It doesn't have to be flat or skeuomorphic. It 'just' has to be appropriate. ._.

“We made a conscious decision to embrace modern typographic design and avoid the excesses of skeuomorphism. But like skeuomorphism, flat design also has excesses.”

Thus was born what might be called (with apologies to Duarte, who never used this term) “quasi-flat design,” which is now fairly well entrenched across all of Google’s products.

“Tactile cues are important in touch interfaces, giving users a sense of what they can expect that’s touchable, and how it’s going to behave,” he continued. “It’s not just good from a familiarity perspective; It also touches the fundamental reptile parts of our brain, which knows that is a thing and it has identity and mass and lives in relationship to other things.”

From a brilliant interview with Matias Duarte, Head of design at Android, by Christopher Mims.


If you like pixel art and typography, BitFontMaker is full of awesome! Useful for pixel-based iconsets too. And free!

Dump this in BitFontMaker's 'Import' function (little document with left and right arrow) in the top right bit of the artboard to import the font data. Which is just one face as of now, but hey...

{"65":[0,0,6156,6132,5140,2056,2376,4420,5268,5092,2056,2032,0,0,0,0],"name":"pixelmonsters","copy":"nugget","letterspace":"64"}


How not to use Helvetica Neue "Lighter"

Oh my eyes. Best (or is that worst) part is, the use of Helvetica Neue "Lighter" (not even the actual Helvetica Neue Light) was obviously intentional. Whoever designed this thought it was a good idea to make it look like this.

And they couldn't even get the implementation of their terrible idea right by using @font-face. Helvetica Neue doesn't come with the OS you know... If you really want it to look like that, so much so that you make it integral to your design and sit it on top of your font stack, then license the font.

Considering the client, one would think there's enough money for that.

P.S. If you don't have Helvetica Neue Light installed on your computer, thank your lucky stars, you'll actually be able to read the page.

Bagarozz - Incredibly cool and creative font lets you create your own monsters!

Code and design geek readers, check this out. DL eet. DO EET!

Bagarozz

Install the font, then type your name. Watch the magic.

This is my meatspace name monster, using this Bagarozz font!

And this is my Nugget name monster!

What it does is it associates each graphic with a letter, but somehow positions them so that they are superimposed on each other, allowing the creation of custom monsters based on the letters typed.

It sounds a lot more complicated to use than it is.

Just DL eet, install eet, try eet!

DO EET NAO!

Typography for Lawyers (and Other Folk, Too)

Great design resource covering the basics of typography, with a strong focus on practicality and readability. Although written (as shown) for lawyers, it's relevant to anyone who creates/handles/processes high volumes of 'boring' documents over the course of a work day, since its main aim is to make sure your Boring Documents are as painless (and perhaps even pleasant) to read as possible.

Sample stuff - lots more goodies where it came from!

Good typography is measured on a utilitarian yardstick. Typography that is aesthetically pleasant, but that doesn’t reinforce the goals of the text, is a failure. Typography that reinforces the goals of the text, even if aestheti­cally unpleasant, is a success.

Now that particular paragraph is something I wish more of the baby designers I've dealt with understood.