What’s Worse: Comic Sans or Papyrus?

What is a worse use of type?

Papyrus as the logo font in Avatar. Papyrus in Avatar

Or Dan Gilbert’s( the Cleveland Cavaliers owner) letter to the fans in Comic Sans. Cavs Owner Letter to the Fans

I’m going to have to with Dan Gilbert’s letter to the fans. Unless you are 10 years old Comic Sans should never be used for anything and ever then I would argue against using it. I just can’t take any letter seriously from a grown adult that is written in Comic Sans. You would think that guy would know better.

In the case of Avatar, I felt that Papyrus at least somewhat fit the theme of Avatar. Yes you would think they could have found a better font but it worked.

Drive Shaft T-Shirt

The 6th and final season of LOST is winding down, as much as it pains me to say that. A few nights ago Charlie made his first appearance since “LA X” in the Desmond centric episode “Happily Ever After”. As they were riding in the car Charlie’s crappy band Drive Shaft came on the radio and I was quickly reminded how awful and annoying that song is, “You all everybody”. Nevertheless, the next day I received an email from my favorite t-shirt shop, busted-tees, saying that I could actually buy a Drive Shaft T-Shirt!

So of course I purchased it, even though I hate Charlie’s band. With my favorite TV show coming to an end I thought I might as well try to stock up on all of the memorabilia as I can. It’s the least I can do for the greatest Sci-fi / Drama ever!

I also found another LOST t-shirt that I had not seen before while browsing around BustedTees. The Found T-Shirt

10+ Creative Design Blogs

I love reading various different design blogs as it fuels my creativity, gives me inspiration and a source for research in future projects. So besides the major ones like Smashing Magazine and PSD Tuts, I am listing 10+ creative design blogs that are in my RSS reader that you may be unaware of.

TOUCHEY
Continue Reading…

Eric’s Empire Featured On…

I have to admit whenever I began redesigning my portfolio a large part of me was doing in hopes it would get featured on some of the top CSS galleries on the web and help drive new traffic from passionate designers all over the world.

Well to my pleasure, over the past couple of weeks I have submitted Eric’s Empire to some of the top web gallery sites on the web and many of them has added my site to their galleries. As a result I am getting hundreds of new visitors per day and emails from some great designers around the globe. Not only that but other sites and blogs that I never even submitted to are linking to me as well.

As a designer I highly recommend submitting your site to as many galleries you can find. Because it gets your name and work out there and it brings a perfect opportunity to meet and network with other designers around the world.

I decided to make a list of the sites that are giving Eric’s Empire some love and linking back to them in this post. I’ll update the list if more come in.

CSS Mania – Probably the #1 visited CSS gallery site on the web

WeLoveWP – A WordPress Gallery Site

DesignArtWall – Wall of Gorgeous Design Inspiration.

Sixrevisions – An awesome design blog.

Open Source Hunter – A blog with great and useful opensource resources, tools, tutorials, interviews, inspirations, contests, and lots more.

Divvoted – A Website Gallery where you can vote for you favorite sites on twitter.

CSS Creme- The Best Web Flavours

Css Design – A CSS gallery in France

MostInspired – A Website Gallery and blog

CSS Star -  A CSS gallery

CSS Showdown – A CSS design gallery

CSS Orgy – A CSS gallery with a great name.

CSS Glance – A CSS gallery and website showcase.

Designer Source – Web Design Showcase.

Inspiration Up – A CSS and Flash Gallery

Daily Slurp – A website gallery from the maker of DesignMeltdown

Css Showcase – A CSS gallery in the UK

Css Loggia – A CSS gallery

Wooki.es – A CSS and Web Gallery

CSS Brigit – A CSS and Web Gallery

digCSS – Web Design and CSS Showcase

CSS Count – A CSS inspiration Web Gallery

CSS Folder – A japaneese Web 2.0 Gallery

CSS Based -  A CSS based Web Design Gallery

Nice Stylesheet – A gallery showcasing fresh CSS inspiration

Selected Web Design – Directory and Gallery of inspiring websites

Designing the Moment

I recently finished reading
Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action by Robert Hoekman, Jr. It’s a book about designing for good user experience. I had read positive reviews about the book and thought I would give a shot. I have to say as a designer it was one of the most helpful books I’ve ever read. I recommend that all Web Designers and Developers read it as I am confident it will help you and also inspire you in future projects.

When designing Eric’s Empire I used several tips from Designing the Moment to make my site more usable and consistent. In chapter 2 “Showing Your Personality”, Robert explained how using characters that serve as metaphors and visual hooks can help unify your design and make it more consistent. I paid close attention to that when designing Eric’s Empire. As you can tell I used the grunge style star all throughout my site. I’m using it as a fav icon, imagery in page headers and as rollovers in my main navigation. Not only does it add personality to my site but it also gives it a sense of consistency.

In chapter 22 “Designing the Obvious Blog”, Robert gives three ways to create a better blog. He talks about the benefits of using “trackbacks” and offering a RSS link. While most blogging and tech nerds know what those are, the common blogger may not, so when designing you should always remember to include the word “subscribe” when linking to your RSS feed, rather than just throwing a random RSS button on your page.

The book also goes into other important usability topics such as making forms more usable, which is a big one for me, and designing navigation. Overall I thought it was an excellent book and it will defiantly be sitting on my desk for a while as a reference whenever I am working.

The Power of Photoshop Brushes

Whenever I begin creating a new design whether it is a Print or a Web Design, one of the first things I always research are Photoshop brushes.  As a designer I believe that having both a solid font and Photoshop brush collection is essential for any design. Even the design for Eric’s Empire involved several different brush sets. Continue Reading…

Desmond is My Constant T-shirt

If you haven’t heard of Busted Tees, it is the greatest t-shirt store you’ll ever find and they have a pretty sweet looking website too, but that’s beside the point.  Anyway they essentially sell joke t-shirts. A lot of them make fun of stuff in pop culture,  politics,  quotes etc.  I get a weekly newsletter from them every Tuesday where they usually give me this weeks sale or new t-shirts that’s been added. Well they have managed to top themselves this time around with the
Desmond is My Constant T-Shirt!

Right now you are either laughing or thinking “what the hell does that mean?” Well if you ever watch Lost then you know exactly what I am talking about and you are ordering the shirt as you read this post. However, if you’ve never seen Lost then you should seriously think about renting the DVD’s because it is only the best dramatic series on TV right now!

Even if you hate Lost and have no idea what Desmond is My Constant means (I would explain it to you but it might take a while) you should still check out BustedTees For The Funniest T-Shirts Around. because I am confident you’ll find something there to make you smile.

ETSU back in the Big Dance!

After a 5 year drought my Alma Mater East Tennessee State made it back to the NCAA tournament last night by beating Jacksonville University 85-68 in the Atlantic Sun Championship. Senior Kevin Tiggs earned tournament MVP while teammates Courtney Pigram and Mike Smith made the all tournament team. Continue Reading…