periodic table of typefaces

remember how i adore typography?

yeah. me too.

i just found this site as i've been searching for design inspiration. enjoy!

this is now my new desktop background:


i didn't create this, but i wish i would have.

musical goodness from playlist

i've discovered some awesome music in the last few days...and months. thanks to the fabulous whitney, owl city is on there and my new favorite. and i just feel like regina spektor lately. and other such fabulous musicians. i set it so it won't play automatically, so you have the option. it's down on the right side. just letting you know it's there.

so take a listen...or don't. your call. if you do, feel free to comment on any of the music! i love to music-talk. :)

ps, owl city lyrics! the first is from 'rainbow veins'. this especially gets me through the 8-hour work day where i sit in front of a computer...

Your nerves gather with the altitude
Exhale the stress so you don’t come unglued--
Somewhere there is a happy affair, a ghost of a good mood....

also, here are some from 'hot air balloon':

I'll be out of mind,
and you'll be out of ideas pretty soon.
So let's spend the afternoon
in a cold hot air balloon

oh man. so great.

scripture + distraction = ?

I was reading my scriptures this morning in 3rd Nephi 11. I love that chapter, so this is the second or third time I've read it this week (which is why I have a weird scripture study pattern). I was reading in the first part of the chapter where God was introducing Christ. God spoke 3 times to the people, and the first two times they hear but don't really understand what He is saying. When they finally understand, "Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased", I'm sure they perked up.

Ironically, during this part, I was still reading but my mind started to drift off somewhere else, thinking of good things (visiting teaching to be exact) but not really comprehending the verses. When I got to that verse, I perked up, too. I read the next verse when Christ starts to descend from the heavens. Suddenly, all my attention was focused and I felt guilty for having skimmed over the first part of the chapter. Once more, I started over.

It got me thinking. How many times do we do that? When we're trying to be focused on the best things, only to get caught up on other things? Not to say that other things are bad; of course not! Logistics of visiting teaching need to be thought out and visiting teaching is very much an important part of the Gospel and our lives. Lots of our distractions are made up of good things.

However, we need to make sure that our first priorities are the best things. God. The Gospel. Family. I wonder, if I were a Nephite, would I have understood God's voice the first time? Or, like when I read about it this morning, would I have been distracted by something that was good but not as important at the present moment?

No wonder patience is required of us. Half the time, we're (excuse me, I can only speak for myself) I am messing up and getting distracted. Most times I don't always get answers in the way I think they should come or in my time frame. Maybe Heavenly Father is testing me to see if I'm really listening, really ready for the answer. Maybe it's just something that I can decide so He lets me. Or maybe sometimes He is trying to talk to me, but I'm just not hearing it, like in 3rd Nephi 11. "Not hearing it" can come in many ways, including not accepting it or not being willing or ready to act on it.

Anyway, this was a nice little experience to remind me to focus on the best things first. The lesser good things can wait. (By the way, that link is one of my favorites- it would be well worth your time to read or re-read that.)

"When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives." Ezra Taft Benson sure knew what he was talking about.

quick interjection --

look! Gale Larson, who is fabulous, paid me to create a baby shower invitation, pooh bear-themed if possible. i am a huge fan of Ernest Howard Shepard, the artist who first drew Winnie the Pooh. so i decided to go with that style. the line drawing actually his original, then i had fun in photoshop to color it (tangent: did you know that Shepard drew all of the illustrations in pen and ink, then when he was super old, like in his 90's or something, he was asked to color them? so he did! crazy. i think that's the story, according to Bethanne's history of illustration class). Gale's co-worker Lisa whipped out the poem in about a minute, i then designed the little card, gale printed it on cute little 5x7's and that was that!

i changed the info on the card in case any crazies come across my blog. sorry, folks. no stalking available here.

ps, how do you like the new blog header?

why it's wonderful I - typography::

now that my 'antisocial' series about fall 2008 is over, i'll write 'why it's wonderful' posts about the winter 2009 semester. stay tuned, hopefully these won't be as spread out over time :) i actually wrote this one on april 23rd.

Day: Wednesday
Class: Typography
Time: 7-11.....pm.

you'd think, with that schedule (on top of the fact i had class/work on wednesdays from 8 am-3 pm, 5-7 pm, and 7-11pm) i'd hate the dang class.

i didn't.

i actually...absolutely loved it.
the class::
typography is the study of type as a crucial element of graphic design. we learned things like kerning (how close each letter is to each other), tracking (how close the spaces in between words are) and leading (the space between lines of type). we learned the anatomy of letters, such as the x-height (height of a lowercase letter 'x', used to determine height of main body of fonts), ascenders and descenders (parts that ascend and descend the x-height, such as the tall part of an 'h' or the bottom of a 'g'), and counters (the middle parts of letters with enclosed spaces, such as 'p', 'g', 'a', 'd', etc). we learned about specific typefaces and created posters about them after we researched them (i chose neutraface. good-lookin!). we took note of type all around us with our 'typographic journals'. we also learned what good type looked like...and what it doesn't look like. we even created our own fonts!

