It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted anything on here. I’ve been pretty busy with all of life’s demands, which isn’t bad, but I haven’t written very much.

Part of the reason for my lack of writing is because ever since I put together my previous design, I haven’t really been pleased with it. I had a variety of goals for it that I felt weren’t really acheived. In the mean time, though, I thing I’ve put together a design that I feel a little bit better about. Here are some things you might notice:

• More thorough typographical consideration. I really love and care about my type. In the previous iteration, though, I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked working it out. I think this version is much better.
• Use of Clarendon. For better or for worse I’m a huge fan of Clarendon. I discovered Clarendon while in school and really began to love it then. My type professor, however, really hated it. Therefore, my love for it grew. (wink, wink). I have had intentions of using it in public work for a while, but haven’t done so till now. How did I do it? Next point…
• Use of typeface-js. Typeface-js is a javascript solution to embedding typefaces on your website. I won’t go in to detail as to how it works, but I will say I am pretty pleased with how easy it was to install and configure. I have previously used sIFR, but I am glad to leave flash behind for this. (I am aware that Cufón might be a more mature project that works similarly, but I found this one first and like it… I might change later if there is significant reason to do so.)

Some things you probably won’t notice without significant digging, but that I’d like to mention:

• One reason I was able to build this theme quickly (by the way, I was able to build this quickly) was because I found a really helpful, stripped-down WordPress theme that serves as an excellent blank canvass for starting new template developments. It’s called Starkers and it was made by Elliot Jay Stocks.
• I used less javascript. I really like javascript. I really dislike, though, features on sites that don’t significantly contribute to the overall user experience but that still take time to load. Therefore, I cut out some javascript effects I used on the previous iteration of this design. (The only javascript I am using is for the earlier mentioned font embedding.)
• This hardly merits mentioning, but in this iteration I didn’t even bother trying to get things to appear right in IE 6. Very few people view this site and a negligable number use IE. It’s simply not worthy my time or effort.

That’s all. Please let me know what you think of the update. If you notice anything that doesn’t look quite right, let me know–I probably missed some stuff.

Rock on,

Rewdy

These sources change pretty frequently, but here are my most current sources of inspiration. You’ll notice a common theme, possibly. I’m pretty into type and specifically, I’m pretty into hand-drawn type. I really love all hand-created artwork, the immediacy of the process makes the work feel more human to me. I may write on this later.

Anyway, here are some really cool sources for inspiration. Feel free to add your own in the comments, if you like.

Daily Type

Daily Type is a weblog (kind of) of a bunch of Russian type designers. They post images of type every day (thus, the name). A lot of it is hand-drawn, which, as mentioned above, I like a lot. The other thing that is cool about this site is that most of the type is in Cyrillic. Cyrillic is the alphabet that Russian is written in. Jonathan Hoefler wrote an article where he mentioned Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets. Since reading his article, I’ve been pretty into looking at Cyrillic type. It gives me a lot of cool ideas of what can be done with type that I might not always see right away looking at our good old Roman alphabet.

This is definitely a site to add to the feed reader and keep track of. Pretty cool stuff. (H&FJ’s blog is awesome, too, by the way. Maybe my favorite…)

Fiodor Sumkin’s Opera78.com

In all honesty, I know very little about Fiodor Sumkin. I am not quite sure, even, how I found his website. What I do know, though, is that he has some pretty awesome work. Mostly all of his stuff is hand-drawn. My favorite section is his typograhy. His work is kind of edgy, maybe offensive at times, but very impressive.

He also seems to do quite a lot of work in Russian (or another language using the Cyrillic alphabet). Which, as I’ve covered, I’m fascinated by. This is one of those sites I could easily spend a good hour at and not realize the time was passing. Check it out.

Foxie’s Graphic Design

Foxie’s Graphic Design is a Russian graphic design firm. I stumbled across this site yesterday when I was looking for something and accidentally spent a good chunk of time browsing their portfolio. The thing I was impressed with and the reason I’m including the site here is this: In their work, they seem to have a way of creating work that is fresh and unique, without challenging conventions too much. Good work.

Mike Perry’s Midwestisbest.com

Mike Perry is a designer in Brooklyn, NY who (I think) is known mainly for his fun, colorful hand-drawn work. A lot of his stuff utilizes a collage feel and maintains a youthful, fun aesthetic. He has a huge portfolio on his site that will give you quite a lot to look at for a while.

Also to note, Mike Perry is the author of a book called “Handjob”, which is a catalog of hand-drawn type. I haven’t been able to look through the book yet, but a friend of mine recently suggested it to me quite highly. Judging from Perry’s work on his website, I’m going to say it’s probably pretty good.

Flickr

This might be a completely unhelpful thing to list, because I’m pretty sure everyone uses flickr, but here it is. Flickr’s great for finding inspiration. Search for about anything and you’ll get results. My latest queries have been (you guessed it), “hand drawn type”, “type sketches”, … you get the idea.

I’ve found some pretty cool stuff on there. Check it out for yourself.

That’s pretty much all for today. What sources do you use for inspiration? Where do you go when you’re looking for an idea? Let me know…