So, at the risk of irritating other designers, I’m going to give you guys some tips for how to step into Do It Yourself Design on a tight budget. There are “industry secrets” that can help you keep costs low but still create decent design. Obviously there is no substitute for a real designer. We’re trained by professionals, we have valuable experience, and we live & breathe this stuff. Ultimately, a professional designer will always produce better designs than a design hobbyist.

OK, enough of the caveats. On to the DIY Design Tools…

Typography

Let’s start with typography. Every design that involves letters should start with type choice.

By the way, the difference between a font and a typeface is this: typeface: the design of the letterforms (a.k.a. “glyphs”). font: the package the letterforms com in. Example: on a musical album, the songs themselves (chord structures, lyrics, melodies, harmonies) are the typeface. The CD or Record itself is the font.

1. Do not use Comic Sans.
2. Do not use Papyrus.
3. Do not use Times New Roman.
4. For printing, if you want to use Arial, don’t. Use Helvetica instead. The only time you should use Arial is on the internet. Besides, Arial is Microsoft’s lame attempt to copy Helvetica.
5. If you’re using Coolvetica, well, I’m sorry, but it’s really not that cool. Just use Helvetica instead, or change font types altogether.

So what do you do? You really only need a couple of go-to resources. My first suggestion is to regularly check out the MyFonts Specials page. The vast majority of typeface designs on the Specials page are good. Some are terrible, but at least you’ll be using something besides Comic Sans, Times New Roman, Papyrus or Arial. What? Do I sound like a snobby, overly self-important artsy-fartsy jerk? Well, maybe I am—but only when it comes to font choices.

Second, check out Jos Buivenga’s exljbris Font Foundry. Jos is a Dutch typographer in the forefront of new type design. His designs are friendly and approachable while also imparting a sense of stability, trustworthiness and precision. The heavier weights (bold, heavy) of his designs are very happy and fun. Calluna can be very serious and classic, while Calluna Sans can be more youthful. Bottom line: no matter what project you’re working on, Jos Buivenga’s fonts will work. You can’t go wrong here. Plus—and here’s the kicker—he offers at least one style of all his fonts for free! Yes, free. For many people, good typography starts with Jos.

Use font families. When you’re designing a layout, like a document, website, poster, et cetera, it’s ok to use more than one font. At the most, you should use three. It’s important that fonts match without duplicating each other. Here’s some easy rules to follow:

• Don’t use two different sans-serif typefaces in the same design (Calluna Sans & Gill Sans for instance).
• Don’t use two different serif typefaces in the same design (Jenson & Garamond for instance). The same goes for Slab styles (a.k.a. Egyptian styles), Script styles, et cetera.
• Do use different typefaces from the same type family together. For instance, Calluna & Calluna Sans are great together, as are all the fonts in the Museo family.
• Do use different typefaces from the same designer—as long as they aren’t the same style (see the first point above). For instance, Museo Slab for titles, Calluna Italic for subtitles and Calluna Sans for body text would be a good combination.
• Some other great typography houses to check out are Hoefler & Frere-Jones, TypeTogether, Alejandro Paul, and Erik Spiekerman.

Subscribe to the MyFonts email list. They send out great email newsletters that are short, beautiful, incredibly informative, and they will lead you to new, well-designed fonts.

Imagery

If you need imagery for a design, do not use clipart. Ever. Never ever. Head over to iStockphoto and spend a dollar on a stock photo or stock illustration. If you need to edit a vector illustration, download the free GIMP software.

Logo

Need a logo? Here’s where it gets sticky. Well, I guess everything in this post is potentially sticky, but that’s beside the point—unless you’re sticky. Logo design is really hard. Just being honest here. It takes a lot of time, effort, creative energy and skill to come up with a “good” logo. If you use a stock logo design company, or if you use one of the online logo contest sites, you will not be happy. Period. Maybe at first you’ll see your new logo and think, “Ooooh sparkles!” But in the end, there’s simply no way for a designer to communicate your vision, values and mission without interviewing you, working with you, and charging you a lot of money. So, if you need a logo, call me instead.

Can’t afford to hire me to design your logo? No problem. Just use a suitable typeface, set really big with the letters squished close together (called “kerning”).

