Week of 1-11-10:

Design blogs you should be following on Twitter
“With the vast majority of design blogs within the blogging community its hard to keep up with who is saying what. Using twitter along side your favorite RSS reader is a great way to find out about new articles that design blogs are writing up.”

How to make yourself stand out as a freelancer
“The cybersea is full of freelancers all out to make their mark and their money to keep their freelance fires burning. With an abundance of opportunity pouring in to the market, getting yourself out there and making sure you are heard and seen will help you sway those opportunities more your way.”

Impressive Tumblr customizations
“Over the past year, there have been a few different services that have popped up that allows you to post content online a lot faster than WordPress would. Two of the most popular ones are Tumblr and Posterous.”

Your personality, summarized in a typeface
“If you’ve ever sat down with a type designer, what you quickly realize is that they rarely talk about fonts in purely aesthetic or even functional terms: They talk about assertiveness or calm or friendliness. In short, they talk about personality traits. It makes sense, then, that your personality could be translated into a typeface.”

On small caps
“I just read this post by Joe Clark, linked from Daring Fireball, about why you shouldn’t use small caps for acronyms. In it, Clark provides some examples which at first glance seem to support his argument, but a little thought reveals them to be mere examples of ill-considered typography rather than a crushing blow on the use of small caps”

Dyana Weissman on Kerning
“As designers, kerning is one of those esoteric terms we love to use. Not only is it vital to quality typography, it’s also a great word to throw into a conversation with non-designers whenever we want to sound smart or abstruse.”

A Negative View of White Space
“After reading through the article on The Web Design Ledger, “Whitespace: The Underutilized Design Element” I felt compelled to respond and clear up what I feel is spreading misconceptions about design in relation to white space.”

Educate Your Clients On What You Offer With a Guide
“Educating clients on the services you offer can be a tedious process, especially if you find yourself doing it over and over again. There are a few options for providing your clients with a resource that can bring them up to speed on what you can do for them, without you needing to explain over and over again.”

10 big and bold slab fonts
“Slab fonts are a part of the serif font family and are incredibly effective for logos, headlines and in printed media. Slab fonts can be rounded, angled or block like, the common stand out feature is that slab fonts are chunky, bold and big.”

Type on a curve
“Setting type on a curving path can alter the balance and relationships between characters. Here’s how to make sure your text still looks good.”

The Most Relevant Identity Work of the Decade
“I gave myself a deadline of January 15 to do a recap of identity work in the 2000s, assuming that it wouldn’t be an editorial faux pas to do a list of this sort well into the new year. So here it is. An admittedly incomplete — it would take months to do this exhaustively — compilation of the most relevant identities of the past decade.”

The posed questions had me rethink the way I work and make choices — more specifically, why I make certain font choices when pairing a typeface with a logo mark or symbol. Continue reading for a few tips and methods to help choose more relevant and suitable typefaces for a logo mark and overall improve your typography decisions.

*Note: the below can also be translated into all elements of typography

Know your history

Choosing a suitable and relevant font for a logo mark/symbol starts with a base understanding of history (that is too often under acknowledged).

A [good] type designer create typefaces not simply to just “look pretty.” Quality typefaces were designed to fit a particular era or style in history and suited for a specific medium. Instead of dedicating this article to type history, here are a few articles and books for further explanation and study:

• A Brief History of Type by I Love Typography
• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
• Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger

Not to say that you need to know everything there is about each typeface, but doing some history homework will take you a long way when selecting the best font solution for your logo.

Get a feel for the curves and shapes

Next time you choose a font, try zooming in close and analyzing the curves and shapes of the letter forms.

Let’s compare the lowercase A’s in FF Absara and Bienetresocial (free font): Absara’s A has much sharper and straight curves in comparison to Bienetresocial’s rounded curves. Absara’s letterforms appears to be chiseled, while Bienetresocial’s appears more fluid and smooth.

