December 21, 2009 by Jeff
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from us to you!
We’re closed for the holidays until Jan 4th, but feel free to browse our website or blog archives to sate your design thirst in the meantime.
While we have you here, we’d like to thank all of our clients and all our readers for a great 2009: from those in Edmonton to those in New Zealand, and everywhere in-between (visitors from 123 countries)! 2010 already looks promising for us, and here’s hoping it does for you too! Take care & be safe this holiday season.
- Jeff & Andrea
Category: General Tags: christmas, happy holidays, merry, paper leaf | Comments Off
December 18, 2009 by Jeff
I read a lot of design-related articles & blogs online – I mean, really, what else can you do when you live in Edmonton, which was the coldest place in North America on Dec 13 at -58C with windchill? Anyway, I’m constantly bookmarking items I think might be useful for me as a designer in the future – some I never end up using, but some I definitely do! This year, I found some great articles on web usability (always good to be able to effectively communicate why you made a particular design choice to a client), Wordpress and jQuery, as well as a few others. Here are my Top Web Design Bookmarks of 2009, with thanks to everyone in the design community who keeps openly sharing their knowledge.
CSS Tricks is a great website – a web designer’s goldmine, if you will – and this is but one of a ton of great articles on Chris’ site. I have yet to implement it myself, but I hope to soon!
Smashing Magazine is well-known in the design community, and the main reason is its well-researched and written articles pertaining to web design. Check this one out for usability tips, like where viewers look most on a website (above image – I felt it needed an explanation or else it just looks like someone’s website caught Athlete’s Foot).
Hit the jump for more! (more…)
Category: Articles, Design Tags: 2009, best of, bookmarks, jquery, web design | Comments (18)
December 14, 2009 by Jeff
Every once in a while, a design calls for a somewhat sketchy, hand-drawn font. Perhaps it’s a gig poster; perhaps it’s for an !!ENERGY DRINK!! company; perhaps it’s something completely different. As a designer, chances are you usually have a ton of work on your plate and can’t always hand-style lettering unique to each project. That’s where hand-drawn fonts come in.
Some are sketchy; some are based off of well-known fonts; all are great. Check out this list of 10 Awesome Free Hand-Drawn Fonts! If you like it, don’t forget to check out our list of the 10 Free & Amazing Display Fonts too.
It looks like Rockwell, but sketchy! Great for display.
This typeface has a nice mix of classy & old-timey elements. Legible & visually interesting.
Slightly grungy, but not so angry and unreadable like a lot of grunge fonts.
Hit the jump for more free hand-drawn fonts!
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Category: Articles, Design, Fonts, Freebies Tags: Fonts, free, hand-drawn, handwritten, sketch, sketchy | Comments (14)
December 11, 2009 by Jeff
It’s (almost) Christmas! We’re a little late on the uptake, as this wallpaper is a calendar and we’re already 11 days into December – but better late than never, right? I’m specifically looking at the dates after December 20 – when we’ll be on our holiday break. Considering it’s supposed to be minus 34 C on Monday, I think we’ll probably spend most of the break holed up like hermits unless it warms up considerably. Anyway, enough rambling – enjoy the Christmas Calendar wallpaper, designed by my lovely wife below, and subscribe to the RSS feed!
Click to download the Christmas Calendar Wallpaper in 1920X1200, 1680X1050, 1440X900 or 1280X800. Pass it along!
Category: Free Friday Wallpaper, Freebies Tags: calendar, christmas, free, friday, wallpaper | Comments Off
December 7, 2009 by Jeff
Welcome to From A to Z, where I outline all the steps taken in a specific project. In this particular instance, I’ll outline the workflow from initial brainstorming through to delivery for a complete “identity build” for a chocolatier/artisan chocolate business.
Warning: you will want to eat chocolate after reading this post.
Paper Leaf was approached by one Jacqueline Jacek regarding her desire to launch her own artisan chocolate business here in Edmonton. We were commissioned for three main projects: logo design, package design, and website design. We were excited, for a few reasons.
It’s always a pleasure to be able to build an identity for a business from scratch as opposed to doing piece work here and there – building an identity from scratch ensures that there will be design continuity across the board, which is of a huge benefit to the business. Thus, to be able to start from the logo design and carry it through packaging to the website was ideal for both us and the client. As well, Jacqui is a very focused and driven person – the kind of person who hits her deadlines and gives you the website copy once, and it’s good to go. Great person to work with.
So let’s start from the top and look at the logo design process, after the jump.
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Category: A to Z, Articles, Design, Logos Tags: brand, chocolate, chocolatier, identity, logo, logo design edmonton business, packaging, web design edmonton business, website | Comments (6)
