Tag Archives: graphic design

Monday’s Link Roundup.

For graphic designers, this Monday’s Link Roundup has two gems, The Art of the Book Cover Explained at TED and 5 (Mostly) Vintage Children’s Books by Iconic Graphic Designers.  If you’re interested in ethical wills, be sure to take a look at Things to worry about. It’s a letter by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his 11-year-old daughter. While it’s short, it’s nevertheless a wonderful example of an ethical will of sorts.

  • Aging Survivors Can’t Forget. [Podcast] “Many of the estimated 200,000 living Holocaust survivors face a new trauma in their final years, as they are overwhelmed by terrible memories they’ve successfully contained for 70 years…Reporter Karen Brown introduces us to survivors and their family members .., as well as social workers and specialists working with them, to find out more about this painful last chapter in a survivor’s life, and about what can be done to help them.” [ Thanks to Stephen Albert of Lifetime Memoirs for alerting me to this item.]
  • Five Reasons Why Your Life Will Improve By Writing Memoir. “Sue William Silverman is an award-winning memoir author, a writing teacher in the MFA Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the author of Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir. In today’s post, Silverman presents five reasons why writing a memoir will improve our lives! Enjoy!”
  • Crazy Talk: The Do-What-You-Love Guide. “I am not someone who likes to give career advice, or teach people to be online entrepreneurs. So I’m not going to do that here. I’ll just tell you this: it’s possible. Yes, it absolutely is possible. And I’ll share what I’ve learned, in small snippets of goodness, about doing what you love.”
  • Determining if a sentimental item is clutter or a treasure. “If you’re storing sentimental items in cardboard boxes in your basement or attic or garage, it’s a pretty good sign the items are clutter and not treasures…Plus, you can’t see your items or appreciate them through the walls of a box in a corner of a room beneath boxes of holiday decorations…As you’re sorting through your sentimental items to determine what is a treasure and what is clutter, ask yourself:”
  • The Art of the Book Cover Explained at TED. [Video] “Give this one a minute to get going, to get beyond the schtick. And then you’ll enter the world of Chip Kidd, associate art director at Knopf, who has designed covers for many famous books. As he will tell you, his job comes down to asking: What do stories look like, and how can he give them a face, if not write a short visual haiku for them?”
  • Things to worry about. “In 1933, renowned author F. Scott Fitzgerald ended a letter to his 11-year-old daughter, Scottie, with a list of things to worry about, not worry about, and simply think about. It read as follows.”
  • 5 (Mostly) Vintage Children’s Books by Iconic Graphic Designers. “As a lover of children’s books, I have a particularly soft spot for little-known gems by well-known creators. After two rounds of excavating obscure children’s books by famous authors of literature for grown-ups and icons of the art world, here are five wonderful vintage children’s books by some of history’s most celebrated graphic designers.”

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Monday’s Link Roundup.

This Monday’s Link Roundup has a couple of useful articles that’ll improve your website. After reading Are You Making These 7 Mistakes with Your About Page?,  I realized that I’ve got some work to do on my About Page. And How to Write is a pithy 10-point list that all bloggers need to take to heart. If you’re a personal historian and unfamiliar with Cowbird, you owe it to yourself to read Cowbird Debuts New Saga on Valentine’s Day. It’s another innovative way of collecting stories.