• If you’re operating a serious business with lots of history and stability in your brand, use Officina, Jenson Pro or Calluna Sans or even Garamond Premiere Pro. Don’t use plain ol’ Garamond, though.
• If you’re historical and stable but also want to be modern and clean, try Meta, Museo Sans or Gotham. Gill Sans works sometimes as well for this.
• If you want to make sure you fit in, appear trustworthy, and maybe add just a smidgen of European flare, you can use Helvetica Neue (pronounced “Noy-uh”). Be forwarned, though: Helvetica is everywhere. That’s why it makes you fit in with everything. Seriously.
• If you’re a more youthful, organic business, try something like Calluna Sans, Museo Slab, Archer and/or Ideal Sans by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Layout

Use the Golden Ratio for everything. What’s the Golden Ratio? 1.62:1. Or, to be more geektastic about it, the Golden Ratio (a.k.a. Divine Ratio) is 1.618034 to 1.  That means if you draw a shape that is 1 inch tall, it should be 1.62 inches wide to fit in the Golden Ratio.  If your logo is 1 inch tall, it should be 1.62 inches wide.

The ratio scales up and down infinitely, so let’s say you’re doing a 1 page newsletter on a sheet of Letter (8.5×11 inches) paper. Let’s say 11 inches will become the “1″ in the ratio. Divide 11 by 1.62, and you get 6.79. So, you could make the main content portion of your page 6.79 inches wide, which leaves you 1.71 inches of width on the page for a little sidebar or table of contents or content callouts or contact info, etc.  Let’s take it another step. Divide 6.79 by 1.62 to get the next step down. The result is 4.19. So, make the header at the top of the newsletter 4.19 inches. And that’s the entire layout!  4.19 inch header (a.k.a. Masthead), 6.79 inch wide content area. Break it up into two columns for some visual interest. Also, put some stock photos in the content, and have text wrap around them.

Use staggered font weights. Have sections of content use headings in a Bold, large type size.  Also, if you’re using a sans serif for body type, use a serif for headings. If you’re using a serif for body content, use a sans serif for headings.  Use italics for long quotes.

Website Design

Get a free WordPress account and use one of the free themes, either the TwentyTen theme or a WooThemes theme. If you’ve got a little money to spend, set up an $8.00/month Rochen account and use the automatic scripts to install WordPress or Joomla. Then buy your own WordPress theme or Joomla theme. At that point, you can get a designer to install your theme for pretty cheap.

Have any other suggestions for people? Share them below in the comments! I’m skimming the surface of lowest common denominator here, and honestly, I don’t really follow any of these suggestions, but for those who need to do desktop publishing cheaply and quickly, I think I’ve given you some good tools here.

A second key to becoming a trendsetting thinker is to learn who you are.  What makes you “you”?  You are unique. You are singular.  There’s nobody else out there that is quite like you, so if you want to be trend setting, just be yourself!  It may sound trite, and well, it is, but that doesn’t change the truth of the statement.  My highest goal in identity design and branding is to learn who my clients really are—what drives them, what makes them “tick”, who they are and who they aren’t.  Then, I translate that knowledge into the visual language.  When a well-executed brand stands among its peers, it will stand out because it is unique.

So go out there and be yourself, artists and designers!  Find your own voice in the marketplace.  This is just as important as skill and experience; if you don’t know who you are and what you want out of your life, you’ll flounder.

But what do you do when you’re not branding an organization? What if you’re branding an event?

Events are transient; they are here one day and gone the next.  Their target audience does not necessarily reflect the target demographic of the organization that’s putting on the event.  For instance, take the Macworld Expo.  It’s main sponsor is Macworld magazine, a periodical aimed squarely at people who have purchased a computer made by Apple, Inc. in the last ten years.  The Macworld Expo, however, is aimed at all technology companies and vendors primarily, and secondarily at technology consumers.  Notice the word “computer” isn’t mentioned.  The Macworld Expo competes mainly against technology expos like E3.  Therefore, the branding of each year’s Macworld Expo is completely independent of Macworld Magazine.

Macworld Magazine Website Homepage

Macworld Expo Website Homepage

So, let’s get down to the how-to part of this article.

