Hebrew Monograms

So after offering to do the invitation cover for Marissa, the plan to incorporate a monogram was added into the mix. I'd never done a monogram before, so my gut reaction was heading to my roommate Hillel, who's bread and butter is print design. He ended up doing a couple sketches that really expanded my mind as far as what was possible. He inter-weaved letter forms, overlapping elements in ways I would never have thought of. He also went from a place of thinking of the letters as forming a greater image. I didn't take any of the sketches directly, but more had them as inspiration.

I then went online and saw what was out there in terms of Hebrew typography, monograms, letter forms, and the ilk. I wish I could tell you where these images are from, but this is a while ago so you'll just have to google 'Hebrew monograms' yourself. Here are a few of the images that helped me:

In the next step I penciled out half a dozen designs, and brought two of them close to a finish by inking them with a nib. After that, I scanned them in and traced the inking out in vector. Then it was a matter of adjusting the corners, the space between the letters and lines, the curves, the lengths, and just about everything else. Final result:

I don't know if my attempt at a flower completely came across, but I liked it, and more importantly, so did Marissa. I'd love at some point to take another stab at monograms, even if there is quite a long way before I'd ever go for creating a full font.