Happy Year of the Rat, everyone! Does anyone still blog anymore? I guess as long as Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz are still at it, I should put this up and think about posting a little more often [insert thinky-face emoji here]. I thought I would use this blog post to take you through how I made my annual Lunar New Year postcard.
2020 is the year of the metal rat. I don’t know what you think of when you hear the words “metal rat,” but I am reminded of the rats on the portico of the Graybar entrance to the Art Deco-inflected Grand Central Terminal. In that case, they symbolize the importance of New York as a hub of maritime trade. For me, it was enough that rats brought an association to Art Deco. Once I had a direction, I spent some time looking through this lovely book that my brother got me for Christmas for inspiration.
It shows how the Art Deco philosophy and sensibility spread through the design of the built world and applied and fine arts. I started drawing some thumbnails that married this aesthetic with the things I knew I wanted in the card: rats, gears, forms for 2020, along with Art Deco design motifs. Since this phase is about working out ideas, I try not to worry too much about getting anything “perfect” or “right.” I think of it as playtime to let me hand wander with some references in mind. Already, you can see I had a pretty entrenched color palette, for no other reason other than it’s one that I like. Gold/yellow/pink 4eva.
After going a little crazy with gears and thunderbolts and flower motifs, I decided to pare it way down to that design from the second thumbnail in the last image. After all, I wasn’t covering a building—just making a 4”x6” postcard! I painted the elements in gouache, and put them together in photoshop. I found a font that wasn’t too pricey and voilá, sent it off to Moo to be printed.
After I posted it on Instagram, I had a conversation with a friend in the comments that sparked another idea. What if i combined this concept with the Pizza Rat meme? You remember that little rat with the big appetite from 2015, right? You must because the video has been viewed over 11 million times! That exchange resulted in a new round of thumbnails and designs.
Since the end product wouldn’t be a postcard, but an instagram post, I rethought the design for a square format. Should I show the whole pizza? How much did the space have to scream “subway?” I definitely wanted to keep the rat (of course!) and the 2020, and the text (with modifications), but I decided I should just add a slice of pizza (pepperoni, in a slight change from the OG Pizza Rat), with just a suggestion of subway stairs. I experimented with a different color palette in my thumbnails, but eventually settled on expanding it to a reddish orange for the pepperoni and the crust, and bit of purple to make the rat sit on the subway stairs a little more firmly.
Now that you know what my card looked like, what does this year look like? The year of the rat is supposed to keep everyone busy busy busy! If the past couple of weeks is any indication, then that forecast is one hundred percent correct! I guess we’ll sleep in 2021, when it’s the year of the Ox!