|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