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Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022Brand­ing / Cre­ativ­i­ty / Graph­ic Design / Illus­tra­tionWhat to do about Adobe’s impend­ing lack of Pan­tone sup­port? Make a spot col­or, call it the Pan­tone col­or you intend to print. This is what I have always done, print­ers don’t care, and IMHO the RGB screen val­ues in Adobe prod­ucts have nev­er tru­ly matched up to how the actu­al PMS col­or prints— Jes­si­ca His­che (@jessicahische) Octo­ber 28, 2022 Tip: back­up your cur­rent (extreme­ly out­dat­ed) #PANTONE+ .acb and .aco files from the #Adobe InDesign/Illustrator/Photoshop/Bridge ‘Presets/Color Swatches/Color Books’ fold­ers and—probably—restore those files after each CC update.— Emiel Efdée (@emielefdee) Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022 […]
April 25, 2022Fonts / Tips & TricksThose “in the know” know one thing for sure: Don’t use Com­ic Sans. Don’t use it on your web site. Don’t use it on your sign. Don’t use it on your pho­to­copied lost dog notice. Don’t use it on your com­ic. This could be over­ly dog­mat­ic think­ing. Com­ic Sans was cre­at­ed for a Microsoft app in order to give a more “human” dimen­sion to the type. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to overuse from ram­pant dis­tri­b­u­tion, design­ers and oth­ers “in the know” have shunned it. Much has already been writ­ten on the sub­ject. For instance, this post at Design for Hack­ers goes into a lot of typo­graph­ic, his­tor­i­cal and soci­etal details about Com­ic Sans. Also, evi­dence exists that Com­ic Sans and oth­er hard­er-to-read type­faces work well for read­ers with dyslex­ia. Still, it is some­times hard to jus­ti­fy select­ing a type­face with such a neg­a­tive rep­u­ta­tion. Com­ic Sans alter­na­tives Per­haps you have a project which demands a casu­al hand-writ­ten look. In your font menu Com­ic Sans lurks, but a lit­tle online search should reveal some viable alter­na­tives. Here are some I have come across:  1. Dol­cis­si­mo Script Fun and free-spir­it­ed with some strokes loop­ing back on them­selves. 2. Dyna Pro This one is a more styl­ish casu­al script with let­ters that look like they want to dance. 3. Soli Px O.K., here’s a cute one with a slight back­ward angle. 4. Tait Note And final­ly, our own Tait Note. It is some­what sim­i­lar to Soli, but more angu­lar and quirky. This is based on Jamie Tait’s scrawl­ings on var­i­ous mixed tapes from back in the day. So there we have it for now. Keep your anten­nas up for alter­na­tives to overused type­faces and your project will have a more unique look. Stay tuned, I may post more casu­al hand­writ­ing fonts as I stum­ble across them. […]
Octo­ber 5, 2021Down­loads / Edu­ca­tion / KidsNow that every­one is back into the rou­tine of work and school, we can take stock of things that might help us and our kids. One thing that we have been think­ing about is engag­ing our kids in sub­jects that have a “dull” rep­u­ta­tion — like math. Accord­ing to a 2018 Stam­ford Uni­ver­si­ty study, a pos­i­tive atti­tude toward math will result in bet­ter achieve­ments in math class­es in chil­dren. This is not a big sur­prise. “Hav­ing a pos­i­tive atti­tude acts direct­ly on your mem­o­ry and learn­ing sys­tem,” the lead author, Lang Chen, PhD, said about the find­ings. How to get pos­i­tive Of course, the next ques­tion is: how do you cul­ti­vate that pos­i­tive atti­tude? This, I’m sure, depends on the child in ques­tion. Suc­cess in math requires log­ic, orga­ni­za­tion and pre­ci­sion. Also, there exists a more sub­tle and qual­i­ta­tive aspect to math­e­mat­ics. For instance: do the num­bers have asso­ci­a­tions, emo­tions, or per­son­al­i­ties? These asso­ci­a­tions will aid in mem­o­ry.  Sports as a mem­o­ry aid My son is a big sports fan and has a very good mem­o­ry for sports. Speak­ing to him about this, we real­ized there are some num­bers he knows very well: Ath­letes’ jer­sey num­bers. The num­ber 99 belongs to one man: Wayne Gret­zky. It is also 9 x 11.  And so, for sporty kids, we devel­oped a down­load­able mul­ti­pli­ca­tion table using the jer­sey num­bers of hock­ey play­ers. We’re going to offer it free here on the site for a cou­ple of months for now. We hope teach­ers and par­ents will find this help­ful for young sports fans.  Asso­ci­at­ing play­ers with math facts may pro­duce that pos­i­tive atti­tude kids need. Per­haps “Orr times Coffie equals Giroux” is a first step for young math stu­dents to get to “4 x 7 = 28.” Print­ed and framed Jer­sey Num­ber Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion Table. Thanks to Cade Askey for his ideas and research on this project. Check out his hock­ey card blog! So far, two sizes are avail­able in the down­loads sec­tion: an over-size poster 36 x 24 inch­es, and a tabloid-size 11 x 17 inch­es. Let us know what you think! Down­load 36x24 Down­load 11x17 Jer­sey Num­ber Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion Table Close-up, […]
May 11, 2021Askey Stu­dio Activ­i­ties / Media / MusicThe pan­dem­ic has changed a lot. Per­haps the amount and type of music you lis­ten to.  I have been through my col­lec­tion fair­ly thor­ough­ly, lis­ten­ing for lost gems and for reminders of mem­o­rable peri­ods in life. Music has a way of con­jur­ing those mem­o­ries.  How­ev­er, dis­cov­er­ing new music is a great way to estab­lish a sound­track for this new peri­od. Sad­ly, for­ays into local record shops have been way down. Stream­ing ser­vices already had a stran­gle­hold on record­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion pre-pan­dem­ic. And of course, many of us are miss­ing live con­certs — bad­ly. Dis­cov­er­ing new musi­cal mys­ter­ies Here, we’ve helped Iso­naut Music set up a sim­ple web site to fea­ture tracks, mix­es, and albums from their exten­sive cat­a­log. If you’re into unearthing unique sounds, this is a des­ti­na­tion for you.  Iso­naut Music “Cen­tral” Whether you enjoy indie pop rock, exper­i­men­tal beats or lush down­tem­po vibes, there is some­thing to savour. The sim­ple home page pro­vides a good, updat­ed sam­ple of music to lis­ten to right off the bat. From there you can explore fur­ther on linked music ser­vices (Sound­cloud, Band Camp, and YouTube). Keep up the audi­to­ry adven­tures! Sup­port the artists, and delight in those new sounds.  […]
March 12, 2021Edu­ca­tion / Fonts / Graph­ic DesignEvery­body con­sumes (or reads) type every day. You might also be using it every day to help get your mes­sages out there. It’s one of those things most peo­ple take for grant­ed.  If you’re look­ing to look more deeply into this world, these videos are a good place to start. Typog­ra­phy Off Book / PBS (6m 58) Choos­ing fonts Flux (9m 41) Four Quick Tips To Improve Your Typog­ra­phy Futur Acad­e­my (6m 57) […]

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