It's nothing privy, I just have a thing for words; and because today is National Literature Day (it's not), I've filled this post with some word-relevant odds-and-ends. They're designed to facilitate creativity, alleviate writer's block, and inspire.

» Read More

• Here's a quirky little print ad for Swedish Fish that works.

• Here's a bizarre ad for canned mushrooms that doesn't work and gives the innocent, pizza-topping fungi a bad rep.

• Unibody—A free font designed to be used solely at 8pt. Good for captions and illustrations.

• 10 typographic mistakes that everyone—myself included—makes. Blame MS Word. I do.

• The New York Times gets a little too excited over semicolons.

A little under a year ago I took a trip up to Chicago and slept on a friend's hardwood floor. It wasn't a very inviting prospect; a few layers of comforter and a sofa-cushion, packed up against a brick wall of an old firehouse-turned-loft. There are no other words to describe how I felt, towering over my new bed, other than bummed. It may have been the combination of long days and even longer nights, but I have never sleep as comfortably, or as sound, as I did on that small, awkward cot.

What I gathered from the experience is that first impressions are misleading. If I had never slept on that floor for a week, I would have never known its true comfort and, instead, mocked which ever poor sap had to sleep in that misfortune.

Now, I won't deny that I have the potential to be a dork. A fun time to me is a cup of coffee and a game of Scrabble; but when it comes to copy, particularly print ad copy, the smallest mistake sparks a figurative powder-keg within me.

» Read More

Like anything else in this world, presentation means everything. There is probably nothing worse than visiting a site that not only fails to grasp this concept, but also completely throws out all the rules of design and causes an immediate ache behind your eyes. Color is everything. Color has the ability to invoke certain emotions. This means that using the wrong color—or waaaay too much color—can drive a potential customer in the wrong direction.

» Read More

I recently encountered a situation with a website we were working on and, yes, I know that there are hundreds of lines of code out there that do exactly what I am about to discuss, but to me, this is probably the simplest solution and could be easily configured to do what you need it to do.

What was needed you ask? Well, a simple thing really. The client wanted their request form to be a little intuitive. If their users selected an option from the dropdown that was the U.S, then show the U.S. States; if not, then show a textbox for the user to input their area, city, whatever. Granted there is no Database associated with this site, nor did they want one created. So I wrote this little piece to make it do just that.

So to begin let's grab some stuff you need.

» Read More