Mary Kate McDevitt

Every so often, I find myself dreaming about another life to be had. In this life, I live in a pretty but humble little house with a sunny verandah where I sit each morning to drink gentle herbal tea, and eat fresh figs and rustic sourdough from the local bakery. In this dream, I don't of course have to worry about meeting client deadlines or changing a logo twenty times before it's approved. I have all the time in the world, so I choose to spend it tinkering away with my paints, inks and pencils creating mind-blowing hand-drawn typography pieces, day after day. 

Unfortunately, I think I'm still at least a few years off fulfilling that dream. Until then, I'll swoon over clever and charming unique typographic studies created by people like Mary Kate McDevitt. Who probably lives in an urban apartment like me and simply makes making beautiful things like this a priority amidst the daily grind.

The Art For Jungle Project

Just letting ya'll know about a little art show which is