Archive for May, 2012

The Font Wars: A Story On Rivalry Between Type Foundries


  

I had thought terms like “intellectual property� and “intellectual theft� were of fairly recent provenance, so my eye was caught by the latter’s use in a headline of a 1930 edition of the US trade journal The American Printer.

The article it headed proved to be equally intriguing, a response by the president of American Type Founders (ATF) to a June 1929 article in the German journal Gebrauchsgraphik by the designer Rudolf Koch, calling the ATF a “highway robber of German intellectual property.� At issue was a typeface marketed by the ATF earlier in 1929 called Rivoli.

Koch and the German type foundry Klingspor asserted that Rivoli was no more than a copy of Koch’s 1922 design of Koch Antiqua, also later known as Locarno and released in the US as Eve. Klingspor had already taken legal action for piracy against the Viennese foundry Karl Brendler und Sohne for its lookalike Radio Antiqua but with no success.

Part of the sample of Wyss’ script offered by the ATF to back its claim that Koch Antiqua was not its designer’s intellectual property
Part of the sample of Wyss’ script offered by the ATF to back its claim that Koch Antiqua was not its designer’s intellectual property. Neither of the two styles of “g� resemble Koch’s, however, to take just one example.

Koch Antiqua, and uppercase letters of the italic.
Koch Antiqua, and uppercase letters of the italic.

Klingspor lost that case, the ATF argued, because far from Koch Antiqua being Koch’s or German intellectual property, both it and the Austrian face were based on the Lombardic penmanship of the Swiss calligrapher Urbanus Wyss, in particular from his 1549 book Libellus Valde Doctus. Klingspor could not claim theft of a design that was not its to begin with.

Whatever the truth of this, the most striking part of the ATF’s broadside was its free admission that the similarity between Rivoli and Koch Antiqua/Eve, far from being accidental, was quite deliberate, Rivoli having been created and released both as a spoiler for the popular Eve and as a “reprisal� face. Klingspor was partially owned by Stempel, whose 1925 catalogue contained what the ATF claimed were “confessedly� fourteen type series of US origin, including what they deemed pirated versions of their own designs.

ATF’s comparison of the faces that accompanied its article.
The ATF’s comparison of the faces that accompanied its article, but not the truth, says David Pankow. What was purported to be Wyss’ script was, in fact, Brendler and Sohne’s Radio Antiqua, printed heavily on soft paper.

The ATF-Koch-Stempel face-off was part of a savage turf war fought by a company to defend its commercial position, with—arguably, only a decade after a World War—some national antagonism thrown in. (For the full story, see David Pankow’s “A Face by Any Other Name Is Still My Face: A Tale of Type Piracyâ€� in Printing History New York, 1998, page 37.) The ATF remained relatively conservative in its designs, whereas on its own doorstep the New York-based Continental Typefounders’ Association was importing type in which was enshrined the latest European stylistic developments. The acerbity of the language on both sides was unrestrained, and it was exacerbated by the ATF’s suspicions that Continental was involved, too, stoking the fires of the argument.

Type design is a business that has long been bedevilled by piracy and plagiarism (conscious or not), licensing issues and scant or no legal protection for intellectual property. Some of the problems stem from the nature of the craft itself. Although, in theory, the number of ways you can position the points of, say, the capital “A� are myriad, the demands of legibility, style and fashion radically reduce the options, and alphabet designs all use the same raw material.

As designer Dave Farey described himself, facetiously but with an undercurrent of truth, “Nothing I have done is original. It’s all based on the 26 letters of the alphabet and the Arabic numerals.� Add to this the revivals and redrawings of classic faces, and the similarities are unavoidable. Type design is an art that is constantly echoing and alluding. Most people who work in the graphic arts are, in a big part of their design psyche, fans. We were probably inspired to get started in the first place by seeing other people’s work that we absolutely love. It’s unavoidable that some of that DNA will crop up or be used consciously in our own work. In the case of type revivals, you can at least credit your source in the type’s name; as designer Nick Shinn says on Typophile, “plagiarism means copying without recognition of the source.�

In today’s digital environment, do any of the attitudes and practices that marked the ATF quarrel persist? I asked Phil Garnham of London’s Fontsmith if he regards other font companies as rivals:

“I think there is definitely a healthy and friendly rivalry between today’s independent digital foundries. Over the past few years, as designers have become more aware of the power of type in branding, particularly the possibilities of bespoke type and with the boom in type design education at Reading University and Type Media at the Hague, fresh competition is popping up on a monthly basis, which is a great thing for type design. It keeps us all on our toes and looking for new possibilities within our beloved alphabets.”