  • My Memoir Helped Me Reconnect With My Family. “The writing of Man Shoes was a legacy exercise for my sons that turned into a therapeutic exercise for myself. The healing and understanding that has come about through the writing of Man Shoes is miraculous. At fifty years of age, I am now a much stronger, more secure, happier, and more productive individual than I have ever been. Hopefully Man Shoes continues to inspire others in the coming months and years–just as it did me as I wrote it.”
  • Graphic Atlas. “…a new online resource that brings sophisticated print identification and characteristic exploration tools to archivists, curators, historians, collectors, conservators, educators, and general public.”
  • Cowbird Debuts New Saga on Valentine’s Day. “Email and text messaging have left many of us accustomed to instant gratification when it comes to communication, though impulsive tweets and status updates often lead to regret. Our methods of communication have evolved so rapidly, many of us can now tweet about anything (or nothing) within a few seconds. In the era of 140-character updates, when the lingo has become so foreign that you may need a translator to follow Twitter conversations, have our messages lost their depth? Jonathan Harris thinks so – and says his new project, Cowbird, houses personal, searchable storytelling – and may someday be the one-stop shop for an inclusive public library of human experience.”
  • How to Write. “On September 7th of 1982, advertising legend David Ogilvy sent an internal memo to all employees of his advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather. The memo was entitled “How to Write,” and consisted of the following list of advice.”
  • A Way with Words. “Public radio’s lively language show.” [Thanks top Wendy Ledger of VoType for alerting me to this item.]
  • Best of the Blogs: Old School and New Skills. “Don’t have time to keep up with design and photography blogs? Keep calm and read on. In this blog round-up you’ll find the most popular fonts of 2011, an amazing type book from 1912, a Herb Lubalin video from the 1980s, and a Photoshop cooking demonstration from 2007. Plus, there are plenty of Photoshop how-tos, digital photography tips, and design ideas.”
  • Are You Making These 7 Mistakes with Your About Page? “…lots of website owners have an easier time proposing marriage than they do writing a solid About Page. If that’s you, you’re probably overcomplicating things. A good About Page is simple, straightforward, and it communicates just a few key things.”

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Monday’s Link Roundup.

In this Monday’s Link Roundup don’t miss When Data Disappears. A thoughtful piece on the preservation of digital data. And for lovers of graphic design check out The Language of Graphic Design. If you’re near the Smithsonian this summer, you’ll want to see Little Pictures, Big Lives.

  • The Lost Art of Postcard Writing. “The terrific thing about postcards was their immense variety… Almost every business in this country, from a dog photographer to a fancy resort and spa, had a card. In my experience, people in the habit of sending cards could be divided into those who go for the conventional images of famous places and those who delight in sending images whose bad taste guarantees a shock or a laugh.”
  • The Language of Graphic Design. “Visual communication, like all communication, relies on a sophisticated and deeply encoded language to relay its message …The Language of Graphic Design: An Illustrated Handbook for Understanding Fundamental Design Principles offers fluency on a beautiful silver platter by dissecting the building blocks of this language and examining its ABC’s — definitions, functions, and usage — through visually-driven case studies spanning the past 100 years.”
  • Little Pictures, Big Lives: Snapshots Of American Artists. “Whether you’re on vacation or stay-cation this summer, chances are you’re taking pictures. Smartphones make picture-taking easier and more popular than ever. But in earlier years, photography was more of an event. At the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, an exhibition called “Little Pictures, Big Lives” shows snapshots from the 1920s through the ’60s. And many of the people in these photos happen to be some of this country’s greatest artists.” [Thanks to cj madigan of Shoebox Stories for alerting me to this item.]
  • NPR: On Memoir, Truth and ‘Writing Well’. “William Zinsser, author of the classic guide On Writing Well, talks to Michele Norris about the challenges of writing personal history. He says that since the 1990s, many memoirs have focused on victimhood, rather than forgiveness.”
  • When Data Disappears. “…if we’re going to save even a fraction of the trillions of bits of data churned out every year, we can’t think of digital preservation in the same way we do paper preservation. We have to stop thinking about how to save data only after it’s no longer needed, as when an author donates her papers to an archive. Instead, we must look for ways to continuously maintain and improve it. In other words, we must stop preserving digital material and start curating it.”
  • Letters of Note: Many times I have kissed and cryed over this. “Here’s a fascinating missive written to Charles Darwin in 1839 by his wife, Emma, shortly after the inception of his theory of evolution, in which she openly worries about his dwindling faith and, midway through the letter, asks him not to be blinded to the possibilities of things “which if true are likely to be above our comprehension” whilst consumed by his scientific pursuits. Darwin’s reaction is illustrated by his incredibly touching note at the foot of the letter, added some months later.”
  • History stitched in flour sacks. “Nancy Jo Leachman has a talent for reading old flour sacks. And oh, the stories they tell.Valuable American history lessons are stitched into the simple pieces of cloth used to hold flour from the late 1800s up until the 1960s. Leachman gives presentations centered on her own flour sack collection interwoven with fascinating tidbits about the history of Kansas, the nation’s breadbasket and leading hard red winter wheat producing state.” [Thanks to Stefani Twyford of Legacy Multimedia for alerting me to this item.]

