This is a simple sketch of a coffee cup in Inkscape.
This is a collaboration between Antoinette and I. Antoinette has a lovely drafting ability, and makes the most beautiful, colorful, jungle-inspired work. We’ve worked together in Inkscape, to help her expand her digital working style. In this case. I asked her if she had ever used a Wacom tablet, and she said that she had one, a small one. I brought out my lovely 24 inch Wacom, handed her the stylus, and she made this inspiring dancing figure you see above. I added the text below her illustration. We used an image of a lit match as the palette, and applied a range of tones from the very bright parts of the flame, to the darker smoky background. Fun work, and thanks Antoinette!
I was recently on a chat with a friend, and she explained that she really loved this breed of dog that has abundant wrinkles, very short legs, and clipped ears. The name of the breed escapes me, but my reaction was “that thing gives me the creeps”. I paused for a moment and thought about how odd that phrase is, which is usually a trigger for me to illustrate it. I pictured a 1970’s style treatment, dark, and playful.
In Inkscape, I placed the text, and applied the font Ballpark, a staple of my illustrations. I skewed the lines up and to the right. I duplicated and applied an outset to the duplicate, twice. Each time moving the outset shape backwards. I imported a lovely foggy image of red trees in summer morning, and used those colors for the palette.
I picture it being used in social media threads in which one person shares an image or idea that is full of creepiness, and someone shares my illustration as a response.
Tonight, I just wanted to play a bit with a word: bibliophile. It’s such a beautifully rhythmic word, and while I tend to read more screens than physical pages, I feel like I can align myself with the word.
In Inkscape, I found a good hefty font in Chunk Five, typed out the letters, and converted the word into a path. I ungrouped it, as text to path always groups the letters. Then, using the node tool, I extended the serifs to the left and right wherever they had room to move. Originally, I did not cross over the dots for the i’s but after playing with the serifs going through the dots, I decided I liked it. I hope you did too. 🙂
Today, I decided to use Inkscape to play with type. When you type less than three (<3), you are expressing an emoticon for love, symbolized by a heart. It’s a straightforward, easy-to-use symbol. Two close friends or sweethearts might use it in SMS to express a little love.
Melissa Brisbin and I have used an alternative to less than three to express not only that we are good friends, but that we exchange and share value in technology, libraries, and related interests. Ampersand greater than (&>) resembles a heart too, but indicates a togetherness, a bond. When we type it to each other, it’s a little reminder of our history. In honor of her birthday yesterday, I decided to work on the ampersand greater than as a typography muse.
I started by going through my font catalog and pulling out all the fonts that had interesting ampersand and greater than symbols.
Then I began pulling out the best combinations, angling the symbols, pulling them together into a single flowing shape.
Finally, I went back in and tweaked the finest points of the combinations. This was my result: nearly the final set.
And today, I decided to add some color, along with final tweaks to the pieces.
Cost-Benefit as a design principle talks about the tension between the cost of the user’s time, effort, and other resources versus the benefit to that same users. If the perceived cost of a user exceeds their perceived benefit, the user will stop the use of the design. If the value of the benefit exceeds the perceived costs, the user will sustain their use, despite sensing the cost. If a user has to wait too long to get their food at a restaurant, they might get up and leave, despite the fact that they lost time and effort in the process of waiting until that point, and that they will need to find some other way to get the food. If that same diner had waited for weeks for the reservation to open, or had some other perceived valuable benefit to staying despite the wait, they will do so.
I decided to illustrate the concept of Cost-Benefit by considering the costs and benefits of using an interesting but complex font. I was given the idea by Melissa Brisbin, who after hearing the explanation of cost-benefit in design, suggested the creation of a font that was elegant and beautiful (benefit), but not especially legible (cost). I decided to match up the major points of each character between two of my favorite fonts: Gill Sans and Scriptina Pro. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to hate both, as a sensible designer, but I can’t. I just love their lines and forms too much.
If the user finds the font more valuable for its interestingness than its legibility, the user might find a way to use it, despite difficult reading. If the user was looking for a font for a paragraph of text, they might dismiss the font as too difficult to read at that size, despite the potential for beauty or interestingness. Special thanks to Melissa Brisbin for the inspiration for today’s sketch.
Technology and the Arts – Ep. 63 (08.30.2013)
Special webcast Monday, March 10, at 10 p.m. ET
Technology and the Arts Special: Art All Night Trenton 2013
A crash course in typography
Fonts on the Brain – Leaver’s Hoodies