So what does the above have to do with pairing a logo mark with a typeface? Well, a mark that has drastic angles or points might look better with Absara because it closely mimics some of the characteristics of the typefaces, while a mark with rounded corners might look better with Bienetresocial.

Also, many designers will custom design or modify an existing typeface to help it better fit a mark and feel.

Personality

Just like a persons wardrobe or car, it must fit your personality, right? Let’s take a look at the font Public Gothic (free font). As the designer states its personality is “a little industrial and a little vintage.” Now let’s take a look at Public Gothic in good use (not logo related but for the sake of example):

The below, new beautiful website Happy Cog’aoke designed by Happy Cog, uses Public Gothic in their masthead “Happy Cog’aoke.”

The typeface and design elements in their website compliment each other very well. The “industrial, vintage” personality of Public Gothic goes well with the textured background and circuit board-like lines used through the website. A winning combination for the overall superb website.

Think about the look/feel of your clients market and the overall impression you are trying to give off with your logo and pair it with a personality type (pun intended). If you cannot state a few keywords that are similar between the market, mark/symbol, and/or typeface then somewhere something needs to be adjusted, removed or modified.

Contrasts

Contrast is important in design. It allows for visual differences and emphasis where needed. Try pairing thicker, more prominent marks or shapes with a thinner typeface to add atmosphere, space and/or tension.

For example, the new identity for Armani Exchange (A|X) uses a combination of thick, bold and dense boxes with a typeface that has a nice contrast of light lines to add contrast to the dense boxes and thicker lines to add relationship to the black boxes.

This is also a good example of paying attention to shape and form, as the straight, long, horizontal serifs sit perpendicular with the lines of the box. Which brings us to our next point of similarity.

Similarities

In contrast (again, pun intended) to the above, try balancing the weight of the mark to the weight of the selected typeface to create a stronger relationship.

Let’s look at the example of the Exact identity below. The lines of the equal (=) symbol are the same thickness of the letter form thickness of the words ‘exact.’ This creates a balance and relationship of the two separate elements and works to bring them together. Instead of tension we now have uniformity of elements.

Readability

When designing for any medium or subject, you should never let style get in the way of design. More importantly: style should not hinder the usability, and in our case, the readability of the typeface.

Choose a logo that works not only well at large sizes, but small sizes. Sure it might look perfectly fine at a 18-point font size on your monitor, but remember a logo will most likely appear in small corners or on business cards so it needs to be readable at very small sizes.

When testing typefaces, don’t forget to shrink them down on screen in addition to printing them out at small sizes. If it’s hard to read, it’s most likely not the best solution.

Final two thoughts

Contrary to the above, a logo does not have to accompany a mark/symbol. Many of the most successful brands have beautiful, memorable logotypes that display a typeface or custom type design. Get a feel for your clients market and brainstorm what would work best.

Secondly, the above on font pairing does not only relate to logos and marks. Many of the above tips can be used for all forms of typography — for determining a headline for an article on, for example, technology to determining a hierarchy for a book on birds.

Not to say you should start designing typefaces or know how to identity every typeface on the market, but having a strong grasp on typography, rules and history will take you and your designs a long way.

On David Airey

For those unfamiliar with David Airey, he runs a brilliant design blog and another website, Logo Design Love, which is devoted to — you guessed it — logos. Not only are both websites extremely valuable and resourceful, but David’s work is just a superb. As an experienced, self-employed brand identity designer, David’s book shares his passion and expertise in the field.

The book

First off — Logo Design Love is a great read for both designers and clients, as it shares valuable insights and discusses the importance of brand identity all the way down to the process from start to finish.

As with David’s blogs, the book is written in a very friendly tone and very thoroughly explained with relevant examples, logos and designer/firm references. Many of the chapters and topics will help designers explain to their clients why they (clients) should invest in a well research brand identity and what their investment will do for them. This is essential to being a designer (especially if you are freelance): you must be able to sell and talk about your services just as well as you execute your work.

