My first hand-lettered greeting

I’ve finally hand lettered and designed my first publicly-available greeting card. It all started with a drawing in my sketchbook. Just a few ideas I threw together. Note the “Thanks You.” That was intentional. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to just say “Thanks” or if I wanted a full “Thank you” so I created both. Next I brought the image …

Double-spaces after periods

Stop it! Just stop it! http://www.good.is/post/good-design-daily-do-you-double-space-after-periods/ fig. 1 For those of us (meaning: you) who don’t know yet, back in the day when we (meaning: us old people) were learning to type, we were learning on that antiquated mechanism called a “typewriter” (see fig. 1). Typewriters used monotype lettering, meaning, no matter what the letter, every single letter took up the same …

Hand Lettering in Gettysburg

I can’t help it. When I see lettering or graphic design that I like, I have to take a photo. I found some hand lettering at a place called The Pub & Restaurant right in the middle of Gettysburg on Lincoln Square. (If you take a look at their website, you’ll see these lettering examples aren’t carried through the rest of their …

Like I said, NO SPEC!

So as I’ve posted a couple of times before here and here, spec work for designers and artists shouldn’t even be something we’re discussing now that we have minimum wage and the robber barons have long since disappeared and all. For those people who still aren’t “getting” what the problem is, here’s a little video I ran across that might …

Won: Two Purple Dragonflies!

Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1 is the proud recipient of two Purple Dragonfly Book Awards! The first one is a First Place award for Fiction: Collection of Short Stories, and the second is a Second Place award for Interior Design. Here’s a link to all the winners: http://www.fivestarpublications.com/bookcontest/book-award-winners.html#2012pdbawin

In response to VistaPrint (and now 99designs)

Where do I start? I guess I could start by saying this blog post has been sitting around as a draft since Feb. 6, 2012. I started it, took a few deep breaths and slowly lost the fight in my belly that got me started on it in the first place. So lets begin there. I’m sure most everyone has seen the …

Blogging combo

I’ve been trying to keep way, way too many blogs in the air at the same time, and for all the right reasons I’m in the process of combining as many as I can. So my graphic design/editorial illustration/fine art blog posts from a different blog are now integrated into and between the posts in this blog. And you probably …

New business card design

I’ve finally redesigned some new business cards for the graphic design offshoot of my freelance work (the white cards below). I had redesigned my Web site over a couple years ago, but until now I’ve been using the old business cards with all the old fonts and graphics and abrasive attitude (the black card to the right). I guess I thought I could use them …

New banner design for Etsy shop

Here’s a new banner I designed recently for The Dreaming Owl‘s Etsy shop, along with the matching identity icon. The Dreaming Owl sells handmade mittens, scarves, jewelry, bookmarks and purses, and requested a banner to reflect the shop’s personality. We went with this hand drawn and stylized owl and banner.

Molly Leach

Few designers actually get recognition in the world of book publishing, but thankfully Molly Leach seems to be getting at least a little of it. Molly is the brilliant designing mind behind many children’s books including The Stinky Cheese Man. We’re used to books breaking the rules these days, but The Stinky Cheese Man expanded the boundaries of what was …