Studio Process Blog

Silly Signs, my most recent release, was a real pleasure to create. It was a welcome opportunity to step away from clothing, prints, and canvas, and instead design with new materials and functionality in mind. This initial batch includes two decorative magnets and two wall signs, offering a bit of variety. Below, I walk through the inspiration, design, and production process behind these pieces. Hopefully you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed sharing the process!

Design

The design process took place almost entirely in Illustrator. Adobe gets a lot of hate online—yes, they’re an expensive, evil monopoly—but, God, am I ever in love with their software. I’ve probably spent more time in their suite than hanging out with humans IRL. Not sure if that’s impressive or extremely sad (potentially both?).

I tend to start simple by creating basic shapes and selecting fonts. I do this mostly in outline mode (Cmd/Ctrl + Y); seeing everything in simple black and white helps keep the focus on the basics. Once a solid foundation starts coming together is when color gets properly considered. Color selection tends to go fairly quickly—I feel like it’s one of my stronger skills, so decision-making there is pretty swift.

Much of the design was also informed by my experience with laser cutting machines, both operationally and materially. There were a few initial concepts I kicked around with while experimenting in the lab. I wanted to create depth and dimensionality through layering, while combining different materials to introduce textural contrast: mixing woods, acrylics, and paints. My first real project in this vein was the unit number signage for my studio, seen in the collage above along with plenty of tests and side projects.

A huge part of working in any medium is developing the mental framework to visualize the finish line, as well as the steps along the way. Without that, it’s difficult to see the basic potential of a medium, let alone execute a project from start to finish. For me, accumulating experience in Illustrator allowed me to “think” in vectors, which later made it possible to learn and "think" in laser.

Prepress

The colors in the design file are more placeholders that represent the final product. To make the designs laser-ready, cut paths are converted to 100% RGB red (#FF0000) at a 0.01 pt line weight, while the engraving information is set to black (#000000). In the screenshot of my Illustrator file above, the main designs sit in the center, with the laser prepress layout along the bottom and the packaging design across the top.

In terms of material prep, nearly everything is laser-ready—groundbreaking news for a lazy butt like me. The wood pieces need masking paper applied to prevent smoke staining from the laser. Almost all acrylics come pre-masked with paper, which is perfectly fine for cutting. Some acrylics ship with a plastic mask instead, which needs to be removed beforehand. Other than that, dialing in the laser settings is really the only thing left to do—a step that often spills over into the production phase.

Laser Production

All of the production was handled in-house, like pretty much 99% of the store catalog. Materials were sourced primarily from Toronto- and Montréal-based suppliers. Laser materials, especially more niche ones, can be slightly difficult to acquire. While a lot is available D2C online, certain things require old-school B2B purchasing—filling out ancient forms, waiting for account approval, then providing SKUs and quantities directly to the supplier via courier pigeon or raven (depending on one's preferences).

One example is 2-ply acrylic, also known as Gravoply. The surface of these sheets is one color, with a different-colored core beneath that's revealed through engraving. For example, a green surface with a white core, as used on the CSP Wall Sign. It’s typically used for industrial signage, so bringing it into a more playful context was a novel idea to me.

Gravoply is also unique in that it benefits from an “X-offset”—the laser is intentionally taken slightly out of focus to achieve better results. When engraved this way, the material melts just enough to create a richer, less matte finish. Another way to enhance that richness is wiping down the engraved surface with WD-40. One of many tricks I picked up from an ancient web forum and now swear by. Ancient forms, ancient forums, ancient wisdoms—I love it all!

Finishing

Most of the finishing for these pieces comes down to gluing & assembly. The one exception is the 1/8" birchwood piece that houses the colorful lettering for the logo magnet. That part was primed with white then painted matte black to really pump up the contrast behind the lettering.

Some of these tasks I offloaded to studio assistants (shoutout Olivier & Pau), since I've been pretty overwhelmed with contract work as of late. It’s a shift I’ve been making more intentionally—recognizing that I don’t need to handle every step myself. Delegating that work frees me up to focus on more specialized demands, making it easier to keep my artwork production moving without sacrificing quality. It's also nice having people around since studio solitude can get a bit old at times.

In the long term, beyond having help in the form of other people, I’m also being more intentional about creating more work for myself and spending less time taking on contracts just to get by. I’m not in a position yet to drop my freelance work entirely, but through increased rates and higher-quality clients, I’m hoping to at least reduce how much of my life it takes up. Not because I hate it, but because of the joy personal projects like this bring me. With more free time, I’d never leap at kicking back on a beach—freely frolicing through the garden of creativity has always held too much charm.

Thanks for reading!