A walk through

I really enjoyed the way David walks us readers through his design process. He offers his professional insight from laying down the ground work, gathering a brief, bringing out details in the logo discussed by the client, and how to cull the adjectives used by the client. David explains it in a way that you feel apart of his process. It’s a 1-2-3 style insight.

Helpful topics of discussion

I often receive many questions by email from new designers asking “how much do you charge your clients?” and “how do you deal with clients that try to dictate your work.” Many of these questions are answered in Logo Design Love and provide worthwhile insight for some “behind the scenes” experiences and how to [better] deal with them.

One in particular helped me out that pertained how to explain to clients the number of concepts they will receive. David offers the following sound advice:

“With your help, I will create a number of possible design directions that are ideally suited to your potential customers. Once the different ideas have been presented, we can choose the most effective option and either move forward with it, or tweak it a little after your feedback.” — Logo Design Love, Keeping the committee involved (page 132)

David goes on to say how stating the above could have saved him time (and a headache) with a client that had a predetermined idea that they wanted to see executed, instead of a strategic and relevant concept based on research and brainstorming. The following is a great way of positioning to your clients which will help achieve better designer/client interactions and the best solution to your clients needs.

Conclusions

David concludes Logo Design Love with some great Q&A’s from various emails and reader questions, 25 practical logo design tips, and a great list of resources that include: design blogs, iconic designers, and other recommended books.

Overall, Logo Design Love was a solid read, with a friendly approach with tons of great, useful information. It was informative without being too lengthy (202 pages long) and will without a doubt make anyone who reads a better visual identity creator, recognizer and appreciator — especially if you are a beginner or intermediate designer.

The design of the book

What would a review of a book be without reviewing how it was designed and put together?

The cover has a nice matte finish with a gritty substrate — feels similar to plike (plastic like) in a way — with the words ‘Logo Design Love’ and the red heart embossed. The dimensions of the book make it easy to hold and handle.

The inside copy text is large — could have possible brought it down a size or two — but makes for a easy, comfortable and quick read. The pages have a large top margin which makes the pages easier to digest. Images and logo examples are used appropriately throughout, although some of the photographs could use a bit of retouching (a few appear to be taken with a low resolution camera). Overall, the design is pleasant and practical — much like the content within the book.

If what you have to say on your website is so important, then what can we do to make it a more enjoyable experience and better compliment the content with the way we design for it?

Appropriate typefaces

Typography is not about picking a font that looks cool, but rather choosing a typeface(s) that compliment the medium and purpose. With recent advances in web typography (ahem, Typekit) we now have more control then ever over what typefaces we use for our content — but with more control, we must be even more careful and have a better understanding of type.

Web typography tips:

» When choosing a font for prolonged reading, try something with a larger x-height (for smaller body copy) or study serifs for improved readability and reader comfort.

» Choose typefaces that compliment the content, look and layout

For more on font pairing and web typography:

• On Web Typography
• Thirteen ways of looking at a typeface
• Type inspired interfaces

Breathing room

Websites or blogs with tons of reading require breathing room — or better yet, remember that white space is your friend. It’s difficult to read and stay focused on any information that is, for example, being crammed up against ads, has tight line spacing, or has cluttered design elements.

Don’t worry, it’s alright for users to scroll vertically to get to information. Don’t feel like you need to cram it all in there.

Here are a few design tips to help your content breathe:

» Improve your line spacing of body copy: a good rule of thumb is 1.5 em line-spacing of your body copy font size.
» Remember, white space is good and less is more

Websites with good breathing room:

• http://theswishlife.com
• http://fusionads.net/
• http://sushiandrobots.com/journal/

Establish an information hierarchy

When it comes to readable content, one thing to remember is  people do not like to read — they like to scan and get the information they want quickly. Establishing a strong hierarchy allows the reader to easily scan your website, blog, article, etc. for information without spending too much time on information they do not want to see or read.

A hierarchy guides your readers around the page and creates a more enjoyable experience for them.

