MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1518973
A Lethal Process In whatever way Aaron finds his initial inspiration he gets down to work and things get serious Both Draplin and I were in a generation that saw our work transform from analog to digital. For Aaron, it meant going back to school to get comfortable with the idea of doing art on a machine. His next stop was spending a summer working in Alaska so he could buy his first computer. (Cash, of course.) Like many of us analog natives, his current workflow merges both realms. His design process starts with pencil and paper, something that works wherever he is, whenever the right idea strikes him. “Field notes,” is what he calls them. He still loves the freedom of freehand drawing. “That’s the magic of this stuff. Your hand is that much freer than a digital cursor on a screen…I’ll try a ton of variations until something feels right,” he says in his book. From there, he moves his best ideas to Adobe Fresco where he can start tightening his ideas up, beginning the translation to the digital realm but retaining some of the sketchbook feel and freedom. When he finds he’s onto something, his work smoothly flows into Adobe Illustrator, vectors, bitmaps, fonts, and all. Draplin is virtually obsessed with getting out his best work with the least time and effort and his process is what does that. “When I say it’s lethal [the process] it's like this: don't be wasting time. … Be smart about how you capture the essence of something and then how to develop that thing and don't kill yourself in the process. That's it. Be lethal with your time, be lethal with your process, and then, you know, slay it.”