Christmas: A Time for Lurning

So I got what I wanted for Christmas. I got a sorely needed occupational education. For anyone seeking information on starting a creative enterprise of any sort I would recommend this book: The Business Side of Creativity. It covers any question you might have. Any question at all. This book answered all the questions I didn't even know enough to ask. It covers everything from how to find an accountant (who knew you needed an actual accountant) to billing questions to potential employee issues (should the event arise).

On top of that I got a boatload of Phaidon books, which I'm keen on perusing. I'm excited to peruse the Paperwork volumes as well as the thick tome that is The Art of Looking Sideways.

As far as truly educational books go I also got The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst and Talent Is Not Enough by Shel Perkins. Now I suppose I should really look for a textbook style guide to designing for print (i.e. standard practices, tips for using Pantone color matching system, etc.). Any recommendations?

{Typo}Graphic Content

Worked until 1:30 or so last night wrapping up the typography project previously mentioned. All in all it came out pretty well. I would have loved more time to spend on the details, but time and opportunity marches on I suppose. Here's a few of the better pages.

Love us or Hiatus

It's Thursday. The last post was over the weekend. Disgraceful. Perhaps, though, you will forgive me the lashings when I tell you that it's not out of laziness. I've been furiously working over the past three days to finish an identity project for the man who mixed my band's album, as well as trying to churn out some inspired typographic design for a report my brother is presenting to McKinney in NC.

Here are some of the variations on the logo I've been developing:




I had previously presented the client with other versions of the logo, but after letting them sit in my head for a while, I realized they weren't really logos at all, but bland arrangements of text. So came up with these instead. Overall, I think they're fun, refined, surprising, and clever. Just about everything I could hope for.

Here's a couple layouts that I've done for my brother:



Notice any similarities? Yeah, I thought so. The only thing that really translates are the colorful lines. I made them for the typography project first, but liked them so much I couldn't help but include them in different colors in the logo project.

If anyone is reading this, let me know what you think.

(Typo)Graphic Content

Typography. I have only recently begun to fumble around with it. Of course that doesn't mean I've never designed with text.

To date my fumblings and preferences have all sprung from my opinions, rather uneducated ones. "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst is seems to be a standard in desktop typographic reference. I'm currently reading the web-translation at http://webtypography.net/intro/. Unraveling the mystery. It's not so mysterious.

I'm hoping soon to have a few projects that deal exclusively with type. It would do me some good.

I'm also working on rebuilding my portfolio website, The Visual Field. Complaints have been basically that the portfolio images are too small and I've just grown generally tired with it. Currently it's a very simple and elegant idea, but the execution was lacking in refinement. I'll do better, I swear.