*all images copyright kristin gulledge, 2009

the final project::
our culminating project that took the entire last half of the semester was the magazine re-design. we had to take a lifestyle magazine and redesign the entire thing, including the masthead (the actual letters that make up the name of the magazine, giving it an individual feel.) i chose spin magazine, because it's a music magazine for really artsy music lovers. perfect for me. ;) (however, after researching a lot of them, i don't suggest reading it...not all the issues are exactly my cup of tea).

i worked for many long and grueling hours on it, and would have posted the progress, but i was so busy and exhausted by the time i'd be able to post so i opted not to. BUT...here it is. the final project.

DISCLAIMER::
i'd rather you see the final physical project; it was so time intensive...we had to print it and mount it on foam core, then crop it. it looks awesome in real life. i guess you can check out the details here though. enjoy!

*note: photographs (excluding the garage photo) were found on the web, and used for educational purposes only. magazine masthead copyright kristin gulledge, 2009.

the nitty gritty details::
for those who would like to learn more

• we had to design the masthead, mine being 'spin'. i had a bunch of different ideas and came down to the one you see below and one in a circle. i chose this because it's more interesting, and my teacher made the observation that it's more interesting because we usually think of "spinning" things as circles...not rectangles.
• i tried to keep this rectangle thing as a theme throughout the whole magazine: i slanted the headlines and call-outs, also the photo (do you recognize it?) for the table of contents. consistency is crucial.
  
• we were required to have one department. each magazine has many departments, or similar types of articles in each issue.
  
• we were also required to have a 6-page feature, which is what the focus of the magazine is on in any particular issue.
  
• grids are essential to good design. i used a three-column grid for the feature and a four-column grid for the department.
  
• call-outs, in magazines, are certain parts of the text that are set apart from the rest of the words to give emphasis. mine are red and black, slanted with varying font size. this was actually inspired from my blog stylization!
  
• captions, in magazines, describe pictures and they are set apart from the text as well by a different design element. mine are smaller, always next to a photo, and gray colored.
• dummy text, or greek text, is just nonsense text that we use to fill in where text would be in a real magazine. even this, however, had to be custom-designed to an extent.
  

my goodness. i feel as if i've told all my design secrets; i guess i have no more to share. now you can go out and design fabulous magazines as well. piece of cake.*

*this is, in fact, a lie. it's NOT a piece of cake. it's more like a slab of stone...a really really big hard stone that you have to carve with a knife. a butter knife. call me masochistic, but i really love doing it.

salt lake sketchventure!

{{sketchventure}}
goal: find awesome neighborhood filled with cool-looking homes and narrow streets. draw/paint/photograph said cool-looking homes and architecture. and each other, when least expected.

[i think my personal theme was 'color'. i love love loved the colors we saw that day, and laura and zach were wearing fabulous colors to match/complement their surroundings!]

[note: i'm still obsessed with typography.][the picture below is a cool shot taken by zach. he was a fast learner and after a quick photography lesson, he was banging on all cylinders]this was my first drawing that day.[this was my first house i painted with using laura's awesome water color pen and my tiny paint set!]

love this one. such great personality.

[coolest things to paint with: tiny watercolor sets and awesome watercolor brush pens]

mission accomplished.

{{the after-party}}
goal: go to the gateway, find zach cool new shoes with to buy with his birthday money.

varied actual results: cool shoes too expensive, affordable shoes too ugly. instead, the three adventurers found a cool store with cool stuff and took cool pictures. please see laura's blog for further explanation. really. you will not regret it...unless you're not awesome.

ps. shout-out to laura, or Sister Smith: samara's about to get even better. i'm so excited for you to be a missionary. i'll hold down the fort...unless i end up joining you. in which case we will rock sketchventures and sketchisodes around the world.

until we sketch again! :)

* all images copyright kristin gulledge, 2009

sketchisodes #1 and #2!

so. ever since laura and i officially became friends through murphy (that's an awesome story all on it's own), we decided we needed to go sketching.

that was back in...whenever murphy left on his mission. in fact, here's my exact message via linkedin.com to her on 8/28/08 at 7:05 AM--

"Now that Murphy's gone...we still have to be friends! :) Maybe if we're "linked in", we'll go sketchbooking more often."

note: that was august. we've been pestering each other about it ever since.

and the FIRST time we went skeckbooking was on may 14th. as in....a few weeks ago. we decided since she's leaving on a mission on WEDNESDAY (as in, two days) to russia, we'd better make good drawing time with what time we had left. so, we decided to plan a big drawing trip and some other little ones. i coined the little ones 'sketchisodes' and the big ones 'sketchventures'. why? because...they're awesome.


{{sketchisode #1}}
our first sketchisode took place at phs' track. we wanted to draw people but they were too far away, so laura taught me a creative exercise: scribble shapes! designing characters out of scribbles. laura showed introduced me to the work of brittney lee, who is absolutely brilliant in my mind now. apparently brittney makes some of her characters out of scribble shapes. mine aren't as good, but here they are:


{{sketchisode #2}}
sketchisode #2 was downright faaan-tastic (it must be said with emphasis on the first syllable). we went to barnes and noble and i bought a mini moleskin sketchbook, then we went to gelato's and drew the unassuming patrons! it's so much more fun to draw with a friend.

for some reason, my drawing utensils didn't get packed in my bag...so i drew with ballpoint. it was a new experience!