Adobe Illustrator Calligramme

Project 2 ("Good News" by Mac Miller)

    For this project, I decided to do a calligram using the lyrics to Mac Miller's song "Good News." The song is a beautiful ode to improving one's mental health and looking forward to the future. Since the song was leaked in October of last year, it has impacted me greatly. I think the most unfortunate reason the song is so powerful is because of the fact that the artist behind it is no longer with us. The song became even more powerful when it was released officially in January alongside a music video that was carefully directed and curated by close friends and family. The video features beautiful animation of still images of Miller alongside art pertaining to him and his background. It's in this music video I found the frame that inspired my piece:

   

     Originally I had tried to copy the frame to an exact replica with the lyrics in the song. At a certain point I stopped because I felt the focus was too broad. It seemed more fitting to me to hone in on the car, a Mercedes G-Class exactly like the one Mac Miller drove. The final product is more representative of this, focusing solely on the vehicle. I started by drawing the vehicle with the pen tool by using this reference image:

      

   Using this image, I created the shape of vehicle using the Pen tool. As I was going I kept the stroke black so I could see what I was doing. Once the shape and details of the car were in place, I selected the entire thing and set the stroke to "none." From there I filled in the shape of the vehicle with the lyrics to this heart-breaking and beautiful song.