 The Holiday Season is already well on its way in our neck of the woods. In India, the months of September and October are flooded with holidays. India is really diverse, with so many different people groups and religions. This makes for a lot of holidays and festivals, many lasting several days. Diwali, the festival of lights, will mark the end of this crazy season in the beginning of November, which is when we will start thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas!
Of course, when it comes to Christmas cards, it doesn't hurt to start thinking about it now. October is my favorite month of the year, and also a perfect time for a great outdoor photo shoot with your family. And once you've got the perfect shots, you can start thinking about your perfect card. The advantage to getting an early start, is you can also consider doing a custom, uNiqUE to YOU photo greeting card. Yes, we can design a card just for you, that compliments your photo and captures your year perfectly. And it won't be re-sold by us! Here are a few reasons why its better than the standard big-box template : Self-Expression You are more than trendy design fads. Express yourself with a design that is truly your own. Superior Fonts and Graphics Fonts that you see often become boring and cliche. We have invested heavily in professional fonts that, coupled with our hand-drawn graphics and embellishments, will keep your card fresh and unique! Professional Photo Correction Was the lighting off? Big zit on your nose? Our custom cards come with free photo retouching & enhancements. Perfectly Matched We can color match the exact colors from your photo to use as accents in your cards design. This gives your photo card an overall look of unity and perfection. Balanced Layout One size does not fit all! Families start with just two of you and could grow into the double digits! With a custom card, you get a layout that is tailored to your clan, without looking too crowded or too empty. Custom Messages and Signatures With a personalized card, we can design any message with style and flair. We can also use your actual signatures to create that extra-special finishing touch! One-of-a-Kind You know, its kind of like wearing the same dress to the prom... A custom greeting card ensures that you won’t be sending out the same card design as a bunch of your friends! Custom Cards start at $24.95 for a front and back design. That's a great deal, but... Order before November 1 and you'll get it for just $19.95!! Check out our Photo Card page for more information, or go ahead and contact us to get started. We've also got tons of pre-made designs in our Etsy shop that will be updated daily! So go on over and check them out, then start dreaming up your perfect photo card!
0 Comments
 I recently read the book Why Fonts Matter by Sarah Hyndman as part of our 2016 Reading Challenge. I read it for the category "Book about Art" but it could have very easily qualified for the "Book about Psychology". It is a fun book with lots of great graphics, charts, and activities. It is not targeted at professional designers, but the common "type consumer", which includes all of us (even professionals). As a font nerd, font snob, type lover or whatever else you want to call me, I enjoyed the book. However, if you could care less about fonts, or have ever wondered what the big deal about fonts is, this book just might show you that you care more about them than you think. Either way, you will get to eat jelly beans, so win-win!
Here are a few parts of the book that got me thinking ---> Typography Activities When I teach my elementary graphic design lesson on typography, I talk about how fonts are like people, with names, families, unique shapes, sizes and personalities. This book gave me so many great ideas for activities that I could do in my class. I especially loved the type designing activity based on different styles of songs. I will definitely be incorporating it in my next class and will be sure to let you know how it goes. The Ethics of Typography This is part of a larger debate on overall marketing tactics, but Hyndman brings up an interesting point that different fonts do suggest certain things about a product which may or may not be true. There are regulations concerning the wording and photography in advertising, but fonts can equally suggest a false claim without any consequence. She will spend a good portion of the rest of the book documenting the associations we have with certain fonts. As I compared the associations that we make with colors, I found it interesting that colors take on different meanings depending on their context and usage, but fonts are much more singular in their personalities. Designer vs. Consumer Designers are known to get caught up in a design bubble, and it is always good for us to get feedback from non-designers. What we may have thought was a clever use of contrast, color, negative space, etc. might be hard our audience to interpret. The same is true for typography. We may tend to associate some fonts with their historical background, while non-designers might view them much differently, and more accurately to common public perception. Sometimes we need a humble reality check :) Tasting Type This was definitely an area of typography that I had never considered. Hyndman offers research to show that the type of