He was a BIG, FAT caterpillar!
Five things from this week
This week: Drawing a bird like Charley Harper. Singing about caterpillars. Another Human Intelligence badge. A Fiddle Leaf Fig drawing. Live video navigation. And more!
🔗 Any text that is underlined is a link that can be clicked 🔗
1. Birds at the zoo
Carly is due early August (!!!) so we’re trying to get out and do a bunch of things before our little girl shows up. This week we went to the Milwaukee Zoo and saw some animals we will probably never see again.
I was especially drawn to the birds and understood why Charley Harper illustrated so many of them. We love his work. One of Knox’s stuffed animals is named Charley Harper and when we first asked him what we should name his sister he said, “Charley Harper.”
Here’s a website dedicated to his work if you want to see a ton of animal illustrations.
We saw a Rhinoceros Hornbill at the zoo so I made this illustration as an homage to one of our favorite artists.
2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Knox got a Toniebox last year and it’s been a great source of screenless entertainment. He recently got The Very Hungry Caterpillar Tonie which reads the book out loud, gives some facts about butterflies and then sings the book.
His favorite part is when they sing “He was a big, fat caterpillar” so now he randomly belts that out during the day.
Eric Carle is another artist we love as a family.
3. Another badge
I made another Human Intelligence badge (here’s a link to the first one I made). I wanted one that would work as a footer.
I think the “branding” of this newsletter is getting a little unruly. The logo is set in stretched Helvetica with a linocut illustration of my face. This badge is set in Axel Grotesk with a clean vector hand. Knox’s quote is a digital drawing made with a random Photoshop brush. Does the “Comics I’ve read this week” section need a header image?
The designer part of me wants to overhaul everything and make it more consistent. The artist part of me sees the inconsistency as evidence of an ongoing creative process. The rest of me believes I’m overthinking it and no one notices or cares. What do you think?
4. A drawing of one of our Fiddle Leaf Figs
5. Website navigation
In the top right corner of Craig & Karl’s website is a graphic that gives an update on both designers. Craig and Carl work together but live in different parts of the world so the graphic changes based on the local time for each designer.
It’s daytime for Craig but nighttime for Karl. Craig is apparently looking at a gossip website and Karl is enjoying some beer. There are a variety of images that change based on the time of day.
I can glance at the corner of their website and instantly understand the time difference between these coworkers. I love how they’ve infused their style and sense of humor into every detail of their work.
It reminds me of the Sagmeister & Walsh website from 2016 (or 2017?):
The homepage of their website was a live video feed of their office. The navigation is on the bottom but you can also click on the signs in the window to navigate to those pages on the website.
They had one view of all the people working and one view of the front desk:
So cool. I wonder if the live feed caused any safety concerns? Maybe they delayed the feed by a day or something.
ALSO
Speaking of Craig & Karl… the mini golf course they designed is wild.
Creatively combining legos and paper. It gets really good around 2:40 (via
).Knox and I have stumbled into the world of diecast racing and it’s surprisingly fun to watch.
A very easy and free way to embed your Substack feed on your website (if you have either of those things). Thanks for the tip,
.
*yelling at Carly’s belly* “It’s not August yet, baby!”
“Can we go for a hunt again?” *trying to say HIKE*
Comics I read this week:
How to Baby - Liana Finck
Americana - Luke Healy
Masters of the Nefarious - Pierre La Police
This newsletter was made by Mitchell Volk with help from Carly Volk and Knox Volk. It was written, edited, illustrated and animated between July 8 and July 13, 2024. It was sent from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, USA. It took 4 hours and 31 minutes to make. It was made with love.
Sending good vibes for #2’s arrival 😊
Always a giant source of inspiration and great ideas that leave me with more questions and thoughts.
LOVE Charlie Harper. I feel like he's one of those artist that has made such a huge ripple and can spot his influence everywhere. Also, his work always makes me wish I was more creative.
Your "Big Fat Caterpillar" animation and illustration is great. Just captures all the fun and energy.
This new badge looks great. I'm all for whatever makes you happy as far as the layout. I have no doubt that the designer in you would make it look great but I also love a messy creative process. I was just reading about Design Systems and one point that I liked was that design systems are good if they take care of the boring stuff, so you (the artist) can spend more time on the creative. So maybe a mix a both?
We also have a fiddle leaf and it has come to my attention that they are really fiddly but yours looks like it's doing well!
Thank you again for sharing all this wonderful work and inspiration!