1. Interview someone who carries the vision/mission for the event.  This usually doesn’t have to be the president of whatever organization is putting on the event.  You’ll probably find someone in management or an event planner that understands the core purposes of the event.
2. Don’t get caught up in the administrative details of the event.  When you are doing the interview, most managers will want to speak about what the conference will do; that’s not important for the branding.  The promotion and branding must come from the vision, the purpose, the “heart” of the event.  If there is a central theme to keynote addresses, these will be more important to communicate than any particular element of the event.
3. Decide on a central person to highlight in the advertising.  Usually there’s a keynote speaker that’s relatively famous.  You’ll want to make this person central in the advertising. Remember that people connect with people; there’s no greater draw to an event than a human face.  If the event you are branding doesn’t have a keynote speaker, there’s probably some major event or offering that you can highlight.  For instance, if you’re marketing a state fair, you could focus on a favorite competition or a new roller coaster ride.  This “rule” has to be held loosely.  Sometimes it’s best to make a theme the focus of your marketing efforts instead of a person.
4. Decide on a primary and secondary target demographic.  Hopefully the event organizers already have a demographic in mind.  If so, make sure your visual language fits the audience.  You don’t want to use dark, grunge, death metal imagery if your target audience is women over the age of 65 living in rural Georgia, USA.  Conversely, you don’t want to use pink doilies in your design if the target audience is men under the age of 30 living in London, England.
5. Your theme should be original enough to stand out amidst it’s medium (direct mail, email newsletter, website ad banner, etc.) but not so trend-setting as to be unrelatable to the target audience.  This is the core of what it means to be a trend-setting designer. You have to push the boundaries—your own personal skill boundaries and the perceptions of your viewers—but you have to keep your design sufficiently rooted in pop culture. That is, unless you’re looking to shock people.
6. Get a budget figure up-front for all the marketing of the event.  You’ll have to figure in printing costs, shipping for printed materials, domain/hosting for website(s), stock photography, or hiring a photographer, etc. All of that has to be taken into consideration before you quote a price for your part in everything.
7. Lastly, remember to have fun. You’re branding something that’s going to be here and gone very quickly, so don’t invest too much into the project emotionally.  If it gets too tedious, drop the project and move on!

Some would say the problem started with the digitization and consequent low-price proliferation of stock photography, followed soon thereafter by stock illustration.  When online stock photos first came out, photographers were initially in uproar about the sudden drop in worth of their product as stock photography companies began to offer royalty-free subscription services, and eventually pay-as-you-go royalty-free stock photography for ridiculously cheap prices.  Some would still argue that the design industry has suffered at the hands of low-cost stock photography, while others (me included) make the argument that in a capitalist society, the marketplace determines not just supply and demand but also product variation within a given business sector.  What you see now in the stock photography marketplace is a clear quality-to-price ratio when comparing low-cost royalty free stock imagery to higher-cost rights managed stock imagery.  By and large, professional photographers and illustrators can still get top dollar for their work by only submitting their pieces to higher-end stock imagery suppliers.

There is some type of logical boundary between producing, purchasing and using stock photography and doing the same with logos.  Here’s what I’m ranting about: using a stock photo or even a stock illustration is comparable to a carpenter buying a new tool. Sure, it might be a tool that’s so specialized that it can only ever be used on one job, but still—it’s just a tool.  However, when someone buys a stock logo, it’s comparable to calling up a random doctor from the Yellow Pages, and saying to the doctor, “Hey, I gotta fever. And the only prescription—is more cowbell.”  I couldn’t resist.  Actually, it’s like saying to the doctor, “I have a disease which requires a doctor to cure. Please give me a prescription for some medication. You’ll have to guess what my symptoms are, and you won’t see me.  I’ll send you five bucks, and I expect to be fully cured upon the medicine’s delivery.”  You see, a logo is meant to effectively communicate who you are using the visual language.  A designer has no way of knowing who you are—your likes, dislikes, your vision, mission, objectives, your corporate culture, your history and plans for the future, your competitors—unless the designer asks you about these things, or talks to you long enough to get a sense of these things.  When you purchase a stock logo, all of these issues are left to you—someone with presumably no training in the visual language.  Another way to illustrate this is using another medical analogy.  Imagine you have one or two very strange symptoms, say persistent dull headaches that won’t go away, and a tingling sensation in your right ribcage.  You do some research online and find out that it could be one of two life-threatening diseases, or up to 5 non-risky short-term illnesses that don’t need treatment.  The problem is, you’re not a doctor.  You don’t know if the cramp you felt yesterday was another symptom or just bad pizza.  Maybe the pain in your big toe just now is another symptom.  But, instead of going to a doctor to find out what’s going on, you just go to the local Walgreens, stroll through the pharmacists’ medicine supply and pick something that you think will fix you.  You think to yourself, “I googled this extensively, and read the Wikipedia article thoroughly. I know what’s going on, and this is the right medicine for me.”  But you’ve never had any real medical training, so in the end you have no authority to judge what is good or bad for you.  So it is with stock logos.  The untrained consumer only has non-objective insular opinions about what works for them.  Without an expert (a.k.a. Designer), the consumer is lost—whether they know it or not.

