Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a lovely week and are managing to stay healthy. The cold and flu are going around our library so I’m hoping you’ve been spared. Today I want to share some articles and such about type and design–two of my favorite topics.

I love typography; that’s no secret. But what I really love is good typography and unexpected, but amazing uses of typography. I love books on typography and I’m one of those people who can definitely spend hours looking for the perfect font to use in a project. I’m also one of those readers who is driven bonkers when a book doesn’t include a note about which font was used in setting the type, but that is really neither here nor there.

What is important is that for those times when we don’t want to take hours looking at fonts or deciding how to set type, there are handy cheatsheets and guidelines. I quite like this infographic on the design rules for text. Learning these tips will set you well on your way to artfully combining fonts and communicating well textually on everything from business cards to posters.

Type, when used well, can trigger emotions and moods in the viewer and help you engage library users, so it is important for librarians to understand at least the basics of typography. Plus, it is just a lot of fun and you can amaze people when you talk about kerning and leading and whether you are a fan of slab serifs or not. (Well, maybe not amaze people, but you will be able to talk coherently with designers and know what to consider the next time you design with text.)

While typing on a computer may be a quicker way to write a note (and almost essentially for designing graphics for the library), there is nothing better than receiving a handwritten note. I think everyone should always have with them a pen they like for writing and for encouraging more writing throughout the day. I love this post from The Well-Appointed Desk on the Top 5 Pens under $5. This is a great, fairly inexpensive way to branch out and write with something other than the last free pen that you got from a vendor. 🙂

I had to share probably the best resume design I’ve ever seen: top-secret resume. Getting a resume that was that thoughtfully designed would be a huge improvement over many that I’ve seen. Plus, super-fun.

Finally, because it is almost the weekend and I think weekends should involve sweet things, I wanted to share Joy the Baker’s recipe for extra nutty dark chocolate fudge brownies. They look so scrumptious that I might have to bake them this weekend.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend full of things that make you smile. I’ll be back soon with some more news and notes. Allons-y!