Photos from What Katie Does
Loving these great typographic prints from What Katie Does. The walls of our kitchen are looking a little bare, and I think the food print especially would be a nice little reminder. I’m terrible at choosing art to decorate with, but I think a collection of typographic prints are right up my alley.
Not getting anything out of this by the way, just a fan!
How adorable are these Hidden Animal teacups by designer Ange-line Tetrault? I think the bear is my pick for a surprise in my teacup.
These cups are all available on Amazon.com. FYI, this is an affiliate link, so if you really hate me you can not click on it and just search for it yourself.
I’ve come across a few of these little online games for design geeks, and can never resist playing them! Here’s a few of my favourites:
Color - a color matching game by Method of Action
Try to match up colours on the colour wheel, for hue, saturation, complimentary, analogous, ternary and quartenery. It times you and gives you a score at the end, which made me panic a little. Surprisingly fun, and extra geek points for being made entirely in HTML5 and having support for colour blindness.
Arrange color blocks in order of hue from left to right. Definitely not for the color blind (or those with badly calibrated monitors).
Adjust the kerning (spacing between letters) to make the letters as readable and visually appealing as possible. A lot harder than you would think!
Manipulate the bézier curves to fix letter shapes (I was the worst at this one!).
The Rather Difficult Font Game 
True to its name, this game is rather difficult. Since I work primarily with web, it’s only recently that I’ve been able to use much more than Arial, Verdana and Georgia (all of which did come up in the test), and I’ve actually never heard of a few of these fonts. You can sort of figure some out through a process of elimination though. The game didn’t seem to be working/scoring properly when I tried it, so click through to the mobile version if your score/font numbers aren’t increasing.
Happy playing!
These ‘Confessions of a Designer’ quotes put together by Anneke of AMS Design Blog made me snigger. I agree with her that there’s often misconceptions about how long graphic design takes, since it’s just “makings stuff in Photoshop” and “choosing fonts” right?
I should probably note that I’ve been really lucky with clients, and haven’t had to deal with these things much!
Yup – whilst not as insane and screamy as some, I am a bit of a fan of BBC’s series Sherlock. I’ve been really enjoying season two, and can’t wait for the final episode this week (although since it’s based on The Final Problem it’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster).
Since I’m several different kinds of geek, I couldn’t help noticing the set design more this season, particularly the interiors.
Considering it’s home to two bachelors, 221B Baker Street actually looks really warm and inviting with its vintage furniture, crammed bookshelves, random curios and eclectic damask wallpapers (the black and white one can be found here by the way). I’ve been a fan of the Scandinavian modern minimalist look forever, but I’m finding myself drawn more and more to this sort of warm, slightly masculine, wood-and-leather, very lived-in sort of look. I keep seeing Sherlock’s armchair, Corbusier’s Le Grand Confort, in interior design blogs and have wanted it for ages before spotting it on the show too. Interesting that there’s not a tv in sight – I think rooms look so much nicer when all the chairs aren’t orientated towards a screen!
Irene Adler’s townhouse is a stark contrast – clean, minimal, bright and feminine, full of beautiful antique furniture and decor. Everything looks carefully chosen and arranged, but not as welcoming and lived-in. I suppose it suits the way that the character presents herself – classy, classic, luxurious and beautifully presented, but giving no hint as to the real person behind it all. It’s not my style at all, but I can’t help admiring the white chaise lounge in the sitting room or that amazing and majestic bed!
Do you end up admiring somewhat unrelated elements, like interiors or costume design, when watching tv too? I’m really looking forward to the return of Mad Men this year, it’s always full of inspiring mid-century design!