And spoilers? Phil feels the tactic might still be out there, but for his own part, like musicians who consciously don’t listen to other people’s music when writing and recording, he tries not to look too much at other work: “I think that it keeps me detached from other people’s ideas, and allows me to pursue mine, free from any subconscious involvement.�

But even then, you can find that what you’ve done looks like something else. “Arguably, I think there are many designers tripping up in this way, even with the best intentions. I’ve been in this awkward position myself. You have to explore new proportions and alternative letterforms so you can bring something new to the market.�

Horatio: Square leg: Horatio with its restyled ‘R’ in the Letraset catalogue, available in three weights.
Square leg: Horatio with its restyled “R� in the Letraset catalogue, available in three weights.

How close have people steered consciously? Dave Farey recalls from his time working for Letraset that among a selection of faces presented to the committee for inclusion in the dry transfer giant’s range was Harry, a design owned by the Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC). The committee loved it, but unfortunately permission hadn’t yet been obtained, and VGC refused. So Letraset produced Horatio. “I think the only thing we changed was the leg of the uppercase R,� Dave recalls, adding candidly, “Ours was worse.�

Heldustry: From the 1983 Compugraphic Type catalogue.
Heldustry, from the 1983 Compugraphic Type catalogue.

Clues could even be gleaned from the font names—or not. Customers requesting Helvetica from photosetting companies of the 1980s that used the Compugraphic type library might have been told, “We don’t have Helvetica, but we do have Heldustry,â€� which looked… well, similar. The catalogue that digital company Bitstream produced at the start of the 1990s was helpful to customers unable to find familiar names: its Staccato 222, for instance, was the “Bitstream version of Mistralâ€�; “Lapidary 333 was the Bitstream version of Perpetuaâ€�; Venetian 301 the “Bitstream version of Centaur.â€�

Staccato: From the Bitstream catalogue, early 1990s.
Staccato, from the Bitstream catalogue, early 1990s.

Some More Face-Offs

Memphis and Stymie

Memphis seen here in extra bold weight, and Stymie Bold. Memphis was designed by Emil Weiss.
Memphis, seen here in extra bold weight, and Stymie Bold. Memphis was designed by Emil Weiss.

1931 saw ATF squaring off with Stempel again, countering its Memphis slab serif with Stymie, the name being golf lingo for blocking your opponent’s line of play. ATF’s prolific Morris Fuller Benton based Stymie on his own Rockwell Antique, which was itself basically a repackaging of Litho Antique, whose owner (the Inland Type Foundry) had been taken over by ATF. According to Patricia Cost in her book The Bentons, Monotype then copied Rockwell Antique and called it, confusingly, Stymie Bold.

Janco and Banco

The Typefaces Banco and Janco
Rather than stealing the design, Excoffon exercised squatter’s rights in the territory… with style (above). The names were nearly identical—probably no coincidence.

French type legend Roger Excoffon’s employers, Fonderie Olive, was such rivals with Parisian foundry Deberny and Peignot that Excoffon examined with a magnifying glass a picture of its designer Marcel Janco at work on his new self-named type. “Then I rapidly made some sketches for a few letters in a commercial type, not identical, but of the same family… The rest is a success story. Banco was used throughout the world… It’s the most shameful thing I ever did in my career.� (You’ll find this story in Roger Excoffon et la Fonderie Olive, by Sandra Chamaret, Julien Gineste and Sébastien Morlighem, Ypsilon Editeur, Paris, 2010.)

Starling Burgess vs. Stanley Morison

A comparison of Starling Burgess’ design (Lanston no.54) and Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent’s work on Times.
A comparison of Starling Burgess’ design (Lanston no.54) and Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent’s work on Times, as it appeared in “Printing History 31/32� (1994).

