Typography & Graphic Design Blog
“…the first function of a piece of printing is to capture attention, design with type requires that the designer understand how to make visual units group together for easier organization in the observer’s mind. Many typographical compositions unfortunately look as though the single goal had been to camouflage the message—and sometimes the success is phenomenal.”
—Carl Dair, Design with Type
“Just as every musical score has its home key, in typography the contrast of size of the typographic elements is almost a prerequisite for all other contrasts. A strong contrast in the size of the elements is basic, and all other contrasts are extra effects introduced into relationship.”
—Carl Dair, Design with Type
We like to keep an eye on what typography books people are reading. Every so often we do our own research using a variety of sources to get a pulse on what typography resources have people’s heart beating a little faster.
“Form without function is formalism. Typography can neither be modern nor beautiful if it just pays homage to form rather than fulfill its purpose – a legible communication.”
-Robert Büchler
It’s no trouble to be reminded of the simple things we can do to improve our typographic chops! This quick list of a dozen top typography resources feature over 100 easy-to-grasp hints, tips, and bits of advice. If you are a type newbie, spend a few minutes soaking up some new (to you) typography advice. If you are a seasoned type pro…well…spend a few minutes re-soaking up some old (to you) typography advice! Nobody remembers everything, right?
“You can do a good ad with poor typography, but you can’t do a great ad with poor typography.”
—Herb Lubalin
“Black and white is the simplest and the most radical expression.”
-Werner Jeker
“A love of letters is the beginning of typographical wisdom. That is, the love of letters as literature and the love of letters as physical entities, having abstract beauty of their own, apart from the ideas they may express or the emotions they may evoke.”
-John R. Biggs
We’ve all done it. We all feel bad about it. We want to avoid it in the future: typography mistakes. Whether it was the result of not enough sleep, too tight a deadline, too small a budget, or all of those at the same time, we still must avoid these common typographic mistakes if we want to stay employed as graphic designers!
You like to download fonts! You are a font hoarder! Well, you’ll want to be sure that you have these free font sites bookmarked. If you’ve been to these popular font sites already, why not swing by and pay them a quick update visit? And if you haven’t heard of a few, there is no better time than the present to drop by.
“Any good typeface can be completely destroyed when misused or extensively overused. Helvetica seemed to sustain a beating like no other. Still fresh, still popular Helvetica is king.”
-Alexander Gelman
“Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light, and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart.”
–H.G. Wells, The History of Mr. Polly
If you have a growing collection of usable free sans-serif fonts, you are going to have to have some free serif fonts to go with them! Our recent article on the most popular free sans-serif fonts outlined four criteria we came up with to navigate the morass of free fonts readily available on the web. We came up with the best 14, we think. Take a look at that article so we don’t have to repeat the text here, and so that we can get on with our list of free serif fonts.
“Faces of type are like men’s faces. They have their own expression; their complexion and peculiar twists and turns of line identify them immediately to friends, to whom each is full of identity.”
— J.L. Frazier
“A love of letters is the beginning of typographical wisdom. That is, the love of letters as literature and the love of letters as physical entities, having abstract beauty of their own, apart from the ideas they may express or the emotions they may evoke.”
– Designing with Type, James Craig
So, Ms. BonFX is getting on board with graphic design blogging and a new focus on typography. I’ve gathered some of the classic typography books and of course, my favorite coffee mug. I’ll be sure to recommend some great reads and resources along the way! Stay tuned…
Why do people draw 3d boxes when they doodle? Well, we don’t know, but we are taking the doodling of 3d boxes to the next level 🙂 Introducing 3D Doodle Boxes!
We are in the final phases of our Unity3D project called 3D Doodle Boxes. You can, as the title implies, doodle with prefab 3d boxes in a super-easy-to-use user interface. It’s a cross between doodling 3D boxes on paper, and Minecraft :). After a final round of fit and finish bug fixing, we’ll be submitting 3D Doodle Boxes to the Mac App Store. In the mean time, have a look at the isometric logo and splash screen branding we just completed (click to enlarge):
If you are interested in having a little fun with an app like this, please subscribe to the RSS feed, or leave a comment on this thread to stay in touch.
Want some simply gorgeous random color scheme inspiration? This is the script for you!
I’m working on a new ebook about color combinations to be released later this year. Part of the work for that book entails some very cool Photoshop and Illustrator scripting. One of the scripts, the intriguing one I’m sharing with you today, takes four random colors and creates a stunningly beautiful gradient from them.
The smart way to run a web design business is simple: copy the plan that someone else used successfully to run a web design business and stick to it.
That is it.
Many of you know I’ve moved on from running my own web design business. I’m off in different directions including a lot of writing and programming. However, many visitors to my blog, like you, might be trying to start a web design business or are already up and running, but are short in the what-do-I-do-about-this-or-that department. So now what do you do?
A small milestone for our humble little blog. I just noticed crossed a million page views a couple weeks ago. since launching at the end of 2009. Our most popular posts remain those focused on typography. The Big Book of Font Combinations and the Font Combinations app continue to grow in popularity as more people discover us.
While a million page views is nothing compared to other graphic design blogs, it’s a lot for us considering how we’ve successfully carved out such a small niche. Remember, broad numbers don’t count nearly as much as a narrow, targeted audience. Big, focused numbers in your narrow target audience mean everything! And that’s what we’ve done and will continue to do: reach graphic designers and other casual typeface enthusiasts with particular typographic needs!
What’s next? Let’s get to 2 million twice as fast :). With some cool things coming up in 2012 we can do it! Thanks for stopping by!
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