Wooden Toy Publishing Co.

Have you heard of Wooden Toy? They're great!

Book Hunting

This weekend I enjoyed one of my favorite pastimes--book hunting! I'm constantly on the lookout for inspiring printed material and books are the best source for a quick fix. Chamblin's Book Mine here in Jacksonville has tons to peruse. This time I picked up four great books--Packaging Source Book from Robert Opie, Dover's Pictorial Archive of Printer's Ornaments as well as Modern Monograms, and Typology from Stephen Heller and Louise Fili.

Packaging Source Book is a visual guide to a century of packaging design and has a multitude of examples dating as far back as the 1800's. Nothing gets me going like antique graphic design. Color schemes and typography from previous eras are really something to be admired. I recommend picking this book up if you have a soft spot for anything vintage or antique.

Dover's Pictorial Archive books are always fun to look at. They have collections of differently styled alphabets, calligraphic ornaments, borders, numbers, and anything else a person interested in print design would be interested in. Their Pictorial Archive of Printers Ornaments from the Renaissance to the 20th Century doesn't disappoint. It's full of beautiful scratchboard illustrations and detailed borders, headers, floral arrangements, and various other decorative elements, to be very broad about its contents. It's a great source of inspiration and useful for appropriation since its all royalty-free!

Modern Monograms is full of beautiful letterforms, ligatures and symbols. It will be a book I turn to, I'm sure, when struggling to create a new identity or type style.

Typology takes you through the history of type design from the Victorian Era to the Digital Age. Another great look-book, but also informative in content, it guides you through the evolution of type as it pertains to the art movement of the time. So many influential examples from well-known designers from each period. Even quickly flipping through the pages gives you a pretty good overview of type's progression. An appreciable book for the type-lover.

Francesco Mugnai

Franceso Mugnai is a designer from Florence, Italy. He keeps a compelling blog of various collections of design items from sources around the net. The crop ranges from business cards to peaceful and relaxing posters and lots of stuff in between. What I found particularly interesting was his handful of information graphics. It's hit and miss, but I'm a sucker for beautiful design that also relates something factual or quantitative. So much inspiration to be found at his blog!

Aged Type

In an attempt to rid computer graphics of its coldness, designers have turned to the act of feigning the hand-made. It amazes me what a little distressing can do for a piece. I always have trouble remembering the best ways to recreate that kind of wear and often find myself searching and researching how to do it. Today I came across a site that offers an extremely easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to distressing type and the result is pretty authentic. This effect, however, does have its downfalls. It's easy to overdo it and to use it as a crutch. A good designer exercises restraint in its implementation to make the most of its effectiveness. Let's learn how to do that together. GoMediaZine

Keyboard Shortcuts

By chance, while working on an Ai project, I discovered that option+drag makes a copy of whatever I had selected. At first I thought this was just a CS4 development since I already knew about making a duplicate artboard. However, I had no idea the same shortcut would work on anything I have selected on the artboard and that this was already around in CS3! Oh, how I wish I knew about it before going through 2 years of "cmd+c, cmd+f" through my design courses. Just imagine the countless milliseconds (that could have added into hours) I could've saved! I like to make copies of everything before I alter it in any way and this gives me a quicker means of doing so. Here's a site that has a ton of shortcuts, some I have memorized and some I never knew about. Noble Desktop's Illustrator Shortcuts

Jean Giraud

Behold! The masterful stylings of French comic book artist, Jean "Moebius" Giraud! His attention to detail, sense of whimsy, fascination with the fantastical and impeccable color schemes all attribute to his timelessness. I cannot stress enough how enthralled I am by his illustration style. With the proliferation of his body of work, it is no wonder that he is also known for his speed of production.

The Egret

While taking my dog for a walk, I saw an egret by a pond. I thought that would be a good name for a spaceship. What actually developed, however, was U.S.S. Goose.