fonts used on food packaging can have a placebo affect on how we taste food. While I didn't taste a noticeable difference during the jelly bean experiment, I think I was just overthinking and was too aware of the results that I was supposed to see. It would be a lot of fun to do these in person, at one of her type tasting events. At the end of the book, she suggests that this placebo affect could possibly be used for good, by allowing companies to reduce sugar and fat in their products and replace it with a good use of typography that would induce this placebo affect on our taste buds. Who knows, typography might just save the world after all! You can check out more about the books and type research at www.typetasting.com. Over the past decade, I have had the privilege to design for a really wide range of clients. And while I am just a little bitty tadpole in the graphic design ocean, I have had the excitement of seeing some of my clients do really well and having my work appear on television, magazines, and major blogs. I have also had the opportunity to design for a host of non-profit organizations who are doing a lot of good around the world, from the outback of Australia to the heart of the midwest United States. Although few will see these works, it is amazing to know that my designs are helping others. However, in the past year, I have entered new territory and had perhaps my greatest achievement yet... my appearance on The School Bulletin Board!  Ok, so its not MY work, but its the product of my efforts! This year I did a week workshop at my the school where my kids do co-op activities, teaching short lessons on Graphic Design to 4-8th graders. With little resources or technology, I have tried to show them that Graphic Design is not just turning on the computer and picking out a cool font. It requires thinking, planning, understanding and communicating. It has turned out to be so much fun for me, and the kids too (there is nothing quite like having them beg me to come back for more!)
Throughout teaching this class, I kept thinking about the first logo that I ever created. It was in fifth grade. My friend and I made a logo for our imaginary “Hearty Heart Mints”, where of course, the M was also the top of a heart. For the assignment we also had to make up a commercial, and maybe some other stuff too, but I just remember the logo. While it would be many more years until I realized Graphic Design could be a career, perhaps that was the start of my journey. And that made me excited to teach, with the thought that one day these kids might look back and remember something significant about this class. While I don’t expect to ever be a world-famous designer, I would love to know that I taught one, or inspired one, or even just introduced someone to a career they would really love. Do you remember when you first knew what you wanted to do with your life? I would never consider myself an Illustrator... If you asked me my favorite part about graphic design, I would start using things words like "kerning" and "tracking" and "character style" and "master pages" that might make you roll your eyes and walk away. My heart is in the details. And these are the things I am good at. My favorite and best-selling single product has been my Shabby Chic wedding program. It is really simple, but I love the challenge of each program, trying to expand the minimalist bride's information without it feeling empty or trying to condense the thankful and thorough bride's information without it feeling squished. I want each program to look like the layout had been designed specifically for each wedding no matter how much or little information. Unfortunately, being a freelancer, I cannot limit myself to one part of the design process and I have always wished to improve my illustrative abilities. I know there are a lot of great resources, like stock photography and royalty-free vector illustrations, but deep down in my heart I feel like that's cheating. It can also get really expensive and sifting through all the terms and usage restrictions can be confusing. I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to invest in a good drawing tablet. Certainly that seems like the logical thing to do. I guess I always imagined them to be really expensive, and I was too busy kerning my letters to do some easy research. But after experimenting a bit with a friend's WACOM tablet, I knew it was a long-awaited necessity.  So today I am playing around with my new Turcom TS-6608. I picked it because it was highly discounted AND had great reviews on Amazon. So far, it seems pretty suitable for my basic needs. My first project is to transfer all of these hand-drawn flash cards into my own original digital illustrations. Having them all in digital format will allow me to easily make complimentary worksheets and coloring pages for homeschooling. If I can make it all the way to Z (which will be over 200 illustrations), I think I will have improved my illustrating skills a lot, which will benefit all areas of my design work. Stay tuned and follow my progress, with lots of free downloads along the way.
|
JulieLuke and I are married and have four little munchkins that travel the world with us. I blog about living overseas, travel, kids, education and graphic design. Archives
May 2017
Categories
All
@thetypetree Instagram Feed |
RSS Feed