According to a 1994 article by Mike Parker that appeared in Printing History, Times New Roman was an extremely close reproduction of a typeface designed years earlier by genius boat and car designer and maverick Starling Burgess, which lay unpaid for and abandoned at Lanston Monotype until the design of the new face for The Times newspaper became problematic. Although Morison had a reputation among some for being a slippery operator, the story as presented seems hard to credit: Font Bureau offers a Mike Parker design called Starling.

Futura and Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century (above), Lanston Monotype’s response to Futura (below).
Close but no cigar: Twentieth Century (above), and Lanston Monotype’s response to Futura (below).

Buffalo, New York-based foundry P22 has in its Lanston Type Company collection Twentieth Century, “Monotype’s answer to Futura.� It describes Sol Hess’ redrawing as “close�; as an attractive optional extra, it has included digital recreations of some of Paul Renner’s original experimental characters for Futura.

Comic Sans and Chalkboard

Comic and Chalkboard.
Comic and Chalkboard: both ideal for warning notices.

Apple’s OS X doesn’t supply you with the world’s favorite, Comic Sans, but you do get Chalkboard, which inhabits pretty much the same terrain.

Helvetica and Arial

Arial and Helvetica.
Hard to fully love perhaps, but Arial has certainly been well used, if only because it is the default setting.

Arial, designed in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders, seems to attract its share of ill will in “font hate� blogs these days on the grounds of it being Microsoft’s Helvetica lookalike.

Does It Really Matter?

For the user, does any of this matter? If you like a font and it fits your purpose, then its provenance is irrelevant. And if it’s a new or recent design, then it comes with little or no back story. In terms of design rationale, investigating the background of your choice is always useful. Who designed it? When and for whom—for a particular project or for a company? If for a project, would those associations jar with how you’re planning to use it now, and does that matter? If it was originally designed for Monotype, is the font you’re planning to buy from Monotype or from another foundry? What does Monotype offer as its version, and how does it compare? Stempel Garamond versus Simoncini Garamond, or Garamont?

Koch Rivoli.
Koch Rivoli: channelling the spirit of Rudolf Koch and Willard T. Sniffin.

And how has history served those original battling typefaces? Sebastian Carter in Twentieth Century Type Designers describes Koch Antiqua as “one of the most successful advertising faces of the inter-war period, still often used to suggest the vanishing luxury of ocean liners.� Although some of that usage might have been in reality Rivoli, Koch’s reputation as a type designer endures.

As does the name Rivoli, although its creator or draughtsman, the magnificently named Willard T. Sniffin, is less remembered. But UrbanFonts.com for one offers as a free font Koch Rivoli (a pairing of names that would have the German designer spinning in his grave), an uppercase-only design that takes inspiration from the thick-thin double stroke of Koch’s italic uppercase—and Rivoli’s.

Note: A big thank you to our fabulous Typography editor, Alexander Charchar, for preparing this article.


© Simon Loxley for Smashing Magazine, 2012.


Adobe Illustrator Tutorial: Create a Detailed Lifebuoy Illustration


  

In the following Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a semi-realistic lifebuoy graphic. We’ll start with a bunch of concentric circles and some basic vector shape building techniques. Once we create the starting shapes we’ll continue with some Pathfinder options, several Warp and Gaussian Blur effects plus some basic masking techniques.

For the highlights we will use some simple blending techniques along with a set of linear gradients. Finally, we’ll need a simple, dashed stroke, the Rounded Corners effect and some discrete Drop Shadows. The final illustration is easily editable so it won’t be difficult for you to pick different colors for your lifebuoy.

As always, this is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Hit Control + N to create a new document. Enter 600 in the width and height box then click on the Advanced button. Select RGB, Screen (72ppi) and make sure that the "Align New Objects to Pixel Grid" box is unchecked before your click OK. Now, turn on the Grid (View > Grid) and the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid). Next, you’ll need a grid every 5px.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Guides & Grid, enter 5 in the Gridline every box and 1 in the Subdivisions box. You can also open the Info panel (Window > Info) for a live preview with the size and position of your shapes. Do not forget to set the unit of measurement to pixels from Edit > Preferences > Unit > General. All these options will significantly increase your work speed.

