You have to start somewhere so I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at this Typography thing without any guidance or experience. An inspirational quote is always good to experiment with!

Typography to me is like photography, in that I’ve always appreciated it and thought it was rather beautifully nifty, yet it was something I didn’t want to attempt. Until now that is. So the first port of call is Google, as it is for most things these days (at least in my world). I’m now armed with Thinking with Type I am ready to begin my type journey. If it’s been something you’ve been thinking about, why not just dive into it now… we all have to start somewhere!

A for those that aren’t familiar with what Typography (from the Greek words τύπος (typos) = form and γραφή (graphe) = writing) is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters… thank you Wiki. I’ll post up my experiments up here and comments are always appreciated.

Don't Fall

I thought I might try using Photoshop for this week’s challenge. Tried to think outside the box, but this was all my tired brain could come up with.

“Mr Caterpillar hoped Owl wouldn’t break into an unbalanced midnight dance and topple the tower of hierarchy”

Any comments and suggestions to improve my drawings are appreciated!

Showtime!

Looking around for some inspiration I found a site that had a weekly topic to illustrate. A quick doodle and flick of my tablet pen later I came up with this, the first image that popped into my mind.

“Outside the theatre the animals are putting on a little show. Fred the frog has fainted, overwhelmed by all the excitement.”

More inspiration to follow.

Calm before the wolf

A recreation of Little Red Riding Hood. Nothing spectacular just a few shapes and shadows with Illustrator. Once I get the ball rolling with more pictures I hope to upload them to an istock account.

Yes, that indistinguishable scribble in the bottom corner is my signature.

I enjoy drawing, doodling, sketching (any sort of creative pursuit with pens and pencils) but I have never found time to indulge in it. I’m not one of those people who can say that they have breathed in art since they were young, but it has always held an interest for me. I’m a art fence sitter.

This is my typical working day. Often I wonder where the time goes, so as a first step I decided to whip some digits into Excel and pie it out. I found out some interesting things, you might too if you try the same!

1. I work more than I sleep
2. I have a significant amount of ‘other’ time
3. I spend as much time in the car as I do putting food in my mouth
4. I eat more than I exercise
5. Pie charts aren’t as tasty as real pies

I know that this chart isn’t completely accurate. It’s quite simplistic, but it does make me realise I need to actively make time to do things that I enjoy. Today I signed up with Rescue Time (an online site that keeps track of how long you spend pottering on the computer).

If you’ve come across this blog as a blogger, or future blogger, your path may have been similar to mine. Some just dive right in, others probe around and ask questions. I am the latter, and wanted to know if there was a concensus on the frequency one should blog.

1. Sorted out that I wanted to blog
2. Decided what to blog about
3. Typed in “How often should you blog?” into Google

Google spat out  56,600,000 results, then with quotes a humble 863 results. Still, that’s a lot of asking with even more answers. Then I realised there is no concrete answer. But for the sake of my love of analysing I looked at a random number of websites and they said to blog:

• Several times a day (15%)
• Once a day (33%)
• Once a week (30%)
• A couple of times a week (22%)

Several sites suggest sticking to a blogging routine (50%) and others say blog whenever you feel like it (50%).  If things start to happen, I may need to rethink my ‘plan’ but for now I think I’ll attack it adhoc.

How did you approach this when you started blogging? What advice would you give?