Negative Space in Balloon Shapes

Matt Bernier of Comic Tools lays out a great tutorial on the dos and don'ts of lettering in comics. A lot of it applies the common sense rules of typography and positive/negative space to word balloons. These are all really good ideas to keep in mind whether you're lettering by hand or using a font.

Read here --> This week: Balloon Shape.


He points out that while some examples of poor negative space are the result of the ease of computer lettering, even comics greats like Bill Watterson and Winsor McCay had bad lettering habits.

Also, in the comments, a brief discussion comes up about using hyphenation to break up words, which I've always considered a big no-no. But I love how Matt puts it:

"...breaking up a word with a hyphen to make it fit is like breaking your kid's feet to get him into smaller shoes. He'll fit, but he ain't gonna run too good any more."

It's a long thorough read, but a good one—with lots of doodles and samples to go along with it. HIGHLY recommended.

Creative Juices on Facebook!

Howdy, Creative Juicers and Fablefolk! Allie's previous post was our 200th post! (This is 201) Not bad since we started the blog almost 2 years ago. There's a bit of activity going on behind the scenes as we continue to spread inspiration and creativity. We recently launched a Fan Page on Facebook.

If you frequent Facebook--> Join here!

You'll get Creative Juices updates in your news feed. This was on a suggestion from CJ contributor Naomi (thanks!).

We're also working on a new look and feel. Here's a little guy I conjured up.


And some possible logotype treatments.


Thanks for staying with us this long. And if you're a new reader, welcome aboard! There's lots more to come!

Oh, Twitter

Twitter is currently down for unscheduled maintenance.
We expect to be back in about an hour. Thanks for your patience.

Twitter has been super buggy today. I had to laugh when I saw this moments ago. First time for me, anyway. Most of us have seen the "Fail Whale" before, or the missing page "ghost" bird. Here are those and some others. It's a fun use of illustration to communicate something that would be cause for alarm for most of their audience. Lightens the mood, I suppose.

Content-Aware Scaling is here

Adobe Photoshop CS4 was released today, and everyone is chattering about what's called content-aware scaling. It's probably the most "everyone gather around the computer and check this out" feature they've added in awhile, allowing you resize an image without distorting key content. The Linda video above demonstrates how easy it is to transform a landscape image into a vertical image, without anyone knowing the wiser. Both scary and cool. It also shows where the technology doesn't work. Here's another video by Russel Brown of Adobe.

Got Milk?

--> got milk?

Thirsty? Cookies welcome. Lactose intolerant applicants need not apply ;)

Great site design and overall concept. Take special note of all the attention paid to transitions and sound design.

Vintage Logos

---> VIEW HERE
A huge collection of vintage logos.
GREAT examples of logo and id design.
Thanks, Samantha!

Simplicity in Design

via Compiler:


Cartoon from Stuff that Matters.

Google?

What's wrong with this picture? Wired has an interesting article about how Google got its logo, and how it ended up being so minimalistic and colorful. As always, it's great to see process and how many iterations it can sometimes take to nail something down.

Logo R.I.P.

I dug this up via Boing Boing:

http://www.logorip.com/


'Logo R.I.P.' is a commemoration of logos withdrawn from their ocular landscape. Many are considered icons of their time or international design classics, whilst other cost millions only to be replaced within a year or two. These logos disappeared, yet in contrast to the ceremony an pomp that greeted their arrival, they often suffered an ignoble death. Now deemed defunct, they are consigned to the logo graveyard, no longer allowed to signify.

Funny stuff. You can even leave condolences to your favorites. It's a book, as well.