Welcome to my life

Nothing gets me going like a brand new design challenge. I don't understand why, but it's probably why I enjoy my "job" so much. It's probably why I'm so willing to jump at any opportunity, paying or not, to design something new.

Lately, it's tattoos.

Friend Karen, my lovely friend's roommate/landlady, is an ultramarathoner (i.e. 50k or 31 miles) and wanted a way to "record" her races as a tattoo. The concept here is the laurel wreath of victory will get colored with each race, and the different colors (her idea) represent different years. Pretty cool, huh?

The thing that kept me nearly sleepless last night, however, was a phone call from my friend Shae Lynn. She and her husband went from super-intellectual (cognitive science and international politics, respectively) to farming.

Not that there's anything wrong with farming.

I like farmers.

I like Shae Lynn.

It's a good combination.

That and she keeps bringing me business that makes me wiggle with glee. I designed the logo for their attempt at dairy farming (which collapsed only because of misinformation on the part of the farm they were to rent):

(c) 2010, K.Calderwood Design

And when they moved on to chicken ranching, she called me up again:

(c) 2010, K.Calderwood Design

For a glimpse into the process of an artist, visit my site here, where Early Bird Ranch and their logo is my featured piece. Mostly because it was such a fun logo to design, but also because it's my latest piece.

It's easy to get inspired by chickens when I can wander out into my parents' backyard and watch the hilarity that ensues from tossing two watermelon rinds into the chicken pen.

Chickens are dumb.

Chickens are hilarious.

Anyways, the latest project is her website. Now, I'm not one to get thrilled by websites, but my experiences with websites (other than my own) are fairly humdrum. Shae Lynn wants something kitcsh but professional, cutesy but staid, something that says, "We ARE as idyllic that farm on our label." Because they are. I've seen pictures.

Now that, my friends, is a design challenge. That is what's making me wiggle with glee.

Too bad I have to work today, or I would be parked in front of my computer with my sketchbook trying to concept.

Life is rough.

Ciao,
kc

Font Lovin'

First of all, is it weird that I get turned on by type? No, no, don't answer that. It was rhetorical.


Be forewarned, this posting is not for the faint of heart, nor those who despise work of art.

Or for that matter, those who live/have lived with graphic design/graphic communication/print technology/packaging/typography/etc. majors/professionals/etc. Those of you who have, have probably heard this stuff a thousand times and would be best served ignoring it and moving on.

As an avid reader, and someone who makes their business doing design and print work, I have an unnatural fondness for printed objects when they're well executed. Looking at a book that has been well-designed, printed on nice paper, and abides by all of the rules that my design teachers drilled into me in college (proper balance, good use of whitespace, never ever fake small caps), I literally get shivers of joy. It's like the beginning of a relationship where the love is still new and you still get that exciting little thrill every time you see the person. The heat pooling in your stomach, the constricting of the lungs, the sudden independence of your extremities...you understand what I mean.

I have that love too, of course, I'm not completely abnormal. But give me a book, or a box, or a magazine that has been so completely thought out that it just begs for you to touch it...well, you get the picture.

I save packaging that inspires me. I have a clutter of boxes under my bed (prime packaging real estate) that I drag out whenever I'm really stumped on a project.

I adore Stila's packaging.

I spend full price on books that make me drool — whether or not they're in a genre I like. I purchased The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when it first came out (you know: spot varnish, slick paper, good color...) and that was like two or three years ago and I still haven't gotten through it.


I grin like an idiot every time I see Humboldt State University's "new" signs as they're in my absolute favorite typeface...

Hypatia Sans Pro, my absolute favorite typeface.

The downside of this fetish is that I get the horrors and am physically ill when presented with something less than beautiful. And by less than beautiful, I mean screwy margins, poor alignment, giant font with not enough leading.

I see I'm speaking Greek.

This is now a mini lesson on the beauty of good design. I am going to attempt the first two years of my degree and countless lectures, lab hours, and projects into a few paragraphs. Wish me luck.

If you Google "history of font," the first site to come up is kind of a bizarre site, but it has a decent blurb about fonts.

"What is a font? A font is all the letters, numbers, punctuation and other symbols which compose a typeface. Fonts were first developed as cast lead type for printing presses, and were later digitized as typefaces for use on computers." (vletter.com/aboutfonts.htm)

Another quick definition. Typeface. Typeface is similar to font, but the terms are not interchangeable.

"A typeface is a set of characters of the same design. These characters include letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and symbols." (techterms.com/definition/typeface)

 A font is composed of a typeface. Font is technically a specific size and style of a typeface. For example, "Arial" is a typeface, and "Arial 12 pt black" is a font.

Font (and thus, "typeface") was developed technically by monks before the printing press was even dreamed up. Calligraphy is stylistically considered a font, but of course, back then it was the only font and they didn't call it that. They called it "calligraphy." Duh.

The first typeface was designed by a man named Johannes Gutenberg, who is the man who "invented" the printing press. The Chinese technically beat him to it about five hundred years before, but at that point it was our European fore-fathers who were recording history and they hadn't yet found Asia, so the Chinese get shafted for credit.

Gutenberg's first press was in operation by 1450. He developed a typeface for the press - heavily based on calligraphic styles of the era - and proceeded to print a 42-line Bible, popularly known as the Gutenberg Bible, for the common man in 1452. About 180 were printed.

Of the 47 known remaining copies, a whopping 21 are complete. Most of the complete originals are in Europe, but The Morgan Library & Museum in New York and the Library of Congress in D.C. among a few other locations in the U.S. boast copies on vellum and paper.

