Monday have you down? Why not start your week with a little challenge in the form of kerning and shaping letterforms!
Kern Type and Shape Type provides a much needed escape from endless meetings and pushing pixels. Go for 100%!
–Brittany
Cat Commerce – Denis Sazhin
I’m not a cat person, but I am an animated GIF person! I really only like Holly’s cat, but that is probably because her cat acts like a dog, and is friends with my fluff dog Stella.
I receive a lot of emails relating to design, inspiration, and little gems of the internet like this Cat Power dribbble set of animated cat illustrations. The set is fun to look at even if you don’t like cats. I was drafted on dribbble a while back (crazy story…) and I finally posted my first shot! Now that the initial anxiety is over I’m determined to figure out the magic steps to be granted an invite to pass off to my partner in crime. Posting more shots I’m sure is a prerequisite, so I’m going to work on that. In the mean time, check out the link to Cat Power and sing the soft kitty song from Big Bang Theory. If you don’t know it, that should be the next thing you look up today.
-Brittany
I’m on my second round of Girl Develop It classes with the Seattle chapter. I’m learning that HTML5 and CSS3 are pretty powerful and can be dare I say – fun? From a design perspective I think its always a plus to learn some coding skills. It makes it easier to talk with your developers and empowers you to work independently on side projects.
While in class we’ve been inundated with wonderful code resource after resource. Everything from the helpful HTML5 Doctor to learning the possibilities of CSS3 buttons. My favorite so far has been Give’n’go, a CodePen collaboration with Dribbble. Basically developers peruse Dribbble, find something interesting and develop the code snippet. This little squirrel up top is my favorite, Dribbble snapshot on the left, interactive CodePen on the right (go here to see it blinking). You can even inspect the code to see how it was created. I think this would be a great exercise if you’re new to coding like me.
If you’re interested in learning to code whether it be html, css, javascript or something more advanced check out Girl Develop It. It’s likely they have a chapter near you!
-Holly
Equations for Organic Motion – Test Sheet by Justin Windle
Anytime you want to stare at some incredible examples of what people are creating in the front end dev world just start exploring CodePen. If you are a CodePen first timer, you can start with the curated list of the 2013 Most Popular. Fair warning that minutes can turn into hours. Not from personal experience of course… In a practical sense, I’ve used the site to ferret out some bugs and play around with CSS before talking to devs on quick projects. Saves the “Can you make that larger? No a little smaller… still smaller. Ok, too far, slightly bigger.” You get the idea. I didn’t get the nickname Pixel Perfect Girl at work for nothing.
–Brittany
When it comes to mockups where I need names I typically fall back on characters from movies, famous people or whatever random thing comes to mind. Names that have made appearances in my internal mockups are everything from Betty White, Justin Timberlake, Minions, Walter Bishop, Olivia Dunham… anything weird I don’t mind staring at.
Behold the brilliant project uinames.com that randomly generates male and female names. Looking at the links in the about, the names are pulled from common names over the last 100 years from the social security database and common surnames in the US. This solves the problem when you need to show a mockup beyond the internal team that is in on your practical naming jokes or when a design is customer facing. It is an interesting idea, I like it.
-Brittany
I’ve been wanting to learn calligraphy for a lonnng time. I’ve even bought various supplies here and there. And I’ve tried using them with little success, blaming it on being left-handed or such and quietly putting my pen and nibs back in a drawer. When Molly Jacques announced her calligraphy class on Skillshare I knew this was my chance! Already having taken a hand-lettering workshop with Molly, I was confident she could teach me something. Turns out, it just takes lots and lots of practice! I’m still learning as I go, like how to not ink up a letter too much, add pretty fleurishes and draw consistent line strokes and angles, but it’s finally enjoyable!
If you’re on the edge of learning calligraphy I definitely recommend this class! It’s been really fun and has helped me make more goals to practice. I’ll try to keep sharing what I create and maybe just maybe I’ll be skilled enough to letter some of my wedding escort cards next Fall :) Happy lettering!
– Holly
I like crazy examples of people pushing normal patterns with personal websites. In terms of designing your resume online, this interactive resume has to be one of the most elaborate I’ve seen recently. When you scroll the site plays out like a video game going through different levels to show skill levels and content. The illustrations are bright and remind me a bit of video games I used to play with my brother as a kid. I like the subtle details put in like the bubbles when underwater and the timed animations. Overall a fun idea.
–Brittany
Graphic designer, Jonathan Lawrence photographs and curates found typography through his project, Type Hunting. There’s something very special about vintage typography, with all it’s hand-setting hand-lettering magic. Do yourself a favor and take a peek.
Photos by Jonathan Lawrence for Type Hunting.
As I get excited to go see the new Despicable Me movie tomorrow, I give you a Pure CSS Minion. I’ve been seeing a lot of great examples of what you can do with CSS beyond styling text these days. Another example to check out is Logos in Pure CSS, where each of the logo images hover over the CSS example to show how much the shapes match up. Only the Github logo seems like one little shape on the tail is missing. Pretty impressive overall I think.
-Brittany
I am swooning over Sarah Sherman Samuel‘s new line A Sunny Afternoon. As an occasional sewer I know from experience that beautiful fabrics are pretty hard to come by. The textiles Sarah designed are refreshingly beautiful, made up of simple geometric patterns with the occasional pop of color. I can’t help but fall in love with all the pretty black and white napkins and am definitely going to have to splurge for this triangles table runner. Her textile designs are certainly inspiring and leave me wondering about designing a couple fabrics myself (for personal projects of course). -Holly
Products clockwise: Geometric napkins, Stripes tea towel, Triangles tea towel, & Mint Crosses napkins.
All images by Sarah Sherman Samuel of Smitten Studio. Check out the product line at A Sunny Afternoon.
