Fonts In Use

FONTSINUSE

So I wasn't really sure what I would focus my blog posts on but I figured the best thing to do for me and my fellow designers was to try and find helpful sites that could assist us in making some of the best work we can come up with. Sometimes you just don't have those creative juices flowing or maybe are just unsure about what to do in certain design situations and you need a little push or inspiration.

This site is called Fonts in Use

                                                                                Fonts In Use helps designers like us choose the right typeface and what it would and could look like in certain designs. You can search a certain typeface or just go through the images until you find a typeface you like. It even shows other typefaces that were used in that design so you know what typefaces work well with each other. This site includes a lot of the most well known typefaces like Arial and Helvetica but also a few not so well known. However, The more common, the more images. You can also search based upon the type of design you are creating and what it will be used for. You can search by industries (like fashion or architecture) or even formats (like posters or magazines) to get a clear cut idea of what typefaces to use or ideas on how to use it. 

Another cool feature is that if a design particularly interests you you can click on the image and it will give you a brief description of the image, maybe the designer and even a location of where they found the work.

I think this is actually a decent site, even though pretty new, seems to have a lot of potential. I think it also could help come up with an idea or a better way of using any typeface and give you creative strategies. I've already started looking into fonts for some of my projects! You can visit the site at www.fontsinuse.com

Kate Moross

Editorial Illustration for The Ride Journal

I discovered Kate Moross about two years ago, and I thought that I would be fun to introduce her for my first blog post. Moross is a London based designer, illustrator and art director. When it comes to typography illustration, she’s a real pro! They are often very chaotic, but that’s what makes her style so interesting. I think it works very well in terms of catching people’s attention. They not only have vibrant colors, but the way the composition is made with support of certain object forms, lines, etc… it all just  pretty much screams out at you in an effective way. 

So in the example to the left, you can see there are tons of different typography illustrations that were used for each word of the sentences, and they’re all unique in their own way. They are either tall, short, cursive-like, all caps, all lower case letters and so on. Yet, even if it seems overwhelming you get a sense of balance here by how compact they all are and how they fit next to each other. Plus, each word is characteristically done to represent itself, so for example ‘rain’ has a few emphasized lines around the letters that look like rain drops, and it's in blue color which represents the water substance.

In 2012, Moross became the director of her very own Studio, called Studio Moross. It mostly deals with music based projects, but if you want to check it out there some cool designs; in the packaging tab you can find some neat CD covers. There are more of her personal works (mostly typographic illustrations) on her own website, Kate Moross.

Kate Moross Olympic Shoe for Adidas Consortium 2012

You can start to tell, after seeing a couple of her works, that she has a kind of style that sometimes repeat, such as the kind of lines she uses (squiggly, zigzag, vertical or horizontal, straight lines) as well as shapes; she’s very into 3-sided or triangular shapes. She has done many cover designs and illustrations for well known brands and products, such as Converse and Adidas. In fact, some of her typography and illustrations have been incorporated into the products themselves.  

On top of that, she’s also designed for charitable nonprofit organizations like the American Cancer Society. I think that she’s really pushed herself up the ladder of success at quite a young age (26 I think) and she serves as a great inspiration not only me, but to many other aspiring designers... and  hopefully you guys too. If you want to buy a T-Shirt, necklace or any other products with her designs on it, you can check out her webpage’s Shop. Hope you liked it!