My fear with stock logos hitting the market in force is that the world will become inundated with bad design.  Ugly will be everywhere, but like Hershey’s milk chocolate, this new ugly will be so ubiquitous and so universally lauded, that consumers will be fooled into thinking that it’s the best thing ever!  What was that about Hershey’s milk chocolate?  If you look at the source beans and production methods of chocolate on the market today, Hershey’s milk chocolate is an abomination.  But the vast majority of Americans will prefer Hershey’s milk chocolate over something truly great like Green & Blacks or Scharffen Berger because they grew up eating Hershey’s.  Our culture has suffered as a result, and now anything that contains chocolate also contains lots of sugar, flavorings and milk.  I fear that a comparable change will happen in the visual identities of the world’s businesses if stock logos proliferate as much as their purveyors hope they will.  I am not concerned about the design industry itself—the strong will survive and raise their prices to take a higher position in the marketplace.  Weak designers will change professions and great design will become something indicative of a truly great business.  There has never been a better time to be a good designer than in a market nearly overcome by cheap imitations.  If I can educate my readers and my customers to become connoisseurs of good design, I’ll be a happy designer.

If you look at the bottom of this site, you’ll see a Twitter module showing my latest tweets.  If you like what you’ve read here at the site, I encourage you to follow me on Twitter.  I don’t over-tweet, usually only posting once or twice per day, but I always try to make my tweets enjoyable for a large audience.

In the future, I hope to post more blogs here, but as you all know, I never want to do anything that isn’t trend-setting in some way.  There are so many great design blogs out there, that I don’t want to put anything out there that isn’t already being said by someone else.  Speaking of other blogs, check out the Links are in the right sidebar to see sites that I recommend.

There’s a lesson in all of this: don’t reinvent the wheel.  If you want to do something, look around and see if anyone else is already doing it.  If they are, examine how they do it and make sure that what you’ll be doing is significantly different and/or better than the other guy.  In my case, this means that I blog less often.  When I have insights, I’ll share them, but my goal is to serve the graphic design community and my customers—not become a famous blogger!

Brand New has been a resource for many of the past posts on this blog, and it’s one of the first places I visit each day.  Check it out!

• GoDaddy
• Network Solutions
• StartLogic
• FatCow
• Bluehost
• Rochen

Those are all the hosts I’ve used.  Yes, I know there’s lots more, but if you go read enough reviews, you’ll find that pretty much everybody else out there will fit into a category that one of the above also represents.  Here’s the problems that each one has:

GoDaddy uses proxy servers for https connections, so if you’re going to be using secure https connections, applications like VirtueMart will not be happy.  It takes tons of work and phone calls to customer support to get the necessary options in place.  Not worth it.  If you’re just doing a static HTML site, GoDaddy’s fine, as are all the other listed hosts, but if you’re using a dynamic site, avoid these guys.  Plus, their adds really piss me off with all the near-porn.  Come on, guys—really?  Lame.

