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Logo for Arete Endurance
Logos are just an arrangement of shapes to which we, over time and experience, attach meaning. I created this bunch of shapes for my running club Arete Endurance, which over the summer came to represent one of the highlights of my week, enjoying sunrises, crazy exhausting workouts, and laughs with some great runners and friends.…
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Does the typeface really matter?
I was reading a book recently, For the Time Being by Annie Dillard. When I got to the last page I discovered a note – right-aligned – from the book designer. It read: A Note on the type The text of this book was set in a typeface called Baker Signet, designed by Arthur Baker…
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Is it well-considered?
If you’re a parent, you know how this goes. You’re in the middle of grocery shopping, speeding between the bakery and the milk cooler when your 3-yr-old looks up at you urgently: “Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom.” Mission aborted, new mission! Suddenly your urgent objective is to get to a bathroom before…
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Design a Life With More Whitespace
Young kids have a way of maximizing whitespace when they’re colouring. Three marks on a paper can be a completed work of art that deserves a place on the crowded fridge. As they get older they learn to fill the page with colour (to the gratitude of many a parent, and many trees). They start…
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Diversity Makes the Soil Rich
Last weekend we visited Fort Whyte Alive, an environment education centre, home to wetlands and walking trails, a herd of bison, and thousands of geese this time of year. We learned about the prairie ecosystem, and how the prairie plants, wildlife and soil are intertwined, and essential to the health of our planet. We also…
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10 Things to Remember for Mobile First Design
It’s 2016. More than half of your website users are probably visiting from a mobile device, not a desktop. Unfortunately, because web designers either started the gig before 2006, or because they’re work from their 27″ iMacs plugged into high-speed internet, it’s easy to forget some of the basics of mobile first (or mobile-only) design.…
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Inspiration is Found on Land
Matias Corea, co-founder of Behance, describes the typical search for inspiration for any graphic designer, and many of us in any field these days. Google. When hundreds or thousands of examples of projects similar to our next brief or a click away, why go anywhere else? But Corea has a different approach: For website design,…
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Dive Deeper
Have you ever gone snorkeling? Any time I strap on the goggles and snorkel and dip my head beneath the surface of the water, I’m breathless (even after I get used to breathing through a tiny pipe 😉 ). Water looks fairly ordinary above the surface, but once you look beneath the surface, you discover…
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The Ads Know What You Need…
…but they know they can’t deliver. Ever since I started working in the advertising industry I’ve been amazed at how advertisements can tap into human desires and emotions. In 30 seconds of video or audio, or a few thousand pixels, a successful ad can pull us into a story, make us laugh, bring us to…
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Icky Sticky Signs of Life
The kids book Icky Little Duckling tells of a very mature rabbit who obsessively orders and collects things he finds in the woods. One day he comes across a beautiful shiny egg, which hatches a little duckling. Of course, the duckling destroys rabbit’s meticulously-organized dwelling, making a mess of everything. I often feel like that…