Step 2

Pick the Ellipse Tool(L) and create a 255px circle. Fill it with black, lower its opacity to 30% and go to Object > Path > Offset Path. Enter a -60px Offset and click OK.

Step 3

Reselect the two concentric circles created in the previous step, open the Pathfinder panel and click on the Minus Front button. Fill the resulting compound path with R=241 G=242 B=242, increase its opacity to 100% and move to the Layers panel. Double click on it, name it "Body" and make a copy in front (Control + C > Control + F).

Step 4

Pick the Ellipse Tool(L), create a 195px circle and place it as shown in the first image. Select this new circle along with the copy created in the previous step and click on the Divide button from the Pathfinder panel. Move to the Layers panel and you will find a new group with three simple shapes. Open it, delete the small circle then ungroup (Shift + Control + G) the remaining two compound paths.

Step 5

Focus on the two compound paths created in the previous step and fill them with the linear gradient shown below.

Step 6

Disable the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid) then go to Edit > Preferences > General and make sure that the Keyboard Increment is set at 1px. Reselect "Body" and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and hit the up arrow three times (to move it 3px up).

Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and turn it into a compound path (Object > Compound Path > Make). Fill it with R=134 G=139 B=145, lower its opacity to 30% and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Step 7

Reselect the second compound path edited in the fifth step (the large one) and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 5px up. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Open it, select the top shape, fill it with white and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 3px radius and click OK. Keep focusing on this group, select the bottom shape, fill it with R=134 G=139 B=145 and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 5px radius and click OK.

Step 8

Reselect the first compound path edited in the fifth step (the small one) and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 5px up. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Open it, select the top shape, fill it with R=134 G=139 B=145 and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 5px radius and click OK. Keep focusing on this group, select the bottom shape, fill it with white and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Enter a 3px radius and click OK.

Step 9

Reselect "Body" and make two copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 10px down. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Select the resulting group of shapes and turn it into a compound path (Object > Compound Path > Make). Fill it with white, lower its opacity to 30% and bring it to front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Step 10

Reselect "Body" and make two new copies in front (Control + C > Control + F > Control + F). Select the top copy and move it 5px down. Reselect both copies and click on the Minus Front button from the Pathfinder panel. Turn the resulting group of shapes into a compound path (Object > Compound Path > Make), fill it with white, lower its opacity to 70% and bring it to front (Shift + Control + ] ).

Step 11

Select all the shapes created in the last five steps and group them (Control + G). Reselect "Body", make a copy in front (Control + C > Control + F) and bring it to the front (Shift + Control + ] ). Fill it with white and open the Transparency panel. Select this white compound path along with the group created in the beginning of the step, open the fly-out menu of the Transparency panel and click on Make Opacity Mask. In the end your masked group should look like in the fourth image.

Step 12

Re-enable the Snap to Grid (View > Snap to Grid), pick the Ellipse Tool(L), create a 195px circle and place it as shown in the first image. Fill it with none but add a 30pt stroke. Set its color at R=150 G=150 B=150 then go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke. Select the resulting path and change its blending mode to Overlay.

Step 13

Reselect "Body" and go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown in the left window, click OK then go again to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow. Enter the data shown in the right window and click OK.

Step 14

Pick the Ellipse Tool(L) and create a 265px circle. Fill it with black, lower its opacity to 30% and place it as shown in the first image. Pick the Rectangle Tool(M) and create a 65 by 75px shape. Fill it with R=255 G=30 B=45, lower its opacity to 30% and place it as shown in the second image.

Step 15

Focus on the red rectangle created in the previous step. Pick the Direct Selection Tool(A), select the bottom, left anchor point and move it 10px to the right then select the bottom, right anchor point and move it 10px to the left. In the end your red shape should look like a trapezoid (image #2). Make sure that it’s still selected and go to Effect > Warp > Bulge. Enter the data shown in the following image, click OK and go to Object > Expand Appearance. Select the resulting shape along with the circle created in the previous step and click on the Intersect button from the Pathfinder panel.

Step 16

For this step you’ll need the Round Any Corner script. You can find it here. Save it to your hard drive then return to Illustrator and grab the Direct Selection Tool (A). Focus on the red shape edited in the previous step, select the four anchor points highlighted in the first image and go to File > Scripts > Other Script.

