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Home2015April

April 2015

Freebies, Hand Drawn, Hand Lettering, Holiday, Typography

Can you believe Mother’s Day is next Sunday! NEXT Sunday! Mother’s Day never gets forgotten in my family – My mom was born on Mother’s Day (the year she was born, her birthday – May 13th – was Mother’s Day) and then my youngest sister was also born on May 13th, so she was born on my mom’s birthday AND it was Mother’s Day that year! It was so coincidental the local newspaper wrote an article about us, so we still have the clipping of me at 4 years old sitting on the hospital bed with my brother, my 2 sisters, my dad and mom. My Dad’s dad was born on New Year’s Day and my Mom’s dad was born on Christmas – so it actually gets even crazier, but we’ll save that for another time 😉

Anyway! In celebration of moms, this week’s freebie is a printable hand lettered Mother’s Day card. It’s sized 6″x4″ folded, so it’ll fit in any A4 envelope. Send it out early and get extra points! 🙂

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Tutorials, Web Design

Welcome to the third and last video in the video series, ‘How to Create a WordPress Website from Start to Finish‘! In this week’s final video, we’ll start by briefly walking through WordPress’s interface to get familiar with where everything is for editing purposes. Next, with the help of our friends at seoai.co.uk, we’ll find, install and activate plugins to improve our theme’s SEO, limit spam, offer downloadable content, and provide related posts at the end of every post to keep your readers engaged within your site. We’ll also walk through where to find your theme’s documentation to customize your specific theme even further. By the end of the tutorial, you’ll be up and running and feel confident knowing the little details in the background will be working for you with each new post you create. Let’s get started!

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Fonts, Freebies, Typography

I’ve started using Pirou lately as a headline on some Canva layouts I’ve created, and I’m really liking it! I typically pair it with a regular to medium weight sans serif to create some contrast since Pirou has so much character. Because Pirou is free, I was wondering what kind of buyable fonts were similar that might offer some nice extensions of this look. I discovered Core Deco the other day and I’m getting very tempted – especially because it’s 80% off right now, which means each variation is only $4. Though I wouldn’t completely consider Pirou deco, I really like the different vibes Core Deco gives off + it’s fun to play around with phrases in the type editor on myfonts. Here are a couple of previews with links if you’d like to check them both out a little more 🙂

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Tutorials, Web Design

This is the second video in a 3 video series on how to create a WordPress website from start to finish. If you missed the first part on how to choose the right wordpress theme, check it out here! In this week’s tutorial we get technical – but we’re keeping it easy and understandable, going step by step without anything skipped over or left out. At the end of the video, you’ll have the confidence to start your own WordPress site with your own url using any wordpress theme you picked out to use. For this tutorial, we’ll be using bluehost to purchase our own domain and wordpress hosting which will get our website up and running for anyone to see. Let’s get started!

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Tutorials, Web Design

So let’s talk about websites. As graphic designers – talking primarily print here – we spend a lot of time making really beautiful art that can be hung on walls, printed in magazines, embroidered on polos, or foil stamped on business cards. We make a lot of work in a digital age for a lot of analog applications. For a print designer, getting our work online always seemed like a necessary evil; and a popular necessary evil at that- so much so that Behance did something about it for us. So did Squarespace. Dribbble didn’t try to be, but has become an uncanny solution, too. And those are great for portfolios, but what if you don’t need just a portfolio? What if you want to bedazzle a potential employer with something other than the 20th Behance link they’ve seen today? What if you want a blog, an ecommerce shop to sell your sweet designs, or what if your mom called in a favor for you to make a website for your great aunt Sue’s cake business? We might not be programmers or considered web designers, but we’re smart enough to know we have options. Cue in WordPress: one solution for everything. This is the first video in what will become (what I’m predicting will be) a 3 part video series on how to get your own kick ass wordpress website up from start to finish. This first video goes over everything to look for when picking out the right wordpress website theme for your purpose (be it a blog, ecommerce, portfolio, etc). Read on for all of the tips + tricks I use when getting started.

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Hand Lettering, Roundups, Typography

A few weeks ago I posted about my first Skillshare class, Laying out Your Lettering for Letterpress, and I am so excited to say that over 400 students have enrolled! If you love letterpress and have always wanted to learn how to set up a file for letterpress printing, this class was made especially for you – and you can get one full month of free membership by using this link if you’d like to check out my class or others 🙂

Anyway! Getting down to business – for those students that have enrolled (and anyone that might still be sitting on the fence) I have 2 (Two!) FULL YEAR subscriptions to skillshare to give away! If you’ve checked out any Skillshare classes before, you know how valuable this is! All you have to do is watch the class, create any hand lettered invitation you’d like, and post your project which should follow the project description. Out of the projects posted, I’ll pick 2 to give the free full year memberships to which I’ll announce May 4th. So! If you’d like to participate, make sure your project is posted by then! To get your hand lettered invitation wheels turning, here are 10 swoon-worthy letterpress invitations for inspiration.

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