Nudes, faces and silhouettes in Neon
It usually takes one design brief that you really love to end up being a self-proclaimed or team appointed specialist in the said field here at Electric Confetti.
One of our favourite things to design are faces and the female form.
We love working with the curves of the vector line to create the form of the human body. With face design, there is always a challenge in depicting eyes and lips – these elements generally require a lot of detail to perfect, but due to the limitations of the medium, it can be hard to execute while making it look believable.
Design briefs vary from a detailed brief of their vision, along with colour preference and size requirements along with reference images. We love a client sketch. Sometimes it’s a simple drawing on a piece of paper! A vector illustration is also very handy and we can tell we’re dealing with a fellow professional if that is the case. Vector files (native adobe illustrator files, the preferred design programme for professionals) make the process super fast, often all that is required is a few tweaks to make the design suitable for the hand fabrication.
Equally, a vague brief where the customer isn’t so sure what they want is just as exciting, we love a challenge! This is where our design expertise comes in. We work closely with the client either via a chat over email, the phone, or in person at our studio. Before we meet up, we encourage the customer to establish their style preferences, particularly if it’s an image based sign, like the faces and forms featured in this article. A shared pinterest board where they pin favourite ideas and thoughts – not necessarily of other signage, but anything, even furniture can really help us establish a sense of style so we can begin the design process. Modern style? Traditional with lashings of detail? Simple + clean?
Imagery of the space where the neon will hang always helps get a sense of style too, as the surrounding objects and home decor choices give an indication of how we can approach the design. The Paula’s dance hall design pictured was designed by Nat for the wall of a couples very own diner-style dance hall. Being a surprise for his wife, he covertly visited the shop to discuss the project and sit with us while we designed it for him. He had a reference image of him dancing with his wife, and this was used as the reference to start the design. Font choice was very specific, and had to be genuine to the era. We know our fonts, and capturing the true essence of this era with type choice was as important as getting the drawing right!
Many form-based signs we do are an ode to ye-olde signage as seen frequently on American highways. This one that came though had us all excited, and we’re sure you’ll agree Charlotte did an excellent job of designing it.
It remind us of an old favourite designed in 2015, the classic diving lady neon sign.
