I'm a real typeface junkie! No matter where I am or what I'm doing, I can't help intently examining type. It's a little like how, because I was a dental assistant in my younger years, I can't help looking at people's teeth.
The electronic age has put a myriad of typefaces at the disposal of not only designers but of anyone with a computer and a word processing program. The results in the non-designer world are often appalling, but in the world of design they are gratifying and inspiring!
Some of you who have been around a little longer, like I have, may remember how incredibly excited we were to have access to Palatino and NewCentury Schoolbook on our first Macintoshes back in the mid-1980s. Nowadays, that limited selection looks like typesetter's abject poverty!
I love being able to offer my clients a wide range of type styles to choose from when designing a book and/or a cover. Typefaces, carefully selected, enhance content and make books appealing to readers. I don't think readers necessarily think about the typography of the books they read, but it subtly influences their reading experience, often communicating very nicely the emotional content (or lack thereof) of a book. A novel should look very different from a book in the self-help/spirituality genre, which should look very different from an academic text. Typography plays as great a role in that as cover artwork does (which is a subject for another day).
So I will continue to pore over billboards, books, magazines, ads, and yes, even web sites, analyzing and thinking about the typography that was chosen—how it makes me feel and what it seems to communicate. It's a harmless pastime that feeds my creative juices for hours on end!
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
A Doggy Update!
We found our dog in September. I'd been haunting the pet adoption web sites, and we had our name in with a couple of Welsh Corgi rescue organizations. And then one day I saw Gaby on PetAdopt.com. Her profile contained a link to a YouTube video, and it was instant love!
Gaby's been with us now for well over six months, and it's a perfect fit. She's a little bundle of love—a designed-by-committee dog made up of chihuahua, English toy spaniel, and Dachshund. She has incredibly soft, curly black fur, a tail that waves like a flag in the breeze, expressive tan eyebrows and tan boots on short little Dachshund legs. She's so happy to be retired from having one litter of puppies after another in her five years.
And we're so happy she chose us!
Re-focusing RMcB Creative
After months of having absolutely no time to think about my business, RMcB Creative Services, a window finally opened up to redesign my web site to reflect a re-focus of the business I do. I invite you to drop in on the site and check out the changes.
I've had the pleasure of typesetting books for two wonderful authors in the past several months. Mary Carroll Moore just published her "bible" on planning, developing, and writing a book: Your Book Starts Here, now available on Amazon.com and soon to be available as an e-Book for Kindle. I was honored that she selected me to design and typeset the interior of the book. You can find it on Amazon.com or on her web site. I wish her all success for this wonderful resource for writers of all levels of ability.
The second book, You Are More Than Good Enough, by Gloria M. Rodriguez, founder of DeAlmas Women's Collective, is just a few weeks away from being ready for publication. Once again, I feel so honored that Gloria chose me to design both the interior and the cover of the book. She has been a joy to work with!
I hope to begin running two or three articles a week on the various aspects of self-publishing, print-on-demand, typography, book layout and design, and cover design. Also, fresh from my first experience with the process, I'll talk here about formatting a self-published book for e-Book publication.
It's such a joy to have this inflow of new energy for my work! Isn't that the way the universe works? Enthusiasm generates more of what we're enthusiastic about! A principle we can recognize in all of life.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Finding a Dog to Love
We recently moved (again!). After a year in a delightful townhome with grounds home to a herd of deer, we decided to seek out a pet-friendly, less expensive alternative and downsize a bit.
The day we made the decision, we found the place—a nice two-bedroom townhome in a rather large apartment complex near the Willamette River southeast of downtown Corvallis. We had regrets about leaving the deer, but somewhere inside a dog was letting us know it needs us, so it was time to move on. June was a whirlwind of granddaughter graduation, another granddaughter's wedding, a big garage sale, weeks of moving stuff we wouldn't have room for to a storage unit, and weeks of packing.
