During the onset of the COVID-19 shutdown back in Spring 2020, I was looking for a way to find creativity and community safely from home. My partner and I started a daily drawing challenge inspired by 36 Days of Type to design our unique take on letters A through Z.

The Florida Alphabet was born!

With this self-initiated project, we researched a new Florida-based animal every morning, concepted how to draw the chosen animal in the shape of that day's letter, and then posted our artwork to Instagram that evening, accompanied by a few cool facts we learned. It was a great way to grow our knowledge and appreciation of our home state's incredible biodiversity, as well as help to share and educate others virtually.

We increased our social following from zero to 500+ and our daily animals were featured several times in The New Tropic, a local Miami culture and news publication. We started receiving requests for a printed poster of The Florida Alphabet, and we jumped at the chance to have our artwork inside people's homes. From there, we launched our LLC and officially became Studio CPL, the name based on our last name's initials. An awesome bonus of co-founding Studio CPL has been finding new ways to get involved through volunteer opportunities for things like beach clean-ups in my community and environmental activism initiatives globally.

Co-Founder and Art Director: Emma Cason-Pratt
Co-Founder and Lead Illustrator: Alex Leshansky



A few favorite letters:

Another Studio CPL project I am proud of was my illustration for World Oceans Day, which is every June 8th! I created this drawing in the Procreate iPad app, using the mirror drawing tool on some pieces to create a cool balanced reflection.