Allow for digestible information

If your website or blog has length passages of information or words, try designing in a way that breaks up the content into smaller, digestible blocks of text. A possible solution could be having a home page with short excerpts of articles/information that lead to the entire story by clicking on a link.

Use color and use it well

Color should not only be used to create a mood, but also to draw attention to specific areas or text. Websites that use color sparingly and well typically have great results because of it. It helps readers scan and draws attention to important information.

A few tips on color usage on the web:

» Reversed out (white) text on dark backgrounds can make for difficult, prolonged reading.
» Using too many colors can distract the user and can cause confusion over important content/information
» Use color to communicate a mood

Contrast and call to action

Contrast and call to action allows information to be broken apart and also (like a good hierarchy) easily scan-able. Contrast can be used in typefaces as to separate headlines from body copy, while it can also create areas of darker/brighter color to draw attention or call upon a certain area of your screen.

Contrast can also be used to create tension and set a mood for the content. Try complimenting your content with appropriate typefaces or color. Also note that establishing call to actions early on in the sites preliminary stages is important content management and structures the users experience.

While all of the above factors seem simple in practice, it is often easy to just begin designing and forget about the content and medium in which we are designing for. Remember, content is king, but design is the land of which the king rules. If you have the above thought out and planned before you start designing it will pave the way to a more successful and relevant design.

…be overly complicated

Often times when designing a logo we tend to think too hard and incorporate as much as possible into a logo, thus over complicating it. Instead, try simplifying the logo — yes, sometimes less is more! Here’s what a non-overly complicated logo can provide your business:

1. Flexibility: your logo will be easier to read and interpreted at various sizes, especially when scaled down to smaller sizes.
2. Recognizable: the more elements your logo has the more the brain has to remember various elements that make it the face of your business, in turn  making it less…
3. Memorable: overly complicated logos tend to be less memorable. Think about some of the most successful logos: Nike, Apple, McDonalds… I bet I could give you a pencil and paper and regardless if you are a great artist you could reproduce them.

…be accompanied by a mark or symbol.

Often when many of us think of a logo, we often think of a symbol or mark, but this isn’t necessary for every logo. Try using a quality typeface or designing your own custom type from scratch.

Examples of successful companies with text only logos:

• Netflix
• Sony
• Johnson & Johnson
• Philips
• UrbanOutfitters

…have a tagline.

Sure it’s great to have a company tagline or slogan, but it’s typically best to leave it off the logo. Lengthy taglines typically  require really small type to fit within reason of the logo size, making it illegible, while other times can make your logo appear cluttered and stuffed.

…be HUGE!

When designing any material that includes your logo, your logo does not have to be huge. When’s the last time you read an advertisement and decided to go with that companies product because they had a big ol’ logo that stood out more than anything else on the page?

If your brand message is intriguing enough a prospect will look for and acknowledge the logo that represents your brand. Here’s a funny (and very true) video for your viewing pleasure: Make My Logo Bigger Cream

…be neon colored.

Sure we all want our logos to be memorable and recognizable, but neon colors are not the answer! Effective and memorable logos are well executed and appropriate to your company’s message and brand. Use color to provoke feeling, not just to attract attention.

…the same.

As a logo designer, you’d be surprised by how many clients approach me with their competitors logo and ask me for “something similar.” I usually follow up with the question, “Why? Why would you want to look like something/someone you are trying to compete against? Why would you want a potential customer to mistaken you for another company?”

The goal of a logo should be to differentiate, stand out, and represent your business.

…follow trends.

When you think of trends typically the first thing that comes to mind is clothing and the fashion industry. Ask yourself this: What do you do with clothes that go out of style? You either throw them away or toss them far into your closet to never been seen or worn again.

A good logo isn’t cheap, so why would you want to reinvest your money into it next year? Good logos are timeless and should grow with your company.

…tell the entire story.

A logo is only the beginning for setting the tone for your brand. Your logo does not need to say exactly what your company does. Does Apple use computers in their logo? Does McDonald’s display cheeseburgers?

