|thank you, steve|

|typography 101|

This attractive and informative infographic (click here for the article and complete infographic) by Cliff Kuang perfectly summarizes many typography basics for beginners and helps remind advanced designers of many concepts that long ago became innate and perhaps somewhat forgotten.

-J. Gibb

|peace, love and ampersands|

The best designs are simple and clever. Like this fantastic Threadless submission by Budi Satria Kwan. I have designed quite a few T-shirts and always keep one to wear, so I already own too many... but this is seriously making me reconsider.

-J. Gibb

|i heart this|

Target has really been upping their game in the home décor department. Here's one of the wall art prints that recently caught my eye.

-J. Gibb

|conceptual coffee|

Graphic designers are lazy. We hate doing math, we look for shortcuts, and we steal—er... modify—ideas. I am no exception. Most of the time, it seems, I save time on a design by doing something fairly literal or expected.

For example, with this invite for a GOLD (Graduates Of the Last Decade) event, I was just going to create a coffee mug stain on a napkin and call it good. But then I saw this (I told you, we steal!) and decided to push myself further with more of a concept: spell something with stains. It proved to be quite the challenge, both in creating letterforms (somewhere between too obvious and just unclear) and making them look realistic. But I am quite pleased with the end result. And now I'm craving a granita...

-J. Gibb

|x marks the eating spot|

Now that I have my first "real" full-time job after graduating from college, I'm eagerly anticipating my imminent move to my first apartment. The current plan is to save a few more paychecks before venturing into the unforgiving world of bills and payments, but I'm starting to acquire furnishings as I discover them and/or as they go on sale.

I am a fairly indecisive person, especially when it comes to dropping major bucks, but when I saw this Pier One table base I knew I loved it. As a typography nerd, I love the simple yet strong letterform suggested by this design. I can't wait to set it up and put it to use!

-J. Gibb

|the force justified|

Typography AND Star Wars? Yup, this blog somehow managed to get even nerdier. But who can deny the awesomeness of these self-promotion campaign designs? Argue you cannot.

-J. Gibb

P.S. :-O>>> Thanks to Kelly Murray for being one of many to share this with me!

|text block party|

Lines of text that fit into a fixed width seem to be all the rage right now. Or maybe I just want them to be. Regardless, I created such a type treatment for my latest wedding invitation design (you can see the full invite here).

It's funny how this kind of text block creates a dilemma for the reader: it deemphasizes the words (though I tried to make the couple's names important by centering them in the block and adding thick lines of the same color down the sides) by almost blending them together into a single shape, yet it invites you to take a closer look and perhaps is more effective than "normal" text at convincing you to read everything.

Yes, graphic designers want to get into your head. Is it working?

-J. Gibb