Tomorrow at Exposure Gallery in downtown Sioux Falls, the “Greetings from South Dakota” group show opens at 6pm: For the past three years, Exposure has put on an annual show called Design Sioux Falls, where local graphic designers were given a Sioux Falls related topic, event, business, or person to create a brand new piece of […]

This article is in: Being Human, Community, Design, Layout

“Web design is 95% typography,” and the type that designers choose shapes how we experience the web. Several people have asked lately about how to tell which font is being used on a website. Here are two ways–one slightly technical and one fairly simple: Slightly technical: The “Inspect Element” tool Buried in your browser is […]

This article is in: Book Design, Design, Type Design, Typography, Web design

Know what you’re building before you start Seeing your good work go unused is one of the most draining things about working as a designer. It’s hard to pour your heart, creativity and time into a piece and then watch it languish in your sketchbook or on your hard drive. There are a number of […]

This article is in: Creativity, Design, Illustration

What is a raster image? What’s the difference between raster images and, um, the other kind? Meet JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF, RAW, PSD and their hidden superpowers.

This article is in: Design, Illustration, The Nerdatorium

The four top candidates for the redesign of the New Zealand flag. Design as a public trust There are two design-related stories circulating in recent news that have to do with brands that are “public property.” The first is the logo for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The Olympic games feel like they belong to all of […]

This article is in: Branding, Community, Design, Logo Design

Hermann Zapf, the designer behind Zapfino, Palatino, Optima and many other typefaces, passed away last week. The world is more beautiful because of him.

This article is in: Community, Design, Type Design, Typography

There are some clients who are a joy to work with. They have all their material together, a clear idea of the goals of the project, and a definite timeline. They value the designer’s time and sanity, and give clear and constructive feedback in a timely manner.

Then there’s this client.

This article is in: Being Human, Community, Creativity, Design, Layout

Salient thoughts from WordCamp Minneapolis 2015 For the past three years I’ve attended the WordCamp conference in Minneapolis (and have heard and made jokes about “NerdCamp.”) But each year I’ve learned a surprising amount for a one day event. As in the past, the volunteer presenters gave some solid sessions on web design and development, […]

This article is in: Community, Design, The Nerdatorium, Typography, Web design

This is a continuation of an earlier post, The Creative Process, Part I: The Myth of Orderly Progress. Creative work is non-linear Some work follows a clear path. Step 1 is always followed by Step 2, and if you know how many steps there are you can have a pretty good idea of how the […]

This article is in: Creativity, Design, Ideas, Illustration, The Nerdatorium

I don’t always know what I’m doing When I worked as a house painter, it was easy to figure how the work would go and how long it would take. You have a 2″ brush and 300 feet of trim to paint. There were occasional problems but for the most part the goal was clear, […]

This article is in: Creativity, Design, Ideas, Illustration, The Nerdatorium