Recently I came across a great article on Brand Logic discussing content playing an important role in branding: “A symbol requires carefully constructed context for it to convey its intended meaning. Likewise, when seen under differing contextual circumstances, the same symbol can mean different things.” [Read the rest of the article] Another great resource on this topic is the book, Branding Gap.

Mike was a follower of mine on Twitter and after discovering my portfolio, decided to fill out my online Logo Design Project Worksheet. After reading his responses and a few initial phone conversations I felt that Mike and I shared something very similar, and not because we were both independent workers; we both had extreme passion for what we do and also valued thoughtful, relevant design. Continue reading below for a look into Mike Tittel Photography’s logo design process.

Design Brief

Again, Mike, a freelance adventure sports photographer [ view his portfolio ], shoots both editorial and commercial assignments, as well as maintains a stock collection which contains over 45,000 rights managed images. His primary goal, and main reasoning for getting in contact with me, was to reach further into the commercial photography industry and work for clients such as Nike, New Balance, etc. Essentially he was looking to expand his presence and market reach.

A few notes from my clients Logo Worksheet:

• Simple, clean
• Memorable and approachable
• Easy to work with across various mediums
• Something that reflects and works with his portfolio and current colors; background of current website is black

Brainstorming

After reviewing Mike’s portfolio and worksheet responses, my first initial response was to make the logo bold and dense to compliment the beautiful and powerful extreme sports photography he produced. I also felt that a bold logo/mark would lay well over busy images, since the logo would most likely be overprinted on top of busy background and photographs.

Like all my designs I started off with a sketchbook and pencil:

While many of the above sketches are completely unrelated to the produced concepts, sketching is important as it let’s a designer get as many ideas out as possible in a short amount of time — great activity for the brain. Also, when searching for ideas and brainstorming I like to doodle completely unrelated drawings — sort of allows me to free my mind for few minutes, before coming back to a thoughtful process.

Although the final concept was the first presented concept (see concept 3), the first below concepts were produced to have a more action/sports feel to it.

Concept 1

The ‘M’ in Mike was emphasized through the mountain/lightening bolt mark, with the additional two lines emphasizing speed: all which can been seen through my client’s photography.

Concept 2

Drawing from the above concept, a second mark was produced to emphasize speed, direction, balance and strength.

Concept 3 (“The Chosen One”)

Prior to the above concepts, this concept (seen above) was presented to the client first (sometimes we get it right on the first try), which I was particularly excited about. The image captured all of the notes Mike discussed (simple, clean, memorable, reflective of his work, etc.)

While Mike was more drawn to the first two concepts and direction they were headed, I felt that they stemmed too far away from the fact that Mike was a photographer. What Mike and I particularly enjoyed about concept 1 and 2 was the strength and bold feel, so the typeface, Knockout by Hoefler and Frere-Jones brought back the extra punch the first two presented.

The point in the ‘M’ was replaced with an orange lens with the negative space resembling a simplified camera body (see image below). This logo was much more flexible, as the ‘M’ could also be singled-out as a mark on its own. I also told Mike that this logo would turn out to be his own personal “Fedex gem.”

Logo applied to the website

Business cards and stationery

The business cards were printed by Jakprints and implemented a fifth color, metallic silver, on the backside ‘Mike Tittel.’

Testimonial

While it’s not everyday that you get to work with clients that are not only a pleasure to communicate with, but equally as thrilled with the process AND the result, Mike was kind enough to write a fully detailed testimonial, which you can read on his blog.

While this is only the start of a few projects I’ve been working on with Mike and his company, it’s been a pleasure working with him up to this point and wish him and his company the very best success in the future.

Defining the goal

Each of my brand identity projects starts with a logo questionnaire, which assists in gaining as much information from the client as possible and helps define the goal early on in the process.

Working close with my clients is essential and I try to take their initial ideas and expand on their keywords and company objectives.

