making the design
You’re stacked, packed and ready to design… so what now?
You’ve done your research. You know your objectives. You’ve blocked out an entire day to devote to your latest masterpiece. So why can’t you start? Every designer has been there. I’m certainly no exception.
I recently rediscovered an old favorite (well, maybe not so old, but one of those great things you come across and somewhere along the line, lose track of). Letterhead Font’s arsenal of retro fonts, styling techniques and very handy assortment of tips and tricks is typographical porn for designers. Want to know how to recreate that old Martell ad from the 1930’s? Check it out.
I bring this up, because I just finished putting together some design mock-ups for a client, with a strong, retro influence.
Unfortunately, I remembered this great site after the fact.
make something that doesn’t suck
On the flip side, you might want to start your design efforts with a “what not to do” and tromp over to ban comic sans. Really. I’ll wait.
With all this superfluous imagery in your head, it’s time to start designing. Great. Yeah, I might have mentioned earlier, you might want to give yourself some time between looking and designing. Otherwise you might end up making something like this this.
left, right or center?
…and for peet’s sake, make something good. I’d love to see it.
[…] The focus of this newsletter is precisely to tackle the inspiration conundrum, or at least it effectively serves this purpose. A while back I touched a little on the topic of design inspiration, in making the design. I’d like to revise my position about finding inspiration for web design. Get the hell away from the computer! […]