Design Jones

“TypoFlat is a personal & experimental project of designer Branislav S. Cirkovic. A set of EPS fonts and vector files free to download and create with. It’s a really nice set of resources and you’re free to build on them and share the results. You can take a closer look HERE.

Just a reminder that if you enjoy the Design Jones blog there are plenty of extra finds and useful links waiting for you on Twitter. You can follow us HERE.

Just ordered a copy of this to refer to at this year’s student workshops. A seriously valuable resource for students, recent graduates and even young design companies, in terms of what potential emploeyrs are looking for and how to best present your work and break in to a tough industry.

“Through more than forty case studies, nearly twenty interviews with experienced professionals, and a series of (nonscientific) surveys, Flaunt is a resource for design students as well as young, experienced, freelance, and independent designers. It explains how one can find a way to cohesively, succinctly and creatively showcase their work through an accessible, effective, and creative portfolio. Flaunt showcases a variety of alternatives through a selection of portfolios that represent both the most common approaches as well as some offbeat executions. Hopefully, this book will help ease the anxiety and burden of creating a portfolio—and, perhaps, even help demystify the process of putting it together, along with the expectations of presenting it.”

Find out more HERE, you can order the book or download it in full as a PDF for just $15!

Thanks to Hannah Reid for the heads up on this one. A great collection of pencil drawn typography that is supplied as high res transparent Photoshop files that can quickly and easily be dropped into your designs. Whilst nothing replaces the authenticity and charm of actually picking up a pencil yourself this is still a really valuable and time-saving resource. You can view the SketchType collection HERE.

This week Smashing Magazine have published a couple of articles relating to iPhone Application design. Having recently completed the design for my first one, they have been really useful in terms of confirming what is ‘best practice’ and the process of creating something for a relatively new medium. You can read thearticle about overdeisgning various elements HERE, and the basics of creating an application HERE. They are well worth bookmarking should you ever need it.

I found John Mander’s blog via Drawn! “His blog is full of sketches, colour studies, and in-progress paintings for those that like to see the behind-the-scenes aspects of an illustrator’s workflow.” You can check it out HERE.

I’m really trying to get into a good habit of sketching more and more at the moment. Some days however it’s hard to know where to begin. The Brainstormer is an application designed to generate random sketch topics by combining random words.

Smashing Magazine have a great post linking through to some ‘beuatiful, free, high-quality fonts, you can see them HERE. My personal favourite comes from ‘The League of Moveable Type’ offering only the best of the best in free, open-source type, Chunk is one of four currently available but designers are invited to join the revolution and contirbute their own. You can view the collection and read their manifesto HERE.

LogoLounge have just published their annual report taking a look and highlights and emerging trends from the past year of submissions to their site. Always a valuable tool and aid in forecasting what’s next in the world of branding. Some keys highlights include a dramatic increase in the use of text within an identity, also vibrant colours and the introduction of another challenge to designers, can they make their logo work at 15×15 pixels for favicons! You can read the full report HERE.

HERE is a really useful collection of articles, tutorials and other resources covering most aspects of life as a freelancer. I’ve found a few of these to be genuinely helpful, one in particular this morning, but well worth checking out or bookmarking.