Online Housecleaning

I’ve been doing a lot of housecleaning, site-wise over the past several weeks. I’m in the process of converting over some of my older blog sites to wordpress, shuttering others, and putting up fresh new “coming eventually” pages at all of the URLs I own. I’ve been playing with Foundation by Zurb as a CSS framework, in preparation for working on a portfolio of my design work.

Electrasteph.com has fresh new face. It’s pretty bare bones and needs a little more style, but for now it looks better. I’ve never used it for much except listing out the various sites I own.

I’m struggling with making my fortune cookie site do what I want. I’d like to be more than a blog site, but the template I’ve chosen seems to want to fight with me. I’ll get it done eventually.

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Nancy Drew “Girl Detective” T-shirt

I’ve loved Nancy Drew since I was a kid, and I had a cool shirt with Pamela Sue Martin’s face on in when I was in elementary school. I always wished I had one with the silhouette on it, so I made one for myself. And you, if you want to buy one. They’re for sale on Redbubble.com.

Nancy Drew T-shirt

Nancy Drew T-shirt

I also put the design on a iPad case, if you’d like to carry your Girl Detective around that way instead.

Nancy Drew iPad Cover

Nancy Drew iPad Cover

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Style Tiles

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via Style Tiles.

Style Tiles are a design deliverable consisting of fonts, colors and interface elements that communicate the essence of a visual brand for the web.

They help form a common visual language between the designers and the stakeholders and provide a catalyst for discussions around the preferences and goals of the client.

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Welcome to Brighton, Iowa Shirt

Welcome to Brighton, Iowa

Brighton, Iowa is the small town my dad’s family is from – my grandparents owned a family farm there for over 80 years and many of my extended family members still live there.

Until a few years ago, there was a painted sign when you entered town that said “Welcome to Brighton, Home of Lake Darling State Park” with a drawing of the lake on it – it was charming and I remember it from when I was a kid visiting grandma’s house; we’d look for the sign when we drove into town. A couple years ago the town replaced the worn and peeling sign with a new stone monument that says “Brighton, Iowa” on it – perfectly understandable because the sign was really showing its age. But I do miss seeing the old sign, so I took an old photo I had and recreated it to put on a t-shirt, which I’ve put up on my Redbubble Account for purchase.

Brighton Iowa Sign
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Typography, believability, and what literacy means

Via the NYTimes.com – Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth.

The first part of this two-part series from The New York Times discusses the impact of different fonts on people’s opinions – the font used in a document appears to have an impact on whether people believe the content to be true and/or take it seriously.

The second part takes a look at John Baskerville, the creator of the font that was considered “most believeable” in the survey in part one.

One of the ideas that jumped out at me in Baskerville’s story – not the main point at all, but I found it interesting – is that Baskerville was critiqued as being “illiterate” by his contemporaries. But clearly he could read, and what they meant by the criticism was that he was unfamiliar with literary references, i.e., he wasn’t versed in a body of literature they considered to be “canon” for educated people of their time.

Clearly the common meaning of the word illiterate has changed over time, because it now means “completely unable to read” when we call someone illiterate. By the definition of Baskerville’s contemporaries, I’m probably quite illiterate.

And fuck you guys, I can read, bitches.

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Captain Marvel T-Shirt

I added my first Marvel Comics title to my comic book pull list today – Captain Marvel. The “new” Captain Marvel is the former “Ms. Marvel” — Carol Danvers the female adjunct to Captain Marvel from the old comics, before he died. She’s had a comic for years, but Marvel has reworked her costume and has her taking over the title of “Captain” in this new series.

The story is not too bad; a little heavy on the overt “girl power!” charge at the beginning of the book; with the villain taunting Danvers with sexist remarks while she and Captain America battle him, and of course she wins the day, because “girls are awesome! I thought none of that really needed to be said, but the rest of the story was great, with Danvers working through her reluctance to take on the title of “Captain” from her old friend and mentor.

And hands down, the new costume is my favorite superhero costume ever, knocking my former favorite – Captain America – into the dust. It’s pretty damned awesome. I love it so much, I made a t-shirt design inspired by it, that you can buy at this link on Red Bubble. Unfortunately, they made me take the design down.

Captain Marvel Shirt Design
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