Games for Design Geeks

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.

Munsell Hue Test

Arrange color blocks in order of hue from left to right. Definitely not for the color blind (or those with badly calibrated monitors).

Kern Type

Adjust the kerning (spacing between letters) to make the letters as readable and visually appealing as possible. A lot harder than you would think!

Shape Type

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!

Confessions of a Designer

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!

Sherlock Interiors

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!

The Bearable Lightness of Packing

If you haven’t seen it yet, this short video from fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg is definitely worth a watch. Even if you’re not really sure who she is (I’ll be honest, I didn’t) and don’t really care about fashion, the beautiful and quirky animation is something pretty special.

Since I’m working on my own capsule wardrobe at the moment, I’m loving the quote “If you can figure out your suitcase, you can figure out your life”, and the idea of always being ready for adventure.

Then again… out of 45 items, 24 are pairs of shoes?! Really? Shoes take up so much space – I’m not sure I’d go travelling with more than 4 pairs if I could help it. Then again, I’m sure she doesn’t have to carry her suitcases of shoes around herself. I don’t think I will ever understand the logic of a fashion designer.

Finally – ChiGarden 2011

I did this design a few months ago, but between the wedding and work I never seemed to have the time to finish coding it up. There’s still a few tweaks to be made, but here it is!

My original intention was to design something more simple and minimalist, to better show off photographs. But as I was designing it became apparent that 1) my photography isn’t really good enough to carry a design the way that the amazing photographers I admire do; and 2) I’m more of a bright colours and cartoon characters sort of person anyway. This two column design does open up a bit more space for photos though, and I’ve taken out bits that have become less important to me and added a few new things in.

Geeky bits:

  • I’m using the Twentyeleven theme as a base for this theme
  • All graphics, characters and icons were created by me, over the past few years
  • The curly font is Kavaler Kursive, which is free for personal use
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