The Makers’ Hustle

I made a thing! A thing FOR a thing, really. Amy’s been working on a new podcast called the Makers’ Hustle, and was ready to get it out there FAST. So the thing I made was cover art for a podcast that, at the time, had no episodes, a bare-bones website, and I only knew one of the three people involved.

Here’s how it actually got done.

So there’s a bunch of us MAL folks and friends browsing Amy’s table on the last day of CONvergence (a Sunday). I’m examining all the different rockets and Tardis-es, and then there’s a conversation that went something like this:

AMY: I wanna hire you.

ME: Okay. For what?

AMY: I’m making a podcast. We need a logo.

ME: Okay, what’s it about?

AMY: It’s called Makers’ Hustle, and we talk about doing the things you love and making money and promoting yourself and all that good stuff. The hustle of doing your own thing!

ME: Okay, who’s doing it?

AMY: It’s me and a couple of guys who make stuff, y’know, makers. One of ’em writes stuff for a makers’ magazine, and the other guy’s just really into his projects and it’s great!

ME: Hm. Well, okay, when do you want it?

AMY: End of the week. I wanna pay you.

ME: Uh… okay, sure. I’ll see what I can do.

Though that wasn’t much to go on, the rest was hashed out via email after everyone got home from CONvergence (and had sung many songs about pretzels), so all was well.

That Monday was the 4th of July, and there was also con-recovery to account for. So basically, I had a few days in that week, I had to move fast, and this cover art had to be modular. Something with pieces that could be rearranged to use as banners and profile images on a bunch of different platforms, because that’s just how makers roll.

Two words, two contrasting fonts. Yes.

“Makers” seemed like it should be blocky, strong, something sturdy and maybe angular for all the corners and edges that are made, need to be allowed for, and are sanded down (literally or metaphorically) in the course of making things. Monospace and sans-serif just weren’t cutting it for me, so I went full-force into the opposite direction with a big fat slab serif.

“Hustle” wanted something more free-flowing, a little sketch-like, off-the-cuff, kinda improv and ready to take advantage of the opportunities of the moment. Man, but there are a LOT of script/handwriting fonts out there, and they’re getting better and better. This fast-paintbrush-y one ultimately won out.

Then, to make sure to include the fact that there are all different kinds of makers, I included a row of icons that can be added to or subtracted from depending on the platform/format.

All the icons but the little robot dude are a part of Font Awesome, a pretty fantastic (and open!) font-and-CSS-toolkit that you’ve probably never noticed everywhere. The icons are very recognizable as the items they represent, and the set gives Makers’ Hustle a near-infinite array of possibilities for variations that can include just about any kind of maker.

Because there’s no little robot dude in the Font Awesome set and Makers’ Hustle really wanted one, I built the little robot guy myself. Matching a good line-weight from one of the Font Awesome icons, I basically made him out of a bunch of lines and near-primitive shapes. It was a bit like building a lil’ bot out of Colorforms, and Amy loves him. 😀

In addition to the square podcast cover art, I also put together some cover images for various social platforms. They seem to change the dimensions on those things on a whim, and accounting for the umpteen different variations in the display area of different devices’ viewports and screens seems near-futile sometimes, but these various covers also show some of the different ways the various components could be put together.

Here’s the cover art:

And some variations for social backgrounds:

If you’re interested in hearing what the Makers’ Hustle is all about, new episodes come out every Monday! (Hey, that’s tomorrow!) Find ’em on iTunes and Google Play, or check out their website to do the liking and the following and all that good stuff.