typography
1 April '08 - light
After seeing a story about something similar on I love typography, I had to make one myself. Feel free to get the PDF version of light (pdf, 493 kB). It's all set in various weights of Helvetica (for the simplicity of it rather than any other reason).
10/'05: Rolderdebolder
"squibles"
Many documents designed in the nineteenth-century contain little ornaments such as this one from 1865:
which I started calling squibles (their prper name is fleurons). Squibles are used to break up bits of text or to fill up empty spaces. They are used occasionally on the web as well and they can be quite pretty. I started by designing some simple flower-like shapes going up: 
, and going down: 
. Also, of course, your bog standard swirl: 
, which didnt work out so well. And a star: 
(which is now part of the header graphic of this site). From a book from the New York Public Library online, I reconstructed a border tile: 
, or 
and 
which can be put together like so:
On the web, it's really hard to get the corners right, so I sort of gave up on this idea.
The real interest is in text dividers. I have a document about my great-great-great grandfather's call for military service in the Dutch army from 1822 ("Certificaat Nationale Militie", jpg, 47kb), from which I derived this divider:
This next divider is based on a Ginko leaf. A Ginko-tree bonzai had been languishing for years and – before throwing it out – I scanned in one leaf and sort of turned it into a divider. Not sure if it works that well but it looks alright on the BCP site.
The following flower-pot design is not entirely original: I came across something like it in an ALA article on high resolution image printing and designed one myself. Frankly, the original is better...
24 Sept '05: Swirly twirly design. It seemed so obvious in my head but it was so hard to actually make. Not particularly happy about it but i's OK.
colours
Sometimes you want colours that don;t scream, that are a bit subtle and faded. The NYPL Digital Gallery has a section on book covers (Dust Jackets from American and European Books, 1926-1947) from which I picked a bunch of covers with pleasant colours. The first five or so colours below are based on those covers.
| auberginey | 6F4455 | |
| cement | 898374 | |
| warm blue | 465E84 | |
| fungus green | 819889 | |
| broccoli | 548F30 | |
| pink cement | D7CAAB | |
| mustardy yellow | BDAC55 | |
| transparent broccoli | 6CCE0C | |
| 87204A | ||
| fall daisy 2 | F3DA73 | |
| ketchup bottle | C74B4E | |
| pimento | D0513E | |
| cherry | 9B0C06 | |
| punk red | D2232B | |