Network Solutions has unreliable and exceedingly irritating https connections most of the time.  Sometimes they’re slow but usable, most of the time they drop out after a few seconds then reinitialize.  This leads to multiple charges in web stores and frustrated site visitors that blame the web designer.  Plus, Network Solutions is the most prideful, self-absorbed, self-important, over-promising, under-delivering, uncaring web host in existance.  As one of my web design customers put it, when you call them up for tech support, they answer your question by telling you how great they are, then they close the support ticket.  It’s like living in a Dilbert cartoon working with these guys.  One day I’ll be able to look back and laugh at the insanity that is Network Solutions, but for now I’m still working to get out from under their oppresive stupidity.  I have chosen the words in that paragraph carefully.  There’s no hyperbole going on.

StartLogic is friendly and they work hard, but they’re just too slow in regards to database queries.  Unfortunate, because they’ve got a lot going for them.

FatCow is the most friendly and fun to work with group of folks I’ve yet to encounter.  They advertise in Mac magazines too, which is a big plus.  Their site interface actually makes you happy.  Crazy, I know, but there it is.  I love these guys.  One problem: abysmally slow database connections.  My WordPress installation is beginning to get angry even as we speak.  Yes, WordPress can get angry.  So, if you’re going to be using a MySQL database, avoid FatCow like the plague.  In addition, there is no ability with FatCow to install your own SSL certificate.  You can only use their shared https connection, which doesn’t work with many ecommerce applications like VirtueMart.  That’s a deal-breaker, no matter how friendly you are.  I’m in the process of leaving FatCow right now.

Here’s where it gets good.  The last two hosts in my list are my recommended hosts.  One is for those with little-to-no web development experience, and the other is for those who need control and options—those who have experience with web development.

Recommended Web Hosting Companies

Bluehost www.bluehost.com

Pros:

1. Fast in both HTML and PHP/MySQL applications
2. SSL-ready
3. Friendly, unofficially Mormon company
4. Great cPanel interface, easy to use
5. Perfect for anyone who doesn’t know much about web development.

Cons:

1. A reputation for being ‘‘controlling’’
2. They will close down your site if you use cursewords or host pornography.  Not a problem for most, but it’s indicative of broader corporate policies.
3. If you register a domain name with them, they are reticent to give it up to another registrar if you move to another host.  Reticent is an understatement.  They have a reputation for being downright bullheaded about it.  Please note that I’ve not had experience with this issue with Bluehost, but that’s their reputation.
4. Unlimited data transfer, unlimited storage space.  That’s actually a bad thing because it means they run a load-balanced server structure.  So, if you use tons of storage space, or lots of transfer bandwidth, they will restrict your speed so that the other websites on your shared server don’t experience slowdowns.  Anytime a web host advertises unlimited anything, know that if you use a lot of it, your site’s gonna run slow.  Again, not a problem for most sites, but if you’re running a large site, Bluehost may not be for you.

Rochen www.rochenhost.com

Pros:

1. As fast (possibly faster) as Bluehost with PHP/MySQL usage
2. Amazingly great https/SSL setup.  They do most of the work for you.
3. Friendly, completely knowledgable tech support staff.  They work hard to make sure you have no unanswered questions, and that you’re completely happy with your hosting experience.
4. You’re given complete control over your server space, even on shared hosting plans.  It’s magnificent!
5. Good options for managed private servers, virtual private servers, etc.
6. Free, automatic enterprise-level backups to offsite, encrypted backup facilities.
7. Data center in Dallas, TX
8. Amazing customer support forums
9. MyRochen area with detailed past, present and upcoming invoices for easy bookkeeping and accounting.
10. Great resellers program.  Awesome.
11. They are the official www.joomla.org web host, so they are absolute Joomla masters.
12. CGI runs in your site’s own directory, so you never have to CHMOD any files or folders to 777. Ever. That’s security!

Cons:

1. For the novice, you’re given too much control.  It can be daunting.
2. There are a couple too many places to go when dealing with Rochen.  Such as, for tech support, you can go to the Customer Forums website, where you’ll get answers to your questions from customers and Rochen staff, or you can go to the MyRochen website and get answers just from Rochen staff.  They both are confidential, but the MyRochen site is run under https, and not even other Rochen customers see what you write.  Plus, there’s your site’s Control Panel.  Setting each area’s access is done separately, so it takes a while to get every area going.
3. Expensive.  Rochen charges more for what they do than most others, but after working with them now on 3 websites, I see why.  They offer more than everybody else, so they charge more.
4. All tech support and customer support is done by help ticket, chat forum or email.  I’ve yet to find a telephone number anywhere.  I prefer it this way, as this is the way of the future: no central office, no one telephone number to call.  If you have an issue, all the staff is alerted, and the first to respond is the one that takes the ticket.  But, if you’re used to calling a person, you might end up feeling slighted that you can never speak to a human.

