My niece’s birthday came up fast (I’m a forgetful auntie), so I made her this poster in about 2 hours one evening, printed it in the morning and got it off to Nebraska just in time to arrive on her birthday. Whew!

I drew all the colorful characters in Illustrator with the pen tool. I gave them some dimension to bring some energy and excitement in. It still needed some depth, so I added a background of simple black lines with celebratory bubbles knocked out of the texture.

It’s a funny thing designing for a four year old. I’m pretty sure she knows how to spell her name, and the 4 is easy enough, but it wasn’t until the poster already shipped that I realized she has no idea what an exclamation mark is. I hope the colors and bubbles communicate clearly enough that we’re all very excited that she’s four now.