Below are some of the information, keywords and addition details they provided:

• Something delicate – like children’s hands
• Organic (nature, trees, butterflies, birds, flowers, leaves, nest with baby birds)
• Owl, maybe with mother owl with baby owl under wing
• Children’s art
• Color preferences: earth tones; greens, blues, yellows, browns.

Sketching and brainstorming

Stemming off the initial ideas and concepts of the client, I began to take my ideas to paper. I wanted to play off the idea of a ‘helping-hand’, trust, delicacy, growth and development. Below you can view a few of the pages from my sketchbook:

Once I started to have a solid idea for the direction I thought would work best, I took a few of my initial sketches to the computer and began to expand on the ideas.

Concept 1 and 2

The first mark seen below, was created to take on a variety of symbolism with the two hands forming to create a heart. The hands symbolized a helping hand, while conveying trust, delicacy and care. The mark also symbolized leaves or flower petals which encouraged growth and development in the young children.

The client enjoyed this concept the most but felt (as well as myself) that it needed to be a bit more dynamic, which can be seen in later examples.

The second mark presented to the client seen below, expanded on the hand concept but more in an interweaving way. Not only were the hands interlocked giving the ‘helping hand’ approach but also formed the ‘S’ for Special in the negative space.

Expanding on the idea

As mentioned above, my client really enjoyed the symbolism and simplicity of the first concept presented, although we both felt that it needed something a bit more.

By replicating the first presented concept I was able to add an additional element to the logo, making it more dynamic and visually interesting. Once again it symbolized a “helping hand”, trust, care, growth and development, but with the addition of the 3 other replicated marks it also helped bring together the network and community aspect — since A Special Need helps find and place nannies with parents of special need children.

Deciding on the typeface

Once the above mark was approved I moved on to the typeface, which you can see some of the variations below:

Chosen idea

The chosen mark was complimented with Emigre’s Mrs. Eaves typeface. Mrs. Eaves is a beautiful serif with a bit of a quirky and a less sophisticated side than other serifs can give off.

Color options

Sticking with my clients suggestions of an earth-toned color palette, I decided to “brown down” some of my color options which you can see below. These were the six presented to the client to make the final decision.

Overview

As you can see, A Special Need’s logo clearly works at varying sizes because of the not over complicated mark and works well as black, reversed out (white) and color. It can also be easily adaptable to fit vertical and horizontal positioning and has a meaningful mark which represents the company’s objectives and goals—all which help a logo become more flexible.

The entire project lasted approximately 3 weeks from start to finish and will be used across a variety of print and web applications.

Below are 5 tips and attributes your logo should have in order to work well, increase its flexibility and help it work better in more situations.

1. Works well in black, reversed-out and full color

A good logo should be created to work in black, reversed-out (white) and color. Many of times designers start to create their logo by introducing color right away. This often takes away from the concept because your mind is more focused on the “pretty colors.”

2. Works well in various sizes

Logos should be scalable and work well both large and small sizes. Try to avoid logos and marks that are overly complicated. As the old KISS saying goes, “Keep it simple, stupid!” Especially with logos being implemented favicons, on signage and business cards, logos need to be size flexible.

3. Ambidextrous

Logos should be able to work both horizontally and vertically. Typically, in most cases, I provide my clients with two variations to their logos, especially if the logo design was intended to be vertical – horizontal logos seem to work well on websites. It’s always good to make sure you’re logo is a switch hitter :)

4. Flexible logos are vector-ized

When creating a logo, you should be using vector-based software, such as Adobe Illustrator. This will give you the ability to provide various file formats and scalable logos. Typically I like to provide clients with various types of file formats, this way they have different files to implement into various programs they use.

5. Readable

Not only does a logo mark need to work well at various sizes but so does the text. When creating the mark at a smaller size try increasing the character spacing. This will help improve readability, especially when shrunken down and viewed from afar. Are you able to scale your logo without losing clarity?

Is your logo flexible? What other tips would you add to the above to make your logo work well in more instances?