Open the Round Any Corner Script, enter a 5px Radius and click OK. In the end your shape should look like the second image. Reselect it and got Effect > Warp > Arc Lower. Enter the data shown below, click OK and go to Object > Expand Appearance. Finally, select the resulting shape and increase its opacity back to 100%.

Step 17

Select the red shape created in the previous step and go to Object > Transform > Rotate. Enter a 180 degrees angle and click on the Copy button. This will create a vertically flipped copy. Select it, drag it down and place it as shown in the second image. The Snap to Grid should ease your work. Reselect both red shapes and go again to Object > Transform > Rotate. This time enter a 90 degree angle and click on the Copy button. In the end you should have four red shapes placed like in the fourth image.

More on Page Two

This new Adobe Illustrator tutorial isn’t quite finished yet! There is more waiting for you over on page two.


Portfolio Update

What a week… just a couple of days ago two new apps, I had the honor to work on, were released: the official TouchArcade app and iTranslate Voice.

Taming The Wild Mind


  

Myths have developed around and researchers have studied how the human brain juggles creativity and organization. Popular theory tells us that the left brain is structured and logical, while the right brain is artistic and imaginative, and that all human beings use predominantly one side of the other.

Working in a creative field means challenging that theory, or else challenging the schedules and deadlines that managers impose on writers, designers and other creatives. As a project manager in a UX design agency, as well as a writer, I believe it is necessary to challenge both the assumptions about schedules and the belief that creativity implies disorganization.

Can Creativity Be Scheduled?

There’s a quick and easy answer to this question. Yes!

You’re shaking your head now. You’re thinking about how much you hate deadlines and how your designs suffer from the 9:00 to 5:00 schedule imposed by your manager. You’re remembering the sketches or creative writing you did in college at 3:00 in the morning. Sathish Manohar expresses it well in his article “Why 9 to 5�:

“Knowledge work solely depends on creativity of the workers. But, still some how, knowledge work-places got modeled around factories. Employees had to work 9-5, be creative between 9-5, and go home… This is a problem, We cannot schedule the brain to be creative at any given time.”

Yet I’ve spent years trying to merge my creative-writing personality with my project-management skill set and day job. Recently I realized that writing by the light of the moon results in over-caffeinated mornings and sloppy grammar, and still I continued—after all, isn’t that what creativity is all about? I’ve always been able to empathize with my designers, who want nothing more than free reign to be creative when the mood hits. But as a project manager, I also strive to create a working environment where designers and content strategists can be productive and efficient—and where we can deliver mockups on a deadline.

The solution turned out to be easier than you might expect. Spontaneous creativity is not the only way. In fact, as a content strategist, designer or even developer, you are paid for your ability to turn on the creative faucet. So, what goes into creating on command?

1. Create A Routine

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

– Gustave Flaubert, author

Flaubert did not write on a deadline, and yet he found that following an orderly routine improved his ability to be creative. This holds true for most people. Being able to “do your best work� at 3:00 am is no coincidence: you are training your brain to get those creative juices flowing when the moon is high and the workday is long over. This is fantastic if you don’t have anywhere to be in the morning; but for many of us, 3:00 am is not a great time to be inspired.

Instead, develop a routine that trains your creative juices to kick in at more convenient times. This could mean setting the alarm for 8:00 am, making breakfast and then sitting down with a journal to begin sketching as you eat. It could mean emailing yourself a to-do list before bed, with inspirational quotes to greet you the moment you open your email. Maybe you need a lunchtime scrum every day to energize and focus. Within two weeks, these mini-kickoffs will begin to signal to your brain, “Now is when we begin the creative work of the day.�

2. Take Your Time

“A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything.”

– Paul Graham, essayist and programmer

Distractions are a powerful creativity-blocker. Even the best routine can be waylaid by mandatory meetings, important phone calls and constant emails. If you are a freelancer in charge of your own schedule, try to relegate meetings to the very beginning or end of the day. If a manager schedules your client meetings and internal reviews, talk to them about the benefits of opening up large blocks of time for creative work.

