Where are we? did you see a sign?

For the last few months Lee and I have been talking it up about going for a mountain bike together. So finally last weekend Lee and I decided to hit the Ferguson Valley hills on our mountain bikes, only to find when we got to the trails that the Department of Environment and Conservation had decided that this fine mountain biking day was perfect for a controlled burn off (the first there in 15 years!).

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Typography 101. part 3

In typography the term leading is the amount of vertical space between lines of text. This may sound rather insignificant in the design of an advertisement or brochure etc, but it can make or break the effectiveness of the piece.

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Typography 101. part 2

Nothing can ruin a headline or a logo design more than bad kearning, well okay maybe a spelling mistake. But this fundamental element of design is often neglected by the designer and unseen by the client, so read on and see if you can spot the glaring mistake in the following example.

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Typography 101. part 1

To 99% of the population type is simply a font like Arial typed on the computer and printed out, end of story!

To the designer it is a whole new world where we type geeks get excited by the ascenders and descenders on letters or the slant of the cross stroke. At first my wife found it quite interesting that I could walk past a sign or pick up a magazine and tell her the name of the fonts used, now I don’t say a thing.

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Boys wear skirts too

Every moment of our lives we are bombarded by icons. These simplistic symbols that tell us exactly which direction to go, what button to push, or that unless you pull over now and add water to the radiator you will soon have a sauna under your bonnet. (I simply disconnected my temperature warning light as it kept coming on, and not only did I have a sauna that any Swede would be proud of, but a rather large expensive lake too!).

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