Whereas fine art (such as illustration) looks inward by asking the viewer to see the artist behind the art, graphic design looks outward by asking the viewer to see the art and go do something because of it. While these two concepts overlap in places, the purpose of each is very different.
graphic design
You Know You’re Just My Typeface (Or Is It Font?)
By Bayley McComb @tweetsthings
A few typographical terms still in use today have historical origins. As technology and the practice of digital font creation have advanced, some terms have been replaced by their digital counterparts in conversations surrounding graphic design.
Five Important Lessons We Learned from Freelancing
By Adrian Burke & Jenny Kimura
Do you like making your own schedule and choosing your own projects? Are you someone who doesn’t mind being home all day and is probably also a night owl? Chances are you’ve thought about being a freelancer, perhaps for design, editing, or marketing. The publishing world, like many other industries, is increasingly relying on outsourcing […]
Reading Flow in Book Design and Layout
By Riley Pittenger
What makes your favorite book your favorite? Most answers focused on content will include positive story elements related to characters, language, etc. These effective books and our interactions with them rely on the communication of a story, experience, or information through the “text” of the inside, the interior design. Along with the contents of a book, it is important that readers shape meaning, glean information, or immerse themselves in a text. If the text and interior elements do not have a familiar and clear structure separating different chapters or ingredients from steps, the product runs afoul of difficulty and confusion and invites criticism. By orienting the text to fit the market, reader, and content in the clearest way possible, books are memorable because of the choices made through interior design.
A Haiku of the Story
By Margaret Henry
The last time you heard from the Ocean in My Ears team, we were busy copyediting the manuscript. Well, now the copyediting is finished, and we have since turned our attention to the cover. Like many of our projects at Ooligan Press, this was a collaborative effort. Taylor Farris came up with the original concept for the cover that featured a watercolor splash, a denim textured font, and a clean aesthetic; Leigh Thomas built upon this design, adding the mountains and the reflection, as well as fine-tuning the details; and Riley Pittenger hand drew the illustrated car. Needless to say, the result is a cover that is more than the sum of its parts, but let’s go ahead and take a closer look at some of those parts anyway.
Finding the Right Font for Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before
By Riley Kennysmith
As the interior designer for Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before, one of my biggest challenges was choosing a font for the book. The obvious first requirement is a font that reads well in large blocks at a small size. With that in mind, I started by collecting a list of fonts that felt […]