Final vector illustration.
Chicago Hot Dog Hand-drawn Lettering Illustration
The Chicago hot dog print started as a quick pencil sketch on an airplane. Chicago hot dogs are an institution in the city and the toppings are quite unusual—there are a lot of discussions about whether this style of hot dog with its array of toppings (including a tomato, a pickle spear and sweet relish, and no ketchup!) are good or bad, but I’m a huge fan. The sketch struck a chord, so I put together a full-fledged hand-drawn lettering piece for prints and t-shirts.

From the initial pencil sketch, I refined the sketch and inked elements by hand on tracing paper, knowing that I would do clean-up and more refinement on the computer. I even attended a Chicago TypeThursday event and discussed the work to get audience feedback. I scanned in the inked items, vectorized them in Adobe Illustrator, and straightened lines and fine-tuned the letter shapes, scale, and composition, and added color as well.

The end result is a fun print or t-shirt that anyone in Chicago can display, relate to, and/or argue about. Job done.

Pencil thumbnails and sketch, Inked drawings, and vector in-progress shot
Me presenting in-process work at TypeThursday Chicago, a public typography critique and networking event (October 2017).
Final print, ready to hang up!
From sketch to final print!
Thanks for checking out my work! ;o)
See more of my work at www.jenniferhines.design.
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