I've had a love hate relationship with our Guitar Bear design from the start. I've always loved the concept, but I've struggled with execution from the get go.
Guitar Bear 1.0 is actually a pencil drawing that I digitized after the fact. Before investing in my iPad, I actually did all my drawings by hand, and our entire first collection was created that way. Here she is in her original form:
She actually sold pretty well in this version, but something about the design never sat right with me. In my second attempt I wanted to play off the campfire and cottage-country type vibe. Here's version 2.0
I changed her stance up a bit and bulked up the guitar. I also went for a chunkier feel in terms of the lines, with solid colours and more contrast. Still, after we finalized the design, made a silkscreen, and printed a bunch of rounds of the new version, I wasn't happy.
Back to the drawing board.
For Guitar Bear 2.5, I took a little of the elements in each of the previous design - the heavier guitar, a little more detail in the bear - and pared it down so that the figure was the single and central visual.
I liked this one better, and we had the design this way for a quite a while. But, I still didn't love it. So I sat with it a bit and realized I didn't want to add anything completely new, I just wanted to add more detail to what was already there. So I did.
And here she is - our FINAL design. Promise!