So that's the beginning of fonts. Today, you can find a bazillion crappy free fonts online at sites like 1000freefonts.com and dafont.com. A true, excellent typeface takes thousands of hours to complete. Each character has to be adjusted with specifications set for how close it stands next to another, baseline, x-height, special characters.

Any low-grade typeface has at least 54 characters. That's your standard alphabet in caps and lower case. Any standard font has at least six times that many, if not more. Small caps, special characters, punctuation, numbers, Greek letters...and there's options like "oldstyle" and "tabular" for numbers, alternate glyphs for each letter, etc., etc.

Zapfino, created by renowned typeface designer Hermann Zapf — Zapf dingbats, Palatino, among others can be credited to him — in 1998, is a nearly-overused font that I guarantee you have seen at some point. It is a script font that is extremely popular on wedding invitations, advertisements, they're even using it in movies now for titles and such.  Zapfino is a pretty extensive font, but is by no means the largest. It has only one weight — weight is regular, bold, italic, etc. — and its character total is still nearly 1500 characters.

I think you get my point. Moving on.

Style and design is not just font. Font can add to it, but it can also detract from it. A common design error is "the more the better" which is never true. Amateurs think that the more fonts used the better. Not true.

When designing anything stick to a maximum of two fonts. Three if you really really really really have to, but the standard is two. However, watch out. Even if you only use two typefaces, if you use all of the weights of each you have the same problem as using a bazillion. When in doubt, K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Whitespace whitespace whitespace is next. Or rather:







Whitespace is beautiful. We love whitespace. Whitespace occurs in several places, but the two most important are margins and leading.

Everyone knows what margins are, right? Margins are the space between what's on the paper (as far as text, images, etc.) and the edge of the paper. Leading is a bit more challenging.

Leading is defined as the amount of vertical spacing between lines of type. When you "double space" something in Microsoft word, you are adding leading. Doubling it, in fact. When you "single space" text, you're subtracting leading. It's really quite simple. The challenge is setting the appropriate amount of lead in regards to the type. But that's a lesson for another day.

Those are just a few elements of design, and I've left you with giant gaps in your design education, but I feel as though I've rambled on and on for days. I'd like to finish up with a couple of my favorite books in terms solely of design quality.

Kushiel's Mercy (Hardcover) by Jacqueline Carey. Her paperbacks are a little lacking in whitespace, but this hardcover novel is fantastic - and the paper is epic.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (also hardcover) by Stieg Larson: There are two copies of the hardback version of this book. I'm attracted to the one with the sleek cover with the spot varnish (shiny ink on the lettering), but the innards of both are equally elegant.

Hope and Hard Times by Ted Bernard. A dreary, dull, dud of a read by an author who thinks quite a lot of himself (more than necessary), but when my editor handed me the paperback book, I spent a full twenty minutes just flipping through the pages, reveling in the elegance of it. Not only is the text in Adobe Garamond Pro, my all-time most adored typeface (classic that is, use-all. Hypatia isn't really something you can use for everything, Garamond on the other hand, you totally can), but it is printed entirely on FSC Certified paper. FSC is Forest Stewardship Council, which is "an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests." (fsc.org) Can you say "orgasm"? I think I'm in love.

Also, my current read, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Beautiful margins, love love love the mod-classic placement/design of the header and footer on each page...sigh.

Excuse me, I need to go ogle my books.

WEDNESDAY: 3.5 miles (up a really big hill)

A few good things

I know, I know, it's overkill to do two posts in one day, but I just had to.

First and most importantly, my life is now complete: there is a God, and He has sent Bubble Tea into the land of marijuana (Humboldt). My favorite "treat" in college was to walk from campus to the nearby Quickly which served boba, more commonly known as "bubble tea." (Though later they also started serving crepes...I'm not sure of the reason why, as crepes are well, crepes, and boba is rather Asian.)

Then I moved home. Northern Humboldt, to my knowledge, had no place that served boba. Then this wonderful little drive-thru called "Z & J's Asian Subs" opened in a weird little building that's had probably 3 different business come and go through it in the last six months. Not good odds, but Z and J, whomever they may be, have more smarts than the previous owners. They advertise on the radio. Constantly.

To my joy, I was running around doing errands on my lunch break today and was listening to the commercials on the radio with half an ear when a bit about Z & J's came on and the words "now serving bubble tea" were uttered.

I almost caused an accident I was so surprised.

It was as good as I had hoped, though the line was ridiculous. Next time I go, I'm going to try their Chinese chicken salad, but this time, I just got Thai milk tea with boba.

It's better than cupcakes.

And that says something. As I adore cupcakes.

Next topic: As some of you may know (or not), I'm a graphic designer and I get to do a little freelance here and there. My favorite thing to do is create logos. They're so fun, I can be so creative and they're such a challenge to get an individual's personality and ideals just right with one little graphic.

Side note: for those of you not familiar with the wonders of Adobe Creative Suite, do yourself a favor and become so. Now.

Back to the original message at hand: Everyone is different, everyone wants something a little different, and it's practically delicious to meet someone's expectations and get inside their head just enough to make a good product.

The other side of that though, is that you know you are a good designer when you're not 100% happy with something you do, but it still completely and utterly satisfies the customer. Basically, when you're less ecstatic about your product than they are, you have reached the summit of design. However, there's always more to learn, and you should never stop reading, learning, and researching to improve your work.

Remind me, and I'll publish some recent pieces next time I post. In the meantime, satisfy yourself by checking out my portfolio here or go glance through HOW Magazine (only the coolest design magazine ever. They had an entire issue dedicated solely to fonts...sigh...and they do it annually...heart be still).

Ciao,
kc