So, the final word:

If you’re inexperienced with hosting, or if the site will be handed off to someone who’s inexperiences with hosting and the website in quesion will never be as big as amazon.com, Bluehost is the ticket.

If you are a professional web designer or developer, there’s no better choice than Rochen.  If you’re running an ecommerce site, Rochen’s the way to go.  If you want to become a reseller, Rochen is the deal.

Gabriel and I collaborated on a project for a client of mine, Living Way Church.  I had already designed Living Way’s corporate identity, and collaborated with Cotten:Tech to do a website for them as well.  Gabriel and I worked together to develop a logo for Living Way’s new youth ministry, which would be called 2Twenty2, based on a scripture from II Timothy 2:22.

We were successful, as Living Way is using the logo, and has gotten a great response from it.  Gabriel has a fascinating digital design style that I call Neue Graffiti.  If the art of graffiti were to be reinvented, Gabriel’s work would be at the forefront of the movement.  It’s painterly, raw, textured and original.

He’s got a new blog site up showcasing some of his work in traditional mediums: graphite pencil portraits, pen and ink drawings, oil painting, and so forth.  Check it out! Gabriel Leake Portfolio

Things are pretty busy ’round here, but I found the time tonight to share my thoughts on the modern Christian church and how graphic design is being mishandled, as well as what should be done about it.  Check it out!

BBC Logo

Eric Gill is an interesting figure in history, with his autobiography recalling events which, if true would mean that he was either sexually perverse or insane.  It is also possible, considering his incredible wit, that the sordid events written about in his autobiography never actually occurred, and that he was using his autobiography as a way of pushing the public’s “buttons”.

In any case, we can look at his life, works and perspective on design and learn a great deal.  I’m recounting here several amazing quotes from Gill that can help us see how he thought and operated.

When asked to describe his early artistic motivations,

Eric Gill began to recount the first time he saw his mentor, a true calligrapher, writing.  He described those experiences thusly:

On those occasions I was caught unprepared. I did not know such beauties could exist. I was struck as by lightning, as by a sort of enlightenment. On that evening I was thus rapt. It was no mere dexterity, that transported me; it was as though a secret of heaven were being revealed.

Hopefully we can all relate to that experience, whether it was seeing a beautiful work of art as a child, or seeing a clear rainbow after a summer rain, there is nothing as inspiring as beauty.

On comparing typography to other forms of art:

Moreover it is a precise art. You don’t draw an “A” and then stand back and say: “there, that gives you a good idea of an ‘A’ as seen through an autumn mist”, or: “that’s not a real ‘A’ but gives you a good effect of one.” Letters are things, not pictures of things.

This is a fascinating take on what makes typography stand apart. When we view a painting or a sculpture, we are looking at a depiction of something else, whereas with typography and in an abstract way, photography as well, we are looking at the actual thing – not a depiction of something. But what happens when we add imagery to a typeface? What about old illuminated manuscripts, wherein letters were often embellished to appear like a person or something from nature?

In his later business life, Eric successfully broke into the world of architectural drawing, carvings and inscriptions. Historically, these things were all done by the architect working on the building in question, but Eric began to gain the trust of architects, and would remove this part of their workload from them.

One secret to his success:

My chief claim was that I could relieve the architect of the necessity of supplying drawings in connection with one craft at least. But such a claim depended upon my ability to give them something better than they could get otherwise. Therefore I had to profess to “know” — and to know better than they did themselves.

This is the task of all designers, and in fact, any business seeking to provide a good or service that the customer could potentially provide themselves. I have been asked before, “Why should I pay you to develop a website for me, when I can get a free one included with my GoDaddy hosting plan?” Or, “Why should I hire you to create a custom logo for me, when I can use a Microsoft Word template and do it for free?” We must be true experts, we must truly know more than our clientele about what makes a design work, and how to communicate visually. We must be completely fluent in the visual language. That is the key to success as a designer: the ability to understand and communicate in the visual language of line, shape, color, contrast, movement, structure, form, purpose, and so forth. But just as important as commanding the visual language, we have to be good with verbal language — we have to help our clientele understand why they should hire us and not go it alone. We have to “know” better than they do, and we have to communicate that knowledge.

