Design Citizens

This fun little article about the appropriate and accurate use of different typefaces appeared in the NY Times yesterday. The basic premise is that the more you love typography, the more annoying it is to see poorly-set type or outright mistakes. (I guess it’s the same with grammar lovers - my own father once cringed [...]

Courtesy of bonfx.
There once was a trendy typesetter
Who thought “less is more is more better”
“I’ll sit here and scratch
at my tiny soul patch,
Until my design is one letter.”

Today on nytimes.com - Abbott Miller picks some of his favorite graphic accessories and housewares. (My favorite is the alphabet quilt, above.) I love the idea of using bold, graphic shapes and typographic elements in home design (and a little surprised that more than one of Abbott’s picks came from Urban Outfitters. I haven’t been [...]

or those of you typography (and illustration) bloggers out there, you have a new resource: Daily Drop Cap. Jessica Hische creates a new, gorgeous drop cap every day that you can copy and paste into your own posts. (Expect to see more of these on Design Citizens… I love this idea!) So far she’s made [...]

I know we’ve been posting a lot about typography lately (mostly precipitated by IKEA’s typeface change, which probably got a bigger reaction than they were expecting) but there ARE other elements of good design to cover. Before we move on though, here is one more humorous example of why choosing the right typeface is important, [...]

Those of you offended by crass language, please forgive the title of this post. I didn’t write it; I am simply re-posting it from this article on fastcompany.com about controversial fonts. (Or I should say, typefaces. But that’s a discussion for another day.) It lists several typefaces that create heartburn among designers for various reasons: Verdana; [...]

From idsgn.org: IKEA, the assemble-it-yourself furniture store beloved by college students and people who are still paying for college, years after graduation, has changed its typeface after 50 years. They’ve switched from a customized version of Futura to… wait for it… VERDANA.
Verdana can be found all over the web (it’s a safe bet for web [...]

This project was completed months ago, but we have just now gotten the photos done, so here it is! American Association for Justice (AAJ) needed a display system for photos of their past association presidents. They recently moved into a new space (designed by a team from FOX’s DC Interiors Studio!) and the old system [...]

Grubb & Ellis, a large real estate services and investment company, recently rolled out a new logo and tagline (as seen on Brand New.) Since we’re part of the commercial real estate industry, I’m especially interested in this particular rebrand. For the most part, I think it’s an improvement.
I love the colors (especially the pumped-up yellow - [...]

Keeping with the movie theme again today, I ran across a link to this video from College Humor on Design Observer and it made me smile. I never realized how similar in appearance some of these movie titles had become. Definitely an interesting contrast to Wes Anderson’s (over)use of Futura. Most of the films in the [...]