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Encore! 4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Book Designer.

4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Book Designer. “You know a design is good when you want to lick it.”~ Steve Jobs

We all love good design. That’s why the iPod and Ikea have been so successful. Design is the difference between something that is OK and something that is memorable. If you hope to have a successful personal history business producing books, you’ll want to include a designer on your team. Here  are four important benefits of good design. Good design affects … Read More


From The Archives: 4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Book Designer.

4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Book Designer. “You know a design is good when you want to lick it.”~ Steve Jobs ________________________ We all love good design. That’s why the iPod and Ikea have been so successful. Design is the difference between something that is OK and something that is memorable. If you hope to have a successful personal history business producing books, you’ll want to include a designer on your team. Here  are four important benefits of good design. Good design affects … Read More

Monday’s Link Roundup.

In this Monday’s Link Roundup be sure to check out find stillness to cure the illness.  It’s about taking time to stop and be mindful. Altogether now… breathing in slowly… and breathing out slowly… Don’t you feel better already? ;)

Top 5 Most Unique Family Trees. “While I love any well-designed Family Tree, I especially adore the more modern versions that add a little uniqueness to the time-tested keepsake. So whether you’re looking for a way to visually express your family ties or for a special gift (like for a new baby, perhaps!), here are some beautiful and unique Family Trees.”

Highlights from the World of Visual Storytelling, Part 1. “…if visual storytelling in graphic novels is growing, it is also growing in numerous other manifestations and venues. Here’s a partial sampling from the last several months; look for Part 2 of this post on Oct. 10.”

Graphics Atlas. “…a new online resource that brings sophisticated print identification and characteristic exploration tools to archivists, curators, historians, collectors, conservators, educators, and the general public.”

Goodbye, cruel words: English. It’s dead to me.“The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself.” [Thanks to Paula Stahel of  Breath and Shadows Productions for alerting me to this item.]

Ancestorville. “… a genealogy web site with more than 4,000 lost family photographs, antique paper, and identified genealogy antiques for sale. The site has identified more than 10,000 surnames amongst the items available for sale.”

Important Slavery Collection Goes Online. “The New-York Historical Society  has announced the launch of a new online portal to nearly 12,000 pages of source materials documenting the history of slavery in the United States, the Atlantic slave trade and the abolitionist movement. Made readily accessible to the general public for the first time at www.nyhistory.org/slaverycollections,  these documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries represent fourteen of the most important collections in the library’s Manuscript Department.”

find stillness to cure the illness. “It’s a busy day, and you’re inundated by non-stop emails, text messages, phone calls, instant message requests, notifications, interruptions of all kinds.”

Monday’s Link Roundup.

This Monday’s Link Roundup is an eclectic mix . One item I  found particularly useful was How Not To Embarrass Yourself When Doing Your Elevator Pitch. It’s bang on!  For an amazing story be sure to read I found a message in a bottle.

  • 14 Resources for Free Fonts and Premium Fonts.“You can’t deny that typography is important in design. You could have the most beautiful illustrations in the world, but if you use a font like Jokerman, your entire design will look iffy.”
  • I found a message in a bottle. “When a Frenchwoman wrote a love letter to her dead son, put it in a bottle and threw it into the sea, she never dreamed anyone would read it. But author Karen Liebreich did and, moved by the anonymous mother’s grief, set out to find her.”
  • Intersect. “Stories are a big way we share, connect and remember. On Intersect, like in memory, stories live at the times and places we experience them, where they can reach out to people who cross our path.” [Thanks to Stefani Twyford of Legacy Multimedia for alerting me to this site.]
  • 10 tips for great storytelling from a PowerPoint novelist. “People do astonishing things with PowerPoint, but author Jennifer Egan has brought PowerPoint into a whole new level: literature. She’s written a chapter of her latest novel, “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” (Knopf) entirely in PowerPoint.”
  • Seeking balance: The Rule of Thirds in storytelling. “The “Rule of Thirds” dates back as far as the 18th century, defined as a guideline to help artists compose esthetically pleasing art…The Rule of Thirds can apply to more than just visual composition, however. It’s also applicable as a guideline for effective storytelling.”

