Great graphic designers are great thinkers—because great graphic design is so much more that pretty pictures.

Book Arts

A simple book I designed and built.

This is a book.

I am in a book arts class and I am learning some really cool things. This is the first completed project for the class. It’s called a long stitch. The examples we observed in class looked like this, and this is the style that most of the students did. But me? I don’t really like leather. So I found some corrugated plastic at my local sign shop and achieved a completely different aesthetic.

I rather like it. More images after the jump.

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Advanced Typography

The Fall 2009 semester has begun and I think this is going to be a good one. Oh, and I’m already sleep deprived.

A thousand-year-old manuscript.

The Fall semester here at Brigham Young University-Idaho starts a little late, on the 10th of September this year. But things are in full swing and I am feeling the burn. I am taking Advanced Typography, Color Photography, Book Arts, History of Design and Illustration, and an Old Testament class. All of these are great, really. The big love of my heart? Advanced Typography.

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An Essay on Typography

Gill’s approach to the changes that came with the Industrial Revolution may give us some ideas about how to curb the flux of the information age

Eric Gill's An Essay on Typography. The first edition was written in 1931.

This summer has been filled with some really great reading. About two weeks ago I finished Eric Gill’s, An essay on Typography. This lovely (and quick!) read was written in 1931.

Eric Gill is a very opinionated man, and throughout the book, he speaks much about type, printing, punch-cutting, paper, ink and more as it related to the industrial revolution. I was fascinated with how his concerns and opinions about the changing world relate to our changing world. Today, we are facing globalization, advances in technology, offshoring/outsourcing and so on. Gill’s essay is right in line with some of the challenges that today’s creative professional face.

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Stop Stealing Sheep

A review of Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann and E.M Ginger. Read it. Seriously.

I’ve had this book sitting on my shelf for about a year and I’ve done nothing with it other than look at the pretty pictures (of which there are many). Yesterday, I was on a long drive and I brought it along, thinking I would simply start the book. To my surprise, I digested the entire volume in about two hours. This is not to say that Spiekermann and Ginger’s book is no more than a pamphlet; no, it is a really great little book that (almost) everyone should read.

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