Tag: Font

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NYLA Smart: Practically Designed

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Image via Wikipedia

Presentations and Training Sessions:

Event: NYLA SMART

Date: Monday, June 14th, 2010

Venue: RRRC, Fairport, NY

“Class Description:

During this workshop on the basics of visual design best practices, we’ll examine examples and counter-examples of great design, the basics of layout, simplified color theory, rules for fonts and legibility, images and photographs, designing stamps vs. pages vs. slideshows vs. billboards, copyright and creative commons, and free and open source design tools (photo manipulation, illustration, layout, catalogs, and quick editors).

By the end of the program, you will:

* Find and evaluate web-based resources for great design
* Choose the best colors, layouts, fonts, and graphics for other design projects
* Respect copyrighted work by finding imagery and other materials that are freely and legally available
* Become inspired about your design projects
* Move beyond Word and Publisher to more sophisticated design tools”

Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/121kHFLhNGrP85vKdR5ti1tRFVzMbwRmboBRuzRLFg7A/edit?usp=sharing

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Illustration Inkscape portfolio

163 of 365 is a smack in the face

Smack to the face
Smack to the face
Smack to the face
Smack to the face

So, as someone who grew up watching 10 year old reruns of campy Batman shows, I was imprinted with the message of typography as softcore violence. Oh, you too? So anyway, I recently saw an article on the topic of typography in the 60’s Batman series, and decided to make some of my own.

In Inkscape, I added the text in a clear font, converted to path, and applied the bend live path effect. I bent the text (as a path) and then tweaked each of the corners of each letter with the node tool. I converted the bent path to a new path without the live path effect, and rotated it to fit better in the frame.

Using the shape tool, I created a star, converted it to path, and used the node tool to tweak it. I made the stroke a bit transparent on the star to give it a few colors at the edge. I duplicated the text and made it into a shadow by choosing a flat gray color and blurring it a bit. It was a lot of fun, and it took me back to a lot of childhood afternoons.

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portfolio

155 of 365 is a nod to #libraries in #Inkscape #typography #design

When in doubt
When in doubt

The message here is a simple one — if you need a clear answer, a library is a great place to start. You may notice however, that I’ve broken a major design rule.

In this sketch, and some others that are coming up, I’ve tried to disregard the well known rule about no more than 2 fonts per design. The reason for the rule is that theoretically when you choose a new font you ask your viewer not only to adjust their reading continuity, but depending on the difference of font style, you may be asking them to stop and contemplate the differences in and of themselves, which could very easily get in the way of your primary function in communication: getting the message delivered clearly. I’d say that in my case, at least for these sketches, my primary function is to get viewers to notice font forms as shapes, to make you stop for a moment and contemplate form versus function, and also, to a lesser extent, deliver some message. So, yes, I know you’re not supposed to generally, but knowing the rules and the reasons for them help you to break them sensibly. I hope I’ve done that here.