Catch Up

Sit back, grab a cup of whatever, let's discuss shall we…

So I haven't posted in a while. Ya, I have been really busy. There is a lot going on at the office. And I mean a -lot-. I have felt that I have had more of a design mindset lately, however, so that is good. I have paid more attention to font combinations (Bembo and TheSans work well together). Finding good type is always a challenge. What font best fits the feel you are trying to convey? Which combinations balance or challenge each other? Do you want contrast or consistency? I went to a couple typographic related forums, read articles, did a bit of study to figure out some “best practices” on type selection. I feel a little more like the designer I want to be.

One of the design elements that give me the most grief is color. Trying to figure out good color combinations is a bit daunting at times. But I came up with ten combinations for one project and though only one will be picked, I think all of them actually work and look forward to using them on future projects. Again, I did some research before I chose the ten sets to be “judged”. A great resource in this was Jim Krause’s Color Index. I personally recommend any and all of the Index books by Krause. They are excellent resources, if nothing more than to activate those juices.

Questions are important. Unfortunately, for me, I sometimes forget to ask myself any. I will be staring at my sketch book, just sitting there, like I am expecting the page to magically expose a solution to me. “Here, Terry, wouldn’t this be neat looking?” That’s never going to happen — on blank paper, that is. I have seen a lot of design inside of other things, but never on a blank page in my sketch book. Maybe it’s broken, I don’t know. Anyway, I find that if I ask questions I will often come up with a solution much faster. Ask yourself simple questions and when you provide the answer, you feel accomplished and challenge yourself to a harder question and so on and so forth. Sometimes, however, I will just be staring onto that blank page asking question after question with no solution at all.

One of the things that I have discovered about myself is that I am useless without my pencil. It isn’t a special pencil. I didn’t get it as an heirloom from my 18th Century Great-Uncle on my mother’s side, or anything. I got it in college. A Sanford Pro Touch II - 0.5mm. The ink on the side is rubbed completely off leaving only the slight deboss of the printing. I can not find a replacement for the eraser. The silver chrome has worn off most of the metal parts, leaving behind a dingy bronze color. Despite all its imperfections, it has a certain something that “helps” me work. Without it, I feel insecure and confused. Even if I don’t use it, knowing where it is and having it close is comforting. I don't even remember when I bought it.

SPeCks has, once again, taken a back seat to the “real” world. Oh… so you’ve noticed. No you haven’t. Liar. But at any rate, I miss those little guys and feel bad that I can’t bring them out to play right now. I suppose, eventually, I will have a better schedule for dealing with the little buggers, but for now, it’s too much for me to handle. I think the fact that it is so story-driven makes it also difficult to maintain. I have thousands of short stories in my head. And when I mean short, I mean really really short. 700 words short. For perspective, this post is up to 668 words. 669 if you count ‘words’. Turns out a short story is no longer than 7000 words (according to Zoetrope All-Story). That’s a lot of words for a short story. Granted, All-Story has contests with submission rules for stories no longer than 5,000 words, but still, that’s long to me. Hell, last year’s winner, “A Year Above Christmas Tree Lane,” was 6,449 words long. Cheater.

If you are interested, you might have noticed that my flag collection to the right has grown, steadily, over the last couple of months. There are now 17 countries represented in the graphic. For those that have forgotten, I have a stat-counter that has a nice feature telling me where someone is, in the world, when they view this blog. The internet is an awesome thing.

How have I never heard of Ken Jennings?!?