What is Good Lettering?

And what was fine lettering? It was in the first place rational lettering; it was exactly the opposite of “fancy” lettering. That was the new idea, the explosive notion, and, you might say, the secret. For the world thinks that art and reason are complete opposites, that the artist is the irrational person and all his works the product of caprice and emotional temperament. Art dealers, art critics and artists themselves have more or less consciously conspired to preserve the fiction. Thus art becomes mysterious and a false glamour surrounds it — and better prices.
And what applied to the “fine” arts applied to all the others. As soon a thing was given the title of “artistic” it was supposed to be a work of fancy, and irrational. Artistic lettering meant lettering in which legibility was sacrificed to something called beauty — beauty, “the beautiful”, that which tickles your fancy.
On the other hand, following Morris, following Ruskin, following the universal practice of the world, we were in revolt against the whole conception of art as being irrational.
What is good lettering? That was the job before me. And at every point a justification must be found in reason. Of course we weren’t teetotalers about fancy work, but it must be kept subordinate, and even fancy work should grow out of legitimate occasion. What is decoration but that which is seemly and appropriate?

What is Legibility?

Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

What a great way to look at it. This is an essential principal for all successful designs. We must not put roadblocks in the way of the audience — this is why website intro movies, and sometimes even Welcome pages are a bad idea. If someone visits your website, they are doing so to see the content that the site holds. They aren’t coming to see a movie about how great you are. They want to know what you think, and how you operate. Unless, of course it’s a movie or television network site. In that case, visitors are coming specifically for video content. This applies to print design as well, in that an otherwise good design can become completely ineffective if it is too far outside the understood norms of the target demographic. Know who you’re designing for; who you’re trying to reach. Operate within what those people expect, while simultaneously pushing the boundaries and expectations just enough to give your design a breath of fresh air. It needs to stand out, but not be conspicuous; it needs to grab attention without being gaudy. We need to set trends without turning away those who would follow our trends.

Nevertheless, seeing the whirl of eccentricity into which modern advertising is driving us, it seems good and reasonable to return to some idea of normality, without denying ourselves the pleasure and amusement of designing all sorts of fancy letters whenever the occasion arises. A man who knows his road can occasionally jump off it, whereas a man who does not know his road can only be on it by accident. So a good clear training in the making of letters will enable a man to indulge more efficiently in fancy and impudence.

On Having Good Design Sense:

Good will seems to be a common possession of mankind, but good sense, i.e. intelligence, critical ability, and that intense concentration upon perfection which is a kind of genius, is not so common. Everybody thinks that he knows an A when he sees it, but only the few extraordinary rational minds can distinguish between a good one and a bad one, or can demonstrate precisely what constitutes A-ness. When is an A not an A? Or when is an R not an R?

On Modern Manufacturing:

So we have the designer who designs what he never makes and the worker who minds the machine which makes what he never designs. And we have the salesman who neither designs things nor minds machines but is supposed to know what the public wants. But the public doesn’t know what it wants, and it has no means of finding out.
My one complaint against machine-made goods is precisely this: that they too often hide their light under a bushel of “design”. Think how decent alarm clocks might be if they were just as plain and well-made outside as they often are inside!
If we insist on the ornamental we are not making the best of our system of manufacture, we are not getting the things that system makes best. The process by which a railway locomotive has become the beautiful thing it now is, this process must be welcomed in all other departments of manufacture. … And ornamental typography is to be avoided no less than ornamental architecture in an industrial civilization.
The truth is that a thing fit for its purpose is necessarily pleasant to use and also beautiful (i.e. seen as being in itself delightful to the understanding). I think an artist is not a person who makes things beautiful, but simply one who deliberately makes things as well as he can — whether he is a clock-maker or picture-painter; because machine-made things are very much better when no “designer” has had anything to do with them — when they are just plain serviceable things. I think that if you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.