Monday’s Link Roundup.

Happy Labor Day! I’m back from my “staycation” (somewhat) rested and ready to bring you more wonderful links. This Monday I highly recommend My father still laughed in the face of death. And for those of you interested in graphic design be sure to watch the trailer for Typeface.

Smalltopia: A Practical Guide to Working for Yourself. “…full of tips, tools, and strategies to help you create personal freedom through a very small business. Smalltopia is broken up into three sections: Philosophy, Business Essentials, and Case Studies. The ebook tells my personal story of escaping the rat race and the lessons I learned along the way.”

The Power of Storytelling: Creating a New Future for American Muslims. “In seventh-century Arabia, the storyteller was valued more than the swordsman. The audience sat on the floor surrounding the gifted orator as he captivated the eager listeners with beautiful poetry narrating their history. In the twenty-first century, the art form may have evolved to include motion pictures, TV shows, theater productions, novels, and stand-up comedy, but they all serve the same function: storytelling.”[Thanks to APH member Marcy Davis for alerting me to this item.]

My father still laughed in the face of death. “At the hospice he and his favourite palliative-care nurse would fall into fits of contagious laughter. It was his drug of choice.”

Home Life: A Journey Through Rooms and Recollections. “This is a memoir, but don’t be put off. Fox has organized her memories around a witty and beguiling conceit: rooms, homes, and spaces she has stayed in or, in the case of the Bordeaux room at the Metropolitan Museum, been enchanted by.” ~ from Booklist [Thanks to cj madigan of Shoebox Stories for alerting me to this item.]

Make the Most of Your Memory: 10 Tips for Writing About Your LIfe. “Because memoirs are categorized as nonfiction, you intend to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” right? But how can you be sure your words are true (and avoid controversy)? How can you tell the whole truth of your richly detailed life, when you can’t even remember what you had for breakfast yesterday? And if you aim to tell “nothing but the truth,” does that mean you can’t invent a little when certain facts escape you but are vital to the depth and/or coherence of the story?”

Typeface Official Trailer. “In a time when people can carry computers in their pockets and watch TV while walking down the street, Typeface dares to explore the twilight of an analog craft that is freshly inspiring artists in a digital age. The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI personifies cultural preservation, rural re-birth and the lineage of American graphic design.” [Thanks to Marcy Davis for alerting me to this item.]

We Are All Cousins. “People are connected in surprising ways, says Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS, FUGA — arguably the most influential genealogist of our time. Learn from the best with the NGS Online Video Series, produced by award-winning filmmakers Kate Geis and Allen Moore, featuring today’s most distinguished genealogy experts.”

4 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Book Designer.

“You know a design is good when you want to lick it.”~ Steve Jobs

________________________

We all love good design. That’s why the iPod and Ikea have been so successful. Design is the difference between something that is OK and something that is memorable. If you hope to have a successful personal history business producing books, you’ll want to include a designer on your team. Here  are four important benefits of good design.

  1. Good design affects people emotionally. You’ll lose clients if your books have great content but look homemade. When prospective clients see your work, they don’t have time to read the content. They’ll be primarily influenced by how attractive the books look. Advances in neuroscience have shown that people tend to act first on emotion, then follow it with reasoning to support their choice. The more people are  emotionally drawn to your work, the more likely they’ll hire you.
  2. Good design conveys credibility. Don Norman, a former Apple design guru, sees the value of producing good design. He says,“We all have the feeling that attractive things work better.” If you produce  first class books, your company projects quality, care, and professionalism.
  3. Good  design supports and enhances the content. It’s true that content is vital. But if you have to struggle to read a book, you’re not likely to enjoy it. We can all recall coping with a poorly designed book with type that’s too small or inappropriate for the subject, no white space for the text to breath, lack of headings to provide guidance, and photos placed without any seeming logic. Remember that in addition to your client, your book will be read by others. Your books are your calling card. They speak in your absence. Will your books speak of quality and great design?
  4. Good design differentiates you from the others. It’s becoming a crowded field in the world of self publishing. What will set you apart from all the others  is  design that is compelling.

Image by Juhan  Sonin

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