A friend asked me to design a flyer for a theatre production that her work is putting on.
Then i found out about 2 days ago that they wanted it ready for tonight, and since i wasn't aware of a timeline like that i hadn't really started much at all.
So i got to it!
I am learning a lot about typography at the moment, through other people and also trying to just be more observant. I know that my type skills let me down, and it's one of those things where i can often know that it's wrong, but not know exactly WHY or how to fix it... if i look at a great example of clean, minimal design (like, say, Mark Gowing's work) and try to "work out" why it looks resolved and professional, i can't really... all sorts of fine details and decisions about the type, color, layout work together, and i guess I just need to keep at it.
Anyway, point is, I tried to be conscious of my type in this, but i still don't think it's great. Part of it is just the actual fonts used... I only have free ones really (or the ones that came wth software) and while i have d/l'ed some good free ones from design sites, they are usually at least *partially* odd or something's not quite right with the balance or kerning or whatnot. Still, that's not a crutch really, and i am going to keep working at getting my type to look great. There's things I would change now from this design, but it's OK and they've probably already printed it.
It is also evident that this "it's OK" attitude is good in some ways, but i think you have to be a bit anal to get great type, so when i am rolling my eyes at friends who will disregard a font because they don't like ONE of the characters, maybe that's actually a good move...
