BonFX

Typography & Graphic Design Blog

Have you thought “I’ve spent way too much time editing CSS”? Well, glimpse the future

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Ok People:

Here is a glimpse of the future of web design 🙂

Imagine a future where you spend time designing and not fiddling. Remember those days past? They will yet come again.

Imagine designing in the browser. You will be doing it before too long.

I predict a wholesale shift to much more advanced CMS and web platforms or systems where code takes a big retreat behind dazzling GUIs like we see in Squarespace 6, and other platforms like Virb, Adobe Muse, etc. Hand-coding will be a niche, enterprise-focused endeavor. The realities of responsive web design necessitate this fact.

There was a time before PageMaker and Quark where people edited PostScript by hand, but those days are a distant memory. Can you even imagine hand-coding a page to simply print something out? Web design is moving in that direction. Listen to these sage words and watch magic happen as the user below changes a complex layout in realtime in Squarespace 6. Wow:

Skip to 6:50 for the relevant snippet and watch for about 30 seconds. Again, wow:

So if your favorite CMS doesn’t yet have rich GUI-based dynamic layout editing as it’s default mode, or have it on it’s roadmap, know one thing: it will.

How to draw a spider with 3D Boxes

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3D Doodle Boxes is now available for free in the Mac App Store for a limited time. Get it while it’s free, and leave us some feedback on the app! It’s super easy to draw 3d boxes with it. It’s like Minecraft without the gameplay. It’s so easy, I whipped up this Super Black Widow in a few minutes. What a hoot.

So, you can doodle 3d boxes in your sketchbook, or you can take your 3d sketches to the next level and fire up 3D Doodle Boxes and draw whatever you can think in no time.

3D Doodle Boxes in the Mac App Store

So here is today’s 3d Doodle Boxes sketch!

super black widow 1


super black widow 2

How to draw in 3D the easy way with 3D Doodle Boxes

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Update: 3D Doodle Boxes is now available in the Mac App Store. Free for a limited time! Try it today!

3d-doodle-boxes-logo-v02

3D Doodle Boxes will be available on the Mac App Store very soon. We’ve been working on this on and off for the last couple years as a labor of love. Now that it’s as fun and easy to use as we hoped, it’s ready for the world of doodlers to try it and have as much fun as we have had with it.

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Graphic Design Quote of the Day: Obsession with Originality is a Trap

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“Allowing influences into your work is one  of the ways that you expand your expressive range. Designers enrich their work — not diminish it — by looking for ways to ‘incorporate’ new and radical modes of expression into their work, especially from places outside contemporary design. Shutting out influences because of an obsession with ‘originality’ is a trap. But you have to be able to acknowledge the debt to your sources. Copyists never own up to it; the talented always do. That’s the difference.”

—Adrian Shaughnessy, How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul

Yo, Font-Addict! Make sure to check out The Big Book of Font Combinations. Go grab a copy from Amazon or B&N, or grab the DISCOUNTED ebook PDF digital download version (40% OFF the hardcover retail price!) from the BonFX Store, and stare at all 350+ examples of informative font combinations for web and print. You know you want to!

Graphic Design Quote of the Day: Is Originality an Absolute?

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Work of Julian House

“I don’t believe in originality as an absolute, I think it’s more to do with interesting twists on existing forms. Borrowing from the Modernist designers of the recent past, for instance, is not plagiarism; it’s more a continuation of the processes and ideas that they set in motion. I’m influenced by Polish poster art of the 1960’s, which was influenced by Pop Art and Surrealism, and which in turn appropriated commercial art, comic book art, cinema and Victorian engravings, etc. I think the key to whether it’s good or not lies in the viewer’s response to a piece of design. Do they say “I’ve seen it before” or, “I’ve seen it before but not in that way.”

—Julian House

Yo, Font-Addict! Make sure to check out The Big Book of Font Combinations. Go grab a copy from Amazon or B&N, or grab the DISCOUNTED ebook PDF digital download version (40% OFF the hardcover retail price!) from the BonFX Store, and stare at all 350+ examples of informative font combinations for web and print. You know you want to!

Graphic Design Quote of the Day: The Delusional Quest for Originality

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Kota Kobayashi - Graphic Designer; James Kinney - Art Director/Copy Writer - New York, NY

“Most designers are untroubled by the notion of originality, but others are obsessed with it, and I see many problems caused by the delusional quest for originality. In my view originality is an overrated and misunderstood quality in contemporary graphic design. Copying is bad, no question. Infringing someone’s copyright for personal gain is immoral, not to mention illegal in most countries. But the only people who copy are the terminally second-rate and the downright dishonest, whereas the good designer freely borrows and adapts from sources in precisely the way artists have done for centuries. And furthermore, the good designer readily admits to this ‘appropriation.’ It is a quality of many good designers that their influences and sources are clearly visible and readily acknowledged.”

—Adrian Shaughnessy, How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul

Yo, Font-Addict! Make sure to check out The Big Book of Font Combinations. Go grab a copy from Amazon or B&N, or grab the DISCOUNTED ebook PDF digital download version (40% OFF the hardcover retail price!) from the BonFX Store, and stare at all 350+ examples of informative font combinations for web and print. You know you want to!

Typography Quote of the Day: Can Anyone Set Type?

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Designed by Christopher Thomas Allen

“Typography is a rather modest field, but perhaps it is the most significant ingredient for visual communication. Anyone can set type, but to utilize it creatively is quite a different thing.

—Minoru Morita

Yo, Font-Addict! Make sure to check out The Big Book of Font Combinations. Go grab a copy from Amazon or B&N, or grab the DISCOUNTED ebook PDF digital download version (40% OFF the hardcover retail price!) from the BonFX Store, and stare at all 350+ examples of informative font combinations for web and print. You know you want to!