Dailiness

Late May and June were chockablock with experiences I didn’t blog.

Under my Hit Those Keys umbrella, I produced and launched three new sites:

1. Deborah Brodie: Freelance Editor, Book Doctor & Creative Writing Teacher

   Wow. I loved working on this site. Partly for nerdy design reasons—creating all the text ornaments and paying such close attention to the typography was really fun. But, mainly, this project meant what it did because Deborah herself is both a consummate professional and an entertaining correspondent. I sincerely believe that any aspiring author couldn’t be in better hands than hers.

2. Lindsey Lane: Children’s Author, Columnist, Playwright

   Also Wow. One reason I still craft sites the way I do, one at a time and with an insane attention to detail, is because I get to know such interesting people. Visually, this site is pleasing because I can see clear markers of my style, yet (and the feedback on this has been universal) the site really says Lindsey. I can already tell that I’ll be adding her blog (more on this in another entry) to my daily reading roster.

3. Martha J. Groom: Assoc. Professor, Conservation Biology, Ecology

   This woman rocks. Conservation biologist and twin mom, she keeps an unbelievable number of priorities in balance and helps save the planet, too. Okay, in the interests of full disclosure, she is my sister. And, of course, my services were a gift on this one. Still, what a privilege to know each other in a new way, as two professional women in collaboration.

Typical. Type-ical. Typographic.

Love this post from Cameron Moll on Techniques for Designing with Type Characters. I’ve been a typography junky since I was quite young and still have my childhood manual on how to form calligraphic characters by hand.

A while back I found myself assembling a Tinderbox research file that required me to roam the web for examples of type used as art, type used to create pictures and tag clouds.

Font designer Manfred Klein has some font examples (of images made from words, letterforms or type elements), including one featured in Symbol & Icon Fonts Online called TypeFaces…

A little bird I know is blogging about the the prep school experience, mainly to debunk some of the popular misconceptions:

If you only take one paragraph away from this blog, let it be this:

• Prep-School kids do a lot of work.
• Life revolves around homework first, food second, and friends third.
• “College” is a four-letter word.
• And you will never be the best at anything at prep school.