ONE OF A KIND

In November I received a message for a design. Being a designer, this isn't uncommon and I happily accept any request to help a friend. We bounced off ideas, got some of the basic technical components down and eventually he revealed what this design was for.

His sister had recently been diagnosed with non-hodgkin's lymphoma. Treatment was causing her to lose her hair and he wanted a specially designed beanie she could wear through her treatment. To say this as a special design would be an understatement and being the designer tasked with this challenge I wanted to be sure this would be both encouraging and respectful to the situation she faced.

The only requirements for this design were:

1. It has to work in a small format of a beanie

2. Incorporated a black and white butterfly

While butterfly designs have been done over and over I began to struggle with the idea of how to make this one unique. I began looking for inspiration looking at pictures, other designs, etc. and remembered a friend talking about a butterfly tattoo her sister had gotten to represent her medical difficulties as well.

Using this image as well as other point of inspiration I came to my first mockup.

While I'll spare you the countless hours spent on Illustrator to get to this point just know this was not created over night. I wanted to be sure each petal as placed and colored exactly how I wanted it, the two halved felt connected, and it felt true to the journey that created it.

From there a series of small edits, discussions, and more revisions as well as the discovery of her favorite flower formed the final design.

Thankful to have been apart of this journey.