Fonts à la française!

A couple of weeks ago I came home from a rather lovely holiday in Nice, South of France. We had a super-handy apartment right on the promenade, and the weather was much nicer than expected for early October. Most importantly, copious amounts of red wine, cheese and bread were eaten. C'est la vie!

I love looking at the different styles of signage when you're on holiday. From hand painted shop signs tucked away down little alleys, to neon signs blinking down the main street. They always seem to look more interesting, colourful and personable to the company/people who own the business than the usual signs we see on every British high street. 

During our walks throughout the Old & New town of Nice, I tried to snap some of my favourite examples of signage on the shops, restaurants and official buildings. 

It wasn't too clear at the time, but looking back at the photos below there seem to be two distinct 'french' styles in Nice. 

1. The first style is quite thin, italic, cursive, in a solid colour - think Monotype Corvosia. 

2. The second, and more prominent style uses block capitals and wide kerning with a solid shadow, usually white or lighter than the font colour. 

Across all examples there appears to be a common family of colours used which are all warm/earthly: red, burgandy, brown, cream, black, yellow...

So, if you're working on a design project which requires a french touch, here are some fonts which might help you out: 

Click to download!

Thanks for reading, Melissa x

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Musical theatre: poster design tips!

I've been involved with musical theatre groups for around 10 years now - which is a little bit scary to think as that time has flown by! I started out with ICE (Independent Community Entertainment) and Lanark Panto Club, and for the last couple of years I've been part of LAMS (Lanark Amateur Musical Society) as part of the cast and a committee member. 

With posters being one of the main methods of advertising an amateur production, it's important that they look good enough to pull in the punters! I know that a lot of community groups don't have enough budget to pay designers to produce advertising materials, so most of the time it's someone in the cast/committee that ends up creating them. 

It can be hard to know where to start designing a poster for a performance, with the amount of information you need to fit on (dates, times, prices, rights etc) and any brand guidelines linked to the actual show. (logo, graphics etc)

As a little helper to other amateur dramatics groups out there, I've pulled together some tips for creating posters and a A3 layout template that might be of use. (see below design tips)


Design tips

1. Beware of high contrast gradients or gradients that use more than two colours. These can look quite dated. Keep gradients subtle and stick to harmonious colours not too far apart on the colour wheel. For example white/grey, orange/yellow, purple/blue. 

2. Just say no...to Wordart. Over fussy text with too many effects (3D, bevel, gradient, shadow) is another way to make posters look dated. If you want to make your text stand out try using a free font from a website like dafont.com.  

3. If you're going to include photographs in your poster make sure to crop the edges carefully - organic forms like hair can be especially tricky to make look neat and professional. 

4. There might be a a lot of elements in your poster, so make sure the important details stand out by making them easy to read and in the right place. (see guide below!) The most important details are probably the show name, dates, location, price and how to get tickets. 

5. Don't steal images from Google! It can be tempting to copy and paste images you need from Google, but it's actually illegal. A great site for royalty free images is sxc.hu. 

6. Always place text on a solid or semi-solid colour background so it's legible. If you need to place it over an image try adding a low opacity shape behind it. 

7. As we tend to read from top to bottom, left to right, it makes sense lay your poster out so the most important details are easy for people to spot. Although, rules are made to be broken so sometimes this layout can be moved around if the visual idea requires it. 

Example A3 poster layout 

Some good examples

If you're looking for someone to design your poster for a low cost please feel free to send me an email to melissareilly3@gmail.com :) 

Thanks for reading, Melissa x

Greetings from...America!

The jet lag is just about wearing off, and I'm becoming accustomed to sleeping in a proper bed again (who knew the divine powers of a mattress?) since touching down in Glasgow early on Thursday morning after an amazing three weeks in the USA. Myself and 7 other twenty-somethings from around the world journeyed from New York to Los Angeles with trekamerica on the company's famous 'Southern Sun' trip. Whilst I was holding up the Scottish contingent on my own, we had Angela from New Zealand, Roy from Korea and 5 other gals/guys from England. Leading the group was our amazing tour guide Becky, from Washington State. It was such an incredible experience, I'm sure we'll all remember it for years to come. 

After sifting through all of my souvenirs and random artifacts I picked up along the way, I discovered I had quite the postcard collection going on. Whilst I didn't manage to raid a gift shop in each of the 18 states we passed through, the ones I did manage to get are from some of my favourite states/cities we visited: Texas, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Washington D.C.

I love the down right cheesy graphics on some of the postcards. They remind me of the idealistic America I had in my mind before setting off on the trip: big, brash, bold, colourful and a little bit retro. 

For your viewing pleasure, and from a graphic design point of view here's a look at the different styles of postcards you can pick up from sea to shining sea. 

Do you have a favourite postcard? Mine could be glitter-tastic Vegas!

Thanks for reading, Melissa.

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