At Above the Fold, we make a point of scheduling around the “maker’s schedule.� Paul Graham sums up the maker’s schedule in his essay, “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule�:

“When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it…. I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon.”

Therefore, at Above the Fold, we hold internal reviews at 5:00 pm, check-in meetings at lunchtime, and client calls first thing in the morning. This gives our creative team the time they crave to get engrossed in projects, without interruption.

This doesn’t solve the issue of interruption via email, of course. Try scheduling specific “Check emailâ€� times into your day—again, first thing in the morning, just before your lunch break or at the end of the day works well. Make sure your team is aware that you will not be responding to emails immediately, and suggest they call you or come find you if something is urgent and relevant to the current project. Team members can be surprisingly understanding and can quickly grasp the difference between imperative and interesting.

3. Use Your Team

“Separate brainstorming (idea generation) from synthesis (putting it all into a flowing post).”

– Tim Ferriss, author

Having large blocks of time available and scheduling them into your day sounds well and good, but how do you convince your brain that the time has come to get in the zone and ignore distractions?

Taking a page out of the Agile development book, try starting with a variation on pair programming. Pair programming is designed to help developers break down complex tangles of code with the simple rationale that two heads are better than one. The same is true for kicking off any other sort of creative block of time. Instead of working together all day, kick off the day with a 10-minute group brainstorming session. Nothing focuses the creative mind faster than talking through project details, and 10 minutes can lead to a far more productive three hours of synthesis.

Don’t have a team to kick around ideas with? Hit up a few colleagues on Twitter or Skype. We have found that many in the content and design worlds are happy to help, and you can offer to help in return.

4. Warm Up Your Muscles

“Major league players aren’t the only professionals that regularly practice. We’ve met musicians, firemen, pilots, and surgeons, all of who regularly practice their skills.”

– Jared M. Spool, founding principal of User Interface Engineering

Athletes warm up their muscles before starting their real work, and so should creative thinkers. A good warm-up helps you practice basic skills, focus your mind and improve the work to come. In addition, taking 10 minutes to warm up allows you to separate your ideas from the plethora of ideas surrounding you.

A few hundred years ago, visual stimulation was hard to come by, and artists were influenced primarily by their surroundings. Now, our surroundings contain hundreds of representations of our surroundings and of other people’s interpretations of their surroundings. Finding your own voice can be difficult amid the clutter.

The following quick warm-ups can bring you back to basics and isolate what makes your creative voice unique. Some of these suggestions even include using someone else’s work as a starting point—but making it your own.

  1. Write your thoughts down in a journal.
  2. Doodle for 10 minutes in a sketchpad.
  3. Copy the first sentence of a book, and then write a one-page story that begins with that sentence.
  4. Create three variations of a landing page based on different mood themes (happy, scary, sad, etc.).

None of these warm-ups should take more than 10 minutes, and each offers a different way to reconnect you to your creative spirit. From here, you might find it easier to begin thinking about new and different ideas, and even jumpstarting a project that has felt stale.

5. Save The Best For Last

“Laziness in a white collar job has nothing to do with avoiding hard physical labor. “Who wants to help me move this box!â€� Instead, it has to do with avoiding difficult (and apparently risky) intellectual labor.”

– Seth Godin, entrepreneur, author and speaker

Most creative jobs come with a catch, such as having to respond to client emails, send invoices or email writing samples. It’s not uncommon for these boring, “uncreativeâ€� tasks to turn into a means of procrastination. You feel as though you can’t set a task aside because it must be done; but because you don’t want to do it, you procrastinate—effectively avoiding both your creative work and your busywork.

Invoices and emails and bills are quick tasks, so we don’t feel as though delaying them by an hour or two costs much. But the hour you spend avoiding a five-minute task eats away at your creative time. What’s more frightening is the possibility that you’re actively using these tasks to avoid your creative work. As Seth Godin explains, this is due to “lizard brain�:

“The [lizard brain, or resistance,] is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. The resistance is writer’s block and putting jitters and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn’t stay on the same page long enough to get something out the door.”

We’ve all dealt with lizard brain, and many of the suggestions in this article can help combat it. But how do you remove the procrastinations that are genuine work, the busywork that must be done but just gets in the way?

