On the theme of taking inspiration from other media, this is a...

On the theme of taking inspiration from other media, this is a recent academic project I completed. The idea was to capture motion in a static poster. The subject is a Savannah College of Art and Design Academic Calendar. For this particular poster, legibly was less …

Just having some more fun with ambigrams. This one is a...

Just having some more fun with ambigrams. This one is a rotational perceptual shift that reads graphic or design.

Somehow this evolved from the letter Q. I was working on some...

Somehow this evolved from the letter Q. I was working on some custom type and accidentally deleted an anchor point. Before I hit command+z I recognized something in it. A few extra strokes and some type on the bottom and we've got a logo. Sometimes a mistake can be a …

I've been really fascinated with ambigrams recently....

I've been really fascinated with ambigrams recently. I've found them to be a great form of custom logo type with a set of really interesting challenges. The many restrictions in design end up forcing you to find creative ways to render letterforms to be legible in …

I'm in the process designing some new business cards for...

I'm in the process designing some new business cards for myself so I've been playing with cards and thinking about how people interact with them. One of the first things I've noticed about when you hand someone a card is that you often times will hand it upside down and …

This is a project for a design class, a two color poster on any...

This is a project for a design class, a two color poster on any subject. I decided to design an unofficial poster for the film Objectified. Included are designs from Dieter Rams, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Peter Behrens, Jonathan Ive, Naoto Fukasawa, Chris Bangle, and …

The font you're seeing above is called Ecofont. I've...

The font you're seeing above is called Ecofont. I've seen this pop up on a few design and type blogs as a way to save ink by removing circles from letterforms while still mainting a recognizable character. As the ecofont site puts it:

Appealing ideas are often simple: …

Lipsumlet - The Lorem Ipsum Bookmarklet

Lipsumlet - The Lorem Ipsum Bookmarklet:

This is something I created today. I was using other lipsum sites and realized I'm doing something in multiple steps (go to site, highlight block of text, hit command + c, close window) that should really only have to take one …

I just released a new free tumblr theme called Roboturner....

I just released a new free tumblr theme called Roboturner. Follow the link or just copy and paste roboturner.txt. I just put it up, so if you catch any bugs, let me know, @mattmc on twitter or shoot me an email (matt at pixelspread dot com). Hope you enjoy. I tried to …

I just got some new cards as goodies to include in Turn...

I just got some new cards as goodies to include in Turn Nocturnal orders. What designer doesn't love the day new cards arrive?

Every once in a while, I manage to post something that seems to...

Every once in a while, I manage to post something that seems to strike a chord and it starts to spread through the tumblrsphere with the help of the reblog feature. This is something I love about tumblr.

Then of course there is the downside of that. Once a post gets …

Don't Use Arial

It might be obvious at this point that I'm not a fan of Arial. Or perhaps I'm not as transparent as I thought and it's not so obvious. Either way, I feel like I've seen way too much Arial in my daily life. I can understand feeling like you have to use it when it comes …

This is a follow up to the last post titled "Don't Use...

This is a follow up to the last post titled "Don't Use Arial." This a little explanation as to why I would say a thing like that. Refer to the image above to see what I'm talking about.

1. "Keming." When Monotype attempted to redesign Helvetica (and created Arial), they …

Reblog vs. Comment

I recently made the switch from my blog at pixelspread to focus on matt.cc. There are a few reasons that made the decision seem pretty simple. First and foremost, Tumblr has quickly become my favorite blogging engine. It makes posting quick and simple, it allows for …

Typeface Selection

I have a few pet peeves. Sometimes I try to keep them to myself, but this is one that I feel needs to be aired. And maybe if I post it for everyone to see, I can prevent a future type crime. Even if I can just stop one person from using a terrible typeface, it's worth a …

Photo from Wilson Miner's Relative readability post,...

Photo from Wilson Miner's Relative readability post, illustrating Oliver Reichenstein's theory that 16pt type on screen is equivalent to 11pt on the page when you add distance to the equation. Read more about Oliver's case for large type on screen in The 100% …

The book to screen comparison photo I posted the other day got...

The book to screen comparison photo I posted the other day got me thinking about other devices compared to books in terms of point size.

I decided to see what iPhone font sizes compared to type size in a book might look like. The book I used for comparison was Robert …