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.

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…

Create a Random CD cover.

Chain letters have recently been circulating around Facebook. For the most part I find about 99% of them to be annoying and I never fill out any of the questionnaires or surveys that go around. However, I recently come across one in my news feed that I really enjoyed and being a designer I thought it was a fun little creative exercise….it works too! The above picture is what I came up with my album cover. The directions are below feel free comment your results. Check it out!

1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More… Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 – Post it to FB with this text in the “caption” and TAG the friends you want to join in. (you can untag yourself if you don’t want this photo up)

Eric’s Empire

I am Eric Franklin. A creative website and graphic desinger based in Raleigh, North Carolina. After a complete re-design and domain change of my old portfolio site, I decided to go in a different direction with Eric’s Empire. Not only did I want a portfolio site but I also wanted to add a blog this time around. But my main goal was to create everything with WordPress.  Continue Reading…