About a week before the actual move, I was gazing out my upstairs office window, when I noticed something in the grass. A brand new fawn! How can I bear to leave this? I thought. And again a few days later when a doe trotted past our living room window trailed by twin fawns cavorting on their spidery little legs.
But then it happened.
All month we had been enjoying a container rosebush profusely blooming on the patio. Ray had planted herbs and flowers, and two pots contained the special treasure of two heirloom tomatoes brought to us as seedlings by friend Amy.
One morning about four days before our move, Ray went out to discover the deer had come down on the patio and eaten our lovely rosebush and nibbled off the tops of our tomato plants. It had been a very cool Spring, and the tomatoes were just taking off and showing us some real growth and a blossom or two.
The next day, even more was nibbled away, and more the day after that. My love affair with the deer had ended. We still said "awwwwwwww" every time the fawns gamboled by with their mom, but the bloom was off the rose. Two days later we moved into our new, more urbane digs.
And today we began our search for a dog to love.
Our first tour of the local humane society was disappointing. The majority of the few dogs we saw there were either withdrawn completely or very wary. A couple were even fearfully aggressive. Only one, Sadie, pushed her cheek up against the kennel gate to be scratched, and it was easy to see she would be a lovely dog to love. But she wasn't OUR dog.
So over the next couple of months we will be visiting shelters and rescue organizations looking for the one dog who looks in our eyes and says, What took you so long?
I can't wait!
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Losing and Regaining One's Center
It has been many months since I made a contribution to this blog—many months and a lot of living.
My mother passed away on March 4, 2010. Below, you can find a post or two on her condition over the last months. Although it was hard to lose her, we had been losing her for several years, and in some ways it was a relief that she would no longer be confined to the body that had ceased to serve her well.
But it was startling to find myself alone in life in a very fundamental way. Although I am surrounded by my husband, our children, and many friends, I found that no longer having my mother in the world, even in the limited way she was here for the last few years, was enormously disconcerting. The power our mothers have to anchor us in this world is astonishing. For weeks afterward, I drifted around the house sort of floating in an amorphous space, sorting out what this meant—having a lifelong connection with someone I loved fiercely severed suddenly. Little waves of grief would hit every couple of days—not wild grief, but a quiet sadness and sense of loss that I simply had to sit with and allow myself to feel until it passed.
I have a little girl-bear—it is the only thing of my mother's that I took away from the nursing home. I had bought her for my mom on Mother's Day the last year that she was reasonably cognizant of gifts. She loved the little bear—cinnamon-colored, with a big pink bow tied around its head and holding a little pink heart that said, "I love mom!" The bear now sits on my bed during the day and on the nightstand at night, and because of all the love my mother poured into it while she had it, I feel love pouring out of it every time I pick it up. It's a dear memento.
Exactly one week after my mother passed, my first granddaughter, Sydney, was born. Emotionally she felt like a gift meant to fill the hole that my mother left behind. I haven't met her face-to-face yet, but I love her so dearly. My son is wonderful about sending photos and videos of both the children, and on Mother's Day this year, he Skyped me so I could see my grandson chattering and showing me his toys, and Sydney staring at the webcam with huge dark eyes. It was a lovely hour, even though the picture was chunky and pixilated from the heavy Mother's Day load on the Internet.
I'm in a process of transformation these days. Something concrete in me has crumbled, and that's actually a good thing. I feel more expansive and free. Some days I miss my mom so much, but I have missed her for years—ever since she began to stumble on words and forget the names of her grandchildren. At the same time, there's a new freedom budding and growing. I don't know where it leads exactly, but it feels all right. It feels like I'm finding a truer center than the one I thought I had. It's tenuous, but I embrace it with gratitude.
My mother passed away on March 4, 2010. Below, you can find a post or two on her condition over the last months. Although it was hard to lose her, we had been losing her for several years, and in some ways it was a relief that she would no longer be confined to the body that had ceased to serve her well.