Since my primary focus in is logo design, below are 20 questions to ask your clients prior to beginning their new logo design. Also, many of these questions can be applied to other forms of design, so feel free to integrate them into your questions for various forms of print and web design.

Company-related questions

1- How would you describe your services and/or products?

2- What are the long term goals of your company?

3- Why do you want a new logo? (if they already have one) What do you want your new logo to accomplish?
This question helps to understand the problem.

4- Who are your main competitors?
Having clients provide links allows you to get a better feel for their market and competition.

5- How are you different from your competitors?

6- What’s the age range of your target customer base?
Helps in creating an overall feeling and impression of the logo.

Project-related questions

7- Do you have a tag line? If so, would you like it stated along side your logo?

8- Do you have any specific imagery in mind for your logo?

9- Do you have any color preferences, or existing brand colors?

10- Do you have any colors that you do not wish to use?

11- What adjectives should best describe your logo?

12- What feeling or message do you want your logo to convey to those who view it?

13- How do you prefer your logo to be worded or written out?
Example: thedesigncubicle or the design cubicle

14- How would you like the typography to appear?
Example: script, bold, light, hand drawn, custom lettering

15- Where will you logo be used?
Example: print, web…

16- Where will your logo primarily be used?
If the primary usage is for the web, typically horizontal logos work best.

17- What’s your preferred deadline, time frame or exact date of completion?

18- Budget?
This is where I provide various pricing and concept numbers.

19- Would you like any addition design services to be packaged with your new logo?
Example: business cards, envelops, letterheads, etc.

20- What logos appeal to you and why?
Another question they can also with links and visual examples.

I also like to leave my clients with a field or extra room at the end where they can provide additional details and comments. Remember, being a graphic designer means you are a problem solver. You cannot solve a problem without knowing what the problem is – asking questions is a great start. What questions do you ask your clients prior to starting a project? Feel free to add to the above questions in the comments below.

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Week of 6-15-09:

Huge Collection of T-Shirt Design Mockup Templates
“Templates are a handy resource for any apparel designer to mockup your awesome tee design and show it off in all its glory. Such resources can be a little tricky to come by, especially those high quality files, but check out this huge collection of T-Shirt mockup templates, featuring plenty of highly useful files in both vector and PSD format for use in your future apparel projects.”

25 Excellent Typography Tools for the Serious Designer
“In this article, you will find a collection of the best typography tools available on the web.”

4 Principles of Good Design for Websites
“One of the areas of focus that I’ve taken into all my designs are the four major design principles. They include: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. This post will discuss those four principles as they relate to web design. By keeping these design theories fresh in your mind, you will be sure to design cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing sites”

30 Top Sources of Typography Inspiration
“Last week I launched a new gallery site, TypeInspire, dedicated to typography. I thought it would be worth while for those of you who are typography lovers to point out what I feel are some of the best resources available for receiving inspiration of this kind from the works of other designers.”

45+ CSS Grid Systems, Layout Generators and Tutorials that every Designer should know
“In this article tripwire magazine presents a large collection of CSS Grid Systems, online generators and tutorial on how to use these in your design.”

How to Organize Graphic Design Files
“Not having some sort of organized system in place can quickly lead to lost files, headaches, and even the occasional accidental delete. While every one has their own method of doing this, I wanted to share some of my thoughts and practices on organizing graphic design files.”

Vintage Color and Design: The Architectural Review
“This selection of covers from the 50′s, 60′s, 70′s & 80′s comes from Full Table and flickr user eversion.”

Custom Letters: The Best of the First Half of 2009
“Custom Letters is an evolving category that includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and type design (we’d prefer to feature new/original type over, say, revivals).”

Interesting Designers, Agencies and Organizations on Twitter
“The fast growing micro blogging platform Twitter.com has a vast interests of use. As we focused more on design related terms we suggest you to follow persons and organizations that have significant impact on our spheres of life and professional career development. The lists are incomplete, ordered randomly and kept updating.”