Try setting aside one morning a week (Monday is a good day) to devote to the boring tasks. Relegate email reminders of the busywork to a “Mondayâ€� folder. Keep all physical folders and to-do lists for that work away from your desk. Of course, you don’t want to wake up one day and realize you forgot to pay the bills, but you won’t forget housekeeping chores like that if you assign them to a specific time slot—and not that generic “tomorrow.â€�

One more tip: don’t sit in your creative spot to do the busywork. The area for busywork will quickly get cluttered with to-do notes that have nothing to do with the creative work that you need to accomplish. Do the necessary evils somewhere else to avoid distracting yourself the next time you begin your “real� work.

Untamed Creativity

Saying that a wild creative mind can’t be tamed sounds romantic, but romanticism will serve you better in your actual products than in your schedule. The advice above will help you schedule your mind, enhance your creativity and use team members, time constraints and even deadlines to your advantage. Give your creative mind the structure and security it needs to run wild.

Other Resources

Here are some more resources on creative productivity:

What other tips and tools help you to be creatively productive?

(al) (il)


© Marli Mesibov for Smashing Magazine, 2012.


A Collection of Eye Catching Poster Design


  

Poster design is a true art form. Often the best posters will be bold, eye catching and visually intense, yet minimal and elegant at the same time. As with logo design, often a great poster will be great for what it omits, as well as what it features.

Really the effectiveness of a poster’s design depends upon it’s purpose. Whilst some posters require a basic typographic treatment, others may suit an elaborate visual design. When designing your own posters always try to bear in mind the poster’s audience, and what you are representing.

Often poster designs will need to be pixel perfect, and very carefully designed as they will be printed at very high resolutions. The smallest details will become more obvious in this medium, so it is important for the designer to take extra care in their process.

Today we have featured a wide range of poster designs, each demonstrating a different style, purpose and agenda. We were also lucky enough to speak with James White, and receive permission to feature his inspired poster designs.

The Poster Designs

James White’s Poster Designs

Whilst this post showcases a variety of artist’s and styles, with James White’s permission to feature his poster designs as part of this article, we had to load up on his works. As James is such an inspiration in the design community, and has become hugely successful, largely due to his unique poster designs, a mini-feature was not out of order.

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Alejandro de Antonio’s Minimal Movie Poster Designs

Minimal posters are very trendy, and Alejandro de Antonio has produced an excellent set of minimal movie posters in this vein. He has an uncanny ability to capture the essence of a popular movie and represent it via a simplistic, but elegant illustration.

His designs showcase how strong the brand is behind the movies, as we instantly connect with the represented protagonists.

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Grzegorz Domaradzki’s Vector Posters

Polish digital artist Grzegorz Domaradzki produces some awesome vector designs, including a large collection of vector movie poster designs. It’s really interesting to see how he adapts the original visuals of these films into totally original works of art. Each movie poster is super detailed, mixing complex drawings, lighting effects and typography.

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Inspiring Poster Designs

Retro Vector Poster by Fabio Sasso

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DAM Poster by Project GRAPHICS

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Vintage Swissair Travel Poster by Colaja

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Reservoir Dogs Minimal Movie Poster by Doaly

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Rooney and the Minglers Gig Poster by Doaly

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Addictive Stuidios Promo Poster by Addictive Studios

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The Joker Typographic Poster by Doaly

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Tokyo 2016 Poster by Andreas Leonidou

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Poster Design Tutorials

If you’re looking to design your own poster then there are some great tutorials out there to walk you through the process step by step. The following tutorials cover a wide range of techniques and outcomes, which should give you a great foundation in digital poster design:

Dark, Moody Movie Poster

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Minimal New Years Poster by Abduzeedo

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Abstract Fan Poster by Constantin Potorac

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Slick Club Poster

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Furious Pink Panther Poster by Alex Beltechi

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Dark and Surreal Poster by Constantin Potorac

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Poster with Handdrawn Elements by Alex Beltechi

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What Do You Think?

I hope that you enjoyed this article. Did you have any favorite designs that stood out to you? Perhaps you know some epic poster designs that weren’t included? Let us know in the comments below.

(rb)


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