But it was startling to find myself alone in life in a very fundamental way. Although I am surrounded by my husband, our children, and many friends, I found that no longer having my mother in the world, even in the limited way she was here for the last few years, was enormously disconcerting. The power our mothers have to anchor us in this world is astonishing. For weeks afterward, I drifted around the house sort of floating in an amorphous space, sorting out what this meant—having a lifelong connection with someone I loved fiercely severed suddenly. Little waves of grief would hit every couple of days—not wild grief, but a quiet sadness and sense of loss that I simply had to sit with and allow myself to feel until it passed.
I have a little girl-bear—it is the only thing of my mother's that I took away from the nursing home. I had bought her for my mom on Mother's Day the last year that she was reasonably cognizant of gifts. She loved the little bear—cinnamon-colored, with a big pink bow tied around its head and holding a little pink heart that said, "I love mom!" The bear now sits on my bed during the day and on the nightstand at night, and because of all the love my mother poured into it while she had it, I feel love pouring out of it every time I pick it up. It's a dear memento.
Exactly one week after my mother passed, my first granddaughter, Sydney, was born. Emotionally she felt like a gift meant to fill the hole that my mother left behind. I haven't met her face-to-face yet, but I love her so dearly. My son is wonderful about sending photos and videos of both the children, and on Mother's Day this year, he Skyped me so I could see my grandson chattering and showing me his toys, and Sydney staring at the webcam with huge dark eyes. It was a lovely hour, even though the picture was chunky and pixilated from the heavy Mother's Day load on the Internet.
I'm in a process of transformation these days. Something concrete in me has crumbled, and that's actually a good thing. I feel more expansive and free. Some days I miss my mom so much, but I have missed her for years—ever since she began to stumble on words and forget the names of her grandchildren. At the same time, there's a new freedom budding and growing. I don't know where it leads exactly, but it feels all right. It feels like I'm finding a truer center than the one I thought I had. It's tenuous, but I embrace it with gratitude.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Post-holiday Comeback
The holidays pretty much eclipsed my intent to write at least a few times a week. Dashing about visiting family and friends, getting an icky cold, hosting houseguests, cooking, keeping up a physical therapy regimen for my "surgerized" knee—left little time for blogging. Any insights and illuminations just evaporated in the busyness.
Perhaps my greatest Christmas gift was the reappearance in my e-mail inbox of my dear friend from girlhood after an extended sabbatical from communication. It has restored what is for me a reassuring daily touching of bases—nothing earthshaking, but little daily sharings of ordinary life experiences, movies, recipes, etc. A fifty-three-year friendship is a precious thing, and I am grateful for all of it, even though the very idea that I could have known someone for over fifty years is almost absurd. How in the world did I get this old?
Perhaps my greatest Christmas gift was the reappearance in my e-mail inbox of my dear friend from girlhood after an extended sabbatical from communication. It has restored what is for me a reassuring daily touching of bases—nothing earthshaking, but little daily sharings of ordinary life experiences, movies, recipes, etc. A fifty-three-year friendship is a precious thing, and I am grateful for all of it, even though the very idea that I could have known someone for over fifty years is almost absurd. How in the world did I get this old?
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Creating with Light
Two different streams of thought flow through me this morning. This one is about the title of this blog, Creating with Light.
I spent quite a number of years, beginning in the mid-80s, doing graphic design for the print world. I love bringing order and beauty to the printed word—I can get lost for hours in the process of laying out images and exploring the best typography to enhance them, all with an eye to creating a piece of printed material, whether it be a book, a brochure, a business card or a poster, that causes readers to want to open and explore it.
Something different happened when I began to design Web sites in 1998. Suddenly the mechanical limitations of the printed page were no longer in play. I was creating with light—using red, blue, and green light instead of yellow, red, and blue pigments to create color and light. In spite of apparent limitations of HTML, I felt as if I had been set free to explore a new world. And people liked what I created, asking me to create for them! Later display technology improved to allow even greater freedom with color and light.
Web design is an odd, sort of schizophrenic art form. It's possible for technical people, non-designers to create Web sites by writing code. You see examples of that all over the Internet. They're functional, informative, sometimes templated and populated by content management systems. For the designer, things become more complicated. We're required to use both sides of our brains, and most of us have been more inclined in our lives to be right-brained, creative people. Suddenly, we are confronted with having to develop our left brains—and fast!
My first couple of years, I effectively ignored that requirement. I had a WYSIWYG web page creation program that wrote code behind the scenes and didn't care at all what that code looked like. Didn't even want to see it. But over time, I began to realize that learning the technical language was important if I really wanted to create freely. So little by little, I dipped first a toe, then waded in up to my knees, eventually becoming immersed in the world of HTML, XHTML, CSS—even beginning to understand a little about the behind-the-scenes languages that made forms work and dabbling in Flash.
I'm still not what I would call a technical Web designer. And the technology moves so fast that at the age of sixty-seven, I have no desire to keep up any longer. But what I can do is create with light. I can let those who excel in the technical side DO the technical side while I work in the areas that I enjoyed so much in print design—designing and organizing visual elements to make web pages beautiful, usable, and inviting. Even though I can write an entire Web site in code and style it with style sheets now, I remain utterly mystified that somehow that code and those style sheets produce visual delight.
I've read a bit about what's called the "limbic system" that helps each side of the brain communicate with the other. And I'm utterly convinced that a right-brained, person forced to kick start the left brain in order to create has to be strengthening that system in ways that go far beyond the intended result, expanding creativity in all areas of life.
I spent quite a number of years, beginning in the mid-80s, doing graphic design for the print world. I love bringing order and beauty to the printed word—I can get lost for hours in the process of laying out images and exploring the best typography to enhance them, all with an eye to creating a piece of printed material, whether it be a book, a brochure, a business card or a poster, that causes readers to want to open and explore it.
Something different happened when I began to design Web sites in 1998. Suddenly the mechanical limitations of the printed page were no longer in play. I was creating with light—using red, blue, and green light instead of yellow, red, and blue pigments to create color and light. In spite of apparent limitations of HTML, I felt as if I had been set free to explore a new world. And people liked what I created, asking me to create for them! Later display technology improved to allow even greater freedom with color and light.
Web design is an odd, sort of schizophrenic art form. It's possible for technical people, non-designers to create Web sites by writing code. You see examples of that all over the Internet. They're functional, informative, sometimes templated and populated by content management systems. For the designer, things become more complicated. We're required to use both sides of our brains, and most of us have been more inclined in our lives to be right-brained, creative people. Suddenly, we are confronted with having to develop our left brains—and fast!
My first couple of years, I effectively ignored that requirement. I had a WYSIWYG web page creation program that wrote code behind the scenes and didn't care at all what that code looked like. Didn't even want to see it. But over time, I began to realize that learning the technical language was important if I really wanted to create freely. So little by little, I dipped first a toe, then waded in up to my knees, eventually becoming immersed in the world of HTML, XHTML, CSS—even beginning to understand a little about the behind-the-scenes languages that made forms work and dabbling in Flash.
I'm still not what I would call a technical Web designer. And the technology moves so fast that at the age of sixty-seven, I have no desire to keep up any longer. But what I can do is create with light. I can let those who excel in the technical side DO the technical side while I work in the areas that I enjoyed so much in print design—designing and organizing visual elements to make web pages beautiful, usable, and inviting. Even though I can write an entire Web site in code and style it with style sheets now, I remain utterly mystified that somehow that code and those style sheets produce visual delight.
I've read a bit about what's called the "limbic system" that helps each side of the brain communicate with the other. And I'm utterly convinced that a right-brained, person forced to kick start the left brain in order to create has to be strengthening that system in ways that go far beyond the intended result, expanding creativity in all areas of life.
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