The art of typography

One of the best things about working for myself is all the new stuff I've had to learn. From setting files up for print to tackling Adobe illustrator - I love it all. I also enjoy learning for the heck of it, things I don't have to do but will help me become a better designer.

One course that I've recently completed is Faye Brown's Art of typography on Skillshare. I really enjoyed this course from the first mini exercise of matching typefaces to specific words (such fun), right through to the final project of creating our own typographic layout of a quote.

I chose a made up saying 'Me and you, you and me as happy as can be'. I started off doodling some of the words and letters.

I played around with different layouts until I came up with this one below that I created in Photoshop using a selection of different fonts. I liked the fact that it can be read either across or downwards.

I wanted to hand letter the quote so I copied the above free-hand so it had a little wobbliness to it. After a couple of different versions and adding details to the second 'you' and 'happy', I scanned it into Illustrator, live traced it, added a background and illustrated leaves. And ta dah my final piece.

Another course I've done this year was a printing course at the Regional Print Centre in Wrexham. I've since become a member of the centre so I can use their printing facilities. I thought this illustrated quote would make a great screen print so I made up a screen a few weeks ago and had a go at printing.

I need lots more practice at screen printing before I could think about selling them as art prints but was happy I was able to give one of them to my cousin and his wife-to-be for their engagement present. So until I've perfected my screen printing skills I have this quote available as a digital print in my notonthehighstreet shop.

If you'd like to learn more about typography I highly recommend Faye's course which you can find here.

Just my type {Baskerville}

Baskerville is such a beautiful serif font, and the more I look at it the more I like it. It's one of those fonts that's used all around without us really noticing it. With its sharp and tapered serifs, and curved strokes in contrasting thick and thin lines, what's not to love about it!

Designed by John Baskerville in 1757 this font is classified as a transitional font, placed between old style and modern. It's a classic font and is often used in books and papers with lots of text but I much prefer it when it is used sparingly and large showing off its curves and strokes to their full loveliness.

Image credits - Habitat | Waterstones | Dragonfly

Waterstones and Habitat have both used it for their logos and I'm loving it used on the bottles of Dragonfly Winery.

Just my type

Love this font alphabet!

The Alphabet from n9ve on Vimeo.

Just my type {Cooper Black}

Image source

Not sure that many designers would come out of the closet and admit to being a fan of Cooper Black, and don't get me wrong it's not in my top ten favourite fonts and quite possibly not in my top 20 but anyway, I definitely have a soft spot for it. With its rounded serifs and its simple, curvy style, to me it looks like it was designed in the 60s, when in fact it was designed in the early 1920s by Oswald Bruce Cooper. The font was made popular by its appearance on the cover of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album in 1966 and then it was used everywhere! You only need to google 'cooper black' to see it was on album covers, shop facias, magazines (some particularly dodgy ones), newspaper headlines, posters etc. 

Image sources: Iceland van, Easy Jet Planes, Garfield book, The Black Keys Album, The Beach Boys Album, Doors Album

Cooper Black has quite a colourful history and a book has been published showing many of the ways it has been used by designers over the years. To find out even more about this font take a look at this short film.

Image source 

I've spotted Cooper Black put to good use a couple of times this week, firstly in the White Stuff Spring catalogue and on the packaging of Spicentice.

Image source

Both these examples prove that when used in the right way and coupled with the right fonts, this bold, dated and friendly font can be beautiful. And whats good enough for White Stuff and all that!

Just my type {infographics}

This the first in a series of posts exploring my growing obsession with fonts and typography. Font selection and good typesetting is so important for invitations I design, and therefore I've become aware of it all around me from the fonts used on shop fronts to the typesetting in my children's story books. So in a quest to perfect my own typography skills I'm going to share any typographic inspiration and font discoveries here on my blog.

I've learnt so much already from these infographics that I've found via Pinterest (my other obsession!). Click on the link above each graphic for the image source.

Periodic table

Type guide

34 typographic sins

50 most popular typefaces in the world