Typography.com

Sometimes I forget that I haven’t always had a great eye for using the right font at the right time - I used to sit and stare in awe at some of the websites on gallery sites such as the FWA (well, I still do to a certain extent) and wonder how they started out.

It took me a few years to really understand that top level web design begins with good typography. You can make as many bevelled buttons and drop shadows as you want, if you ignore or don’t understand the basics of typography your designs won’t work.

Understanding good type and knowing how to choose a good font pairing are two completely different things. That’s where sites such as Typography.com come in handy!

Not only will you find an amazing source of inspiration for any design occasion, you’ll also be shown other possible font pairings in different situations, very handy when you are on a strict deadline and have to present several options to a client! Choosing the correct font pairing for any form of design can be very time consuming, so thankfully sites like this make things a bit easier and a bit quicker.

I’ll be following this post up with more amazing sources of typography in the near future. Do yourself a huge favour and take some time to view all the example font pairings on Typography.com

Beautiful site I found yesterday on cssmania, much to admire here, ticks all the boxes for me - stunning photography, clear clean typography and an imaginative parallax scrolling effect. Okay, so it might be just a bit Nike inspired, not a bad look to aspire to really.

New to Behance

I’ve been insanely busy lately with work - the day to day workings of being senior designer at Realise coupled with a few personal projects means I have had literally no free time at all for social stuff - until now that is.

This week I signed up to Behance, the creative networking site, I’ve seen the site itself many times before and been dazzled by some of the work on display so thought I would start my own page for personal projects (if I ever get the change to do any!)

My first thoughts are “Why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?” - it’s really that good. The site is very easy to use, and gives your the work the professional framing it deserves. In fact I’ve become a bit of a Behance addict, I’ve literally spent hours this week viewing work, getting inspiration and going through it’s oodles of options and tools available.

I’ve only uploaded one piece of work so far, a personal Photoshop composite, will hopefully get a chance to upload some more if I have time between designing apps and banners for Standard Life Investments and redesigning the site for a top English Premier League football team :)

Baseline grid handy tips

Found this lovely article on using a baseline grid in Photoshop, very useful -

(Source: vaughanmoffitt.com)

One of the most polished looking websites I’ve seen so far this year, so many nice little touches throughout. Makes me want to buy one of those watches…

More lovely type theory

Always helpful and instantly bookmarked. Knowing your font families is important and how to pair fonts together is always tough - part science and part luck.

A beautiful series of posters designed in a minimalist retro propoganda style. Sent this link around work and my creative director has bought 3 of them (hopefully to go in the office!)

One of my favourite articles on combing fonts

I posted this on Twitter a while back but I’ve referred back to this article a few times and a few people have asked me to resend them the link. So it must be good.