It's Calendar Time!

Yes, my friends, if you haven't started already, it is time to start thinking about holiday gifts and the new year! And that means tea towel calendars are all the rage on Spoonflower. The tea towel calendar design contest is my favorite of the year, mostly because I get to return to my graphic design roots. Here is my entry this year, inspired by board games. Start at January, advance through each month, and the first one to make it through December wins! You can vote for all your favorite designs here.

TBT: I Spy Mod Hand-Drawn Type

Spring cleaning is allowing me the opportunity to look through and reorganize the books on our shelves. I had forgotten about the awesomely MOD hand-drawn lettering on the endpapers of this 1966 Whitman I Spy: Message from Moscow book.

TBT: Needlepoint Alphabet

Words cannot even describe the fantastic needlepoint alphabet found in this recent thrift score. From 1972, I bring you these beautiful excerpts from Carolyn Ambuter's Complete Book of Needlepoint.

Alphabet 100 Exercise: A

About a month ago I blogged about a fun hand-drawn lettering project I had found that was created by Christopher Rouleau. My plan is to do a capital letter every two weeks, which means I should be done with all 26 letters by the end of 2014. Here is my completed sheet for the letter A.

If you'd like to do your own, you can download a blank project sheet from Christopher's website. Now on to the letter B...

The Alphabet 100 Project

I just love this project by Christopher Rouleau: Hand-draw 100 versions of each letter in the alphabet, in both upper- and lowercase, take one week to work on each, and you've completed the project in exactly one year!

You can view his complete gallery on his website, and also download your own BLANK Alphabet 100 pages to do the exercise yourself, by clicking here! I'm starting January 1, 2014, and will post my weekly results. How about you?

Richard Scarry Is Golden

I found this Rabbit and His Friends Little Golden Book while thrifting recently, and bought it not only because it was written and illustrated by Richard Scarry (1953), but because my son is obsessed with platypuses (platypi?), thanks to Perry the Platypus from "Phineas and Ferb". Anyway, I thought I would share with you a couple of my favorite pages: the title page, with some chalk lettering (!), and the last page, which features a poster set in several kinds of wood type.

A Kaleidoscopic Wonderland of Hi-Fidelity Vibrancy

Okay, so check out the amazing stack of vintage record album banners I shuffled up on the Stereo Stack website, developed by my favorite local Seattle record shop, Jive Time Records. Shuffle the stack if you want, and purchase coordinating prints and tees. Bold, graphic, and retro. I love it!

Paper + Typography = Papergraphy

One of my latest faves: the amazing work of Mumbai, India, artist Sabeena Karnik. She sculpts and quills colored paper into letterforms, titles, animals, just about anything. You can see more of her work on her Behance website, and check out photos of her process on her Facebook page.

Make a Font in 10 Minutes! (Freebie Alert!)

Over the weekend I discovered the iFontMaker app for iPad. Wow. Using the simple interface, you can literally make a font in 10 minutes!



Once you have created all your characters, the app then emails you a code so you can go to the website and download TrueType and Web Font versions, and even make the font public so others can use it as well. Here are two of the four fonts I've made so far. Both of these are public--if you'd like to download them, simply click on the font name below the sample. Enjoy!


First Try Unicase

Lilianne

Cut-and-Sew Pattern: Holiday Cocktail Napkins

This week's Spoonflower contest features a cut-and-sew pattern for making holiday cocktail napkins. Here is my entry, along with some closeups of each napkin. If you like the set, you can vote for it here. This set coordinates with my Holiday Tea Towel, and two new holiday fabric/gift wrap designs, shown here and here.

Eek! Week: Spooky Vintage Candy Packaging

Growing up I loved the Munchy Mummies and Mr. Bones candy because of the little, plastic mummy case and coffin they came in. Enough reminiscing. I'll let the amazing graphics here speak for themselves.

Best Dressed Signs: Hand-Painted Eye Candy

Amazing, hand-painted signs and windows from the people at Best Dressed Signs in Boston. See complete images on their website, and peek into their studio here.

Star Wars Posters: The Force of Typography

Check out these awesome Star Wars portraits illustrated entirely with type! Designed by Italian firm H-57, and with the cooperation of Lucasfilm, the posters were auctioned on eBay, with all proceeds going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Italy. Three hundred copies of each character were printed on paper, then stamped and numbered. Only 11 special limited edition posters were printed and sold on canvas.

Clip and Save: Vintage Coupons

I love old coupons. They are a great documentation of old packaging design, pricing trends, and even design and illustration trends of the time. Sometimes they're matter-of-fact, sometimes they're colorful and eye-catching, and sometimes they're made to look really official, like certificates, and even money! You'll notice the coupons below are so retro (going back to the 1960s) they don't have barcodes. A few even use the old IBM punch card system for processing!













Want to see hundreds more? Check out the Flickr group called "Clip and Save" here.