Great graphic design stuff and thieving bastards…

A while ago I purchased some hosting, bought a couple of domain names and committed myself to designing a new website for myself and moving this blog to a proper WordPress install. All that stuff is going ahead.. albeit a little more slowly than I originally anticipated. However, just as I’m feeling all cocky and proud about venturing out onto the web ‘for real’, along comes this to jolt me back to reality:

David Airey, a talented graphic designer who writes a very useful blog by the way, posts about how his site was hacked the day after he went away on vacation. He’s now in the process of trying to wrestle back control of his domain name davidaireyDOTcom which he’s lost to the attackers. So in the meantime he’s using davidairey.co.uk. If you’re a fan of his, or want to check out lots of good graphic design related stuff, make sure you update your aggregators and/or bookmarks to the .co.uk address.

And to David, kudos for exercising such careful restraint in your posting about the incident and best of luck in getting back what is rightfully yours – I’ll be following the story.

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The Fantabulous Inkscape 0.46 About Screen Contest

Ryan Lerch spreads the news that the About Screen contest for the upcoming 0.46 release of Inkscape has been announced. The deadline is January 6th and I may try and make some time to field an entry or two once again. No luck last year, but it sure was fun coming up with ideas.

I seem to be mired in end of term exam marking, full time engineering work along with the website/blog stuff I’m trying to get finished. Oh yeah, and then there’s Christmas to contend with…better start shopping. 😉

I may just have to extend an arm and “sweep the desk clean” for a little while over the next week or two and come up with some new ideas for the Inkscape 0.46 About screen. It would be kind of nice to see your name up in lights inside one of my absolute favourite apps.

Here are my not-so-great entries from last time out.

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Earl’s got some skillz!

Turns out Earl Moore has some serious skillz when it comes to woodworking. He built a very nice looking dining room table extension. And the part I like best is that he’s got three legs on it which keeps the people using that end of the table from bashing their knees. Now that’s a nice solution, elegant and effective.

So tell me Earl, how many links do you want before you come and fix the wavy, gappy monstrosity in my daughter’s bedroom that I creatively call crown molding?

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Does the world really need another font?

Does the world really need another font?

Yes. Mine.

For some inexplicable reason, I’m hell bent on designing/making my own font. I find the whole thing intensely fascinating (at least for now).

How timely then was this link to these Type Workshop images illustrating some fundamentals of type design. Incredible. Thanks to I Love Typography for so much great information.

So anyway, I’ve sketched out a basic alphabet as a starting point. The more I look at it, the more I want to change and refine it. Right now it looks a little anemic. I’m interesting in creating something sans serif, stable and consistent. Honestly, I’m aiming at something that someone (even just me) might actually use. The more reading and research I do, the longer the road seems to get, but hey, you gotta start somewhere. It’s quite rough and there are lots of things to fix and refine. But there will be plenty of time for apologies… here’s my starting point:

And before the typeface nazis attack, yes, it is a font that I’m initially going to create. If I’m successful and enjoy it, it might serve as a starting place for a typeface of which this one will just be a member. 😉

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Free Fonts for Professional Design

I Love Typography cites a nice post over at Smashing Magazine describing 40+ excellent free fonts for professional design. I already have some of them, but am always on the lookout for new ones.

I’m also unable to shake the itch to design and create my own font. Sketching has started.. but it looks like a long road.

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Make My Logo Bigger Cream.. and more!

Stuck with a crappy graphic designer? Say goodbye to all your worries with easy to apply “Make My Logo Bigger Cream”. Big improvements with only one application. And there are lots of other deals to be had too, like “Whitespace Eliminator Spray” and more.

This company could put many hard working designers out of business. 🙂

ps. The look on the designer’s face when confronted with “Flouresencizer” is priceless.

Check out all of these wonderful products right here.

🙂

[via boagworld]

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So I want to create a font…

As I’ve likely mentioned before, I’ve been very interested in graphic design for the last little while and typography is one of the elements of design that I find most interesting. I’ve been humming and hawing over trying to create a font just for the heck of it. So I was quite happy to see the start of the So You Want To Create A Font series over at ILoveTypography.com. I installed FontForge on my system quite a while back and I’m looking forward to taking the font creation plunge.

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One for the Mac guys out there…

While I don’t necessarily like Apple’s relatively closed system. I do hold their designers (both industrial and graphic) in high regard. So why then does their new Leopard packaging remind me of a GeoCities webpage motif?

The problem with raising the bar is that you have to meet it every time after that.

Btw, I’ve watched the Leopard tour video just to see how the other half lives. I’ve got more thoughts on that to come, but one thing sticks out. Is it just me, or does the Aqua blue (or graphite) scroll bar just seem to stick out of their new interface like a very sore (and very shiny) thumb. I think the glass buttons for drop down lists etc. still look decent in the various dialog boxes, but when those scroll bars pop up on a general application window they just look completely out of place with the rest of the interface.

Have the aqua controls finally worn out their stay?

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My Graphic Love Affair with Design

For quite a while now I’ve been harbouring a lusty affair with design. Mostly of the graphic type. 😉 My notebooks and Inkscape are an outlet for that (I’m due up for a new screencast big-time btw). 

A few months back I picked up Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton. A great book if you’re interested in typography and text related design. Another great find was the September/October issue of Good magazine which focused on design (a very interesting magazine on the whole by the way). And just to round out the package, I recently subscribed to the I Love Typography blog which seems to have lots of interesting posts as well. They’ve got a presentation posted there with Ellen Lupton which I’ll definitely watch when I get the chance.

So while there’s not a lot of meat to this post, I just thought I’d share a few things in case any of you harbour the same illicit affair with design that I do. 😉

Do you harbour a love affair with something unrelated to what it is you do everyday for money?

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Beautiful Flash Toy

From the land of completely pointless, but simply beautiful flash animation demo’s, check out:

http://www.zefrank.com/snowflake/

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