artida postcards - sLOVEnia series, originally uploaded by Ajda Gregorčič.

Here are artida’s first postcard designs for sLOVEnia series!

Since I’ve been getting some e-mails to share my ‘i feel slovenia t-shirt design‘ I decided to make some Slovenian promotional items and make them available to people who would like to purchase them. The theme is about artida, the cutest slovenian character!, and is the first slovenian icon that uses japanese kawaii style in form if illustrations on different promotional items. The first step are postcards and T-shirts and other items will be available soon! Website is currently under construction and will be online in the next two months. You will be abble to purchase and order promotional items with artida character! Don’t worry, you’ll be informed in time

And what do you think about artida character for branding our small country Slovenia? Do you like it? Should I use more ’slovenian’ colours like green? Is there a future in branding cute characters in Europe?

I’d be glad to get some opinions on this on this topic. Just leave your response in the comments box below the article.

Artida was watching FIFA World cup finals yesterday and is very happy that Spain became the best football team of 2010 on the world! It was a tough game and both competitors, Spain and Netherlands, were actually so good preventing the other team win that the first goal happened almost 15 minutes AFTER the regular game time!

However it is a great acchievement that Artida’s country Slovenia with 2 milion population even made it to the World cup! It happened when Slovenia beat Russia, a country with 142 milion people. Artida is proud to be slovenian and decided to play football every once in a while, just to remember how great it is to be proud of your country!

I was recently invited to draw illustrations for a coloring book. Slovenian company Amis is celebrating their 15th anniversary and hired an advertising agency to make a corporate identity of several events and projects with world championship boxer Dejan Zavec from Slovenia. The agency contacted me to make illustrations for this coloring book which will be sent to children as a gift if they made a drawing about the internet.

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Today I present you Artida, my newest and cutest character. Artida was designed to make people happy and make us smile. She likes to discover new things and make fun of them, especially by dressing into other cute little things and people just for fun.

Her name comes from my slovenian name Ajda which is pronounced ‘Ida‘ in english and she is designed to make your products look nice and cool. She is my art and so I call her Artida.

Artida will not let you forget her since she has become my friend and will be staying in touch. So say hello and let the kawaii world know that cute little japanese characters got their first slovenian friend.

Yataa!!! °-°

Dark chicken, originally uploaded by Ajda Gregorčič.

I love kawaii! THE BOOK, originally uploaded by charuca.

We all became aware of the japanese cuteness obsession when we first saw Hello Kitty. Stores are now flooded with products with this cute little character that represents everything you need to know about cute in Japan.

Maybe it’s hard to understand cute, pink, happy and colourfull for Europeans and Americans, but cuteness is kind of mainstream in Japan. Products, packages, people, they way they act… it’s all cute, cuter and the cutest. ^_^

Cute (japanese ‘kawaii’) once became global and Hello Kitty inspired designers and illustrators all over the world to try to create an alternative that would become at least half that recognizable as Hello Kitty is today.

There is one specific designer/illustrator that I’d like to mention because of her hard work, volume, type and wideness of work she has done to promote her own cute characters. She attracted my attention because of the refined style, vector drawing technique, colour combinations and variety of design outputs she has made over the past few years. Her characters are named Charuca and have everything (if not more) that Hello Kitty had when she went global.

The author of Charuca is a woman in is not japanese, she comes from Barcelona, Spain. Recently she licensed her characters and made a brand, transformed her blog into a shopping website and managed to sell her characters in various forms in stores.

Charuca is a proof that everyone can make it, even the smallest designer with a talent from anywhere in the world.

And remember: not everyone wants cute, sometimes ‘emotional’ or ‘likeable’ is just enough

Having a small sketchbook and a few pencils in your bag is a must-have if you’re an illustrator, character designer, logo designer or any kind of artist.

I’ve been carrying my sketchbooks around with me since I can remember but I always kind of encounter the same problems; the lack of the right drawing equipment, becoming nervous when attracting attention from people who start asking me what I am drawing or just ran out of empty space on the paper. I think a common problem with sketchbooks is also that you never really sketch without thinking that this book is your portfolio and everything has to be perfect; from composition to shading. This videos helped me understand how was I supposed to use my sketchbook, how much money should I spend for it and how to carry it around. I’ve also shared a few fantastic sketchbooks.

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