you that I really enjoy geometry and symmetry.

You’ll see. There’s more symmetry related stuff I did later in the year.

THE MOST CUSTOM OF TYPOGRAPHY

Don’t Call it Fan Art

This theme was, by far and large, the absolute most difficult theme I somehow managed to pull off during this whole project. I’ve been doing custom typography since 2008 and it was one of the styles I was most recognized for early on in my career as a designer. So when I had the idea to do something so ambitious as to essentially create band logos using my favorite bands’ names, I knew that it would be too much fun to pass up.

I started out by compiling a large list of the names of my favorite bands and narrowed everything down to 31 names. Next I took a name every day and modified the text and shapes to be completely customized using Illustrator, then brought it into Photoshop and worked some magic with colors, gradients, lighting effects, textures, etc… until finally I posted them to my Instagram (@eagleandbison) and tagged every band and band member.

This theme was probably my most popular one out of all of them. I attracted lots of attention and as a result I even became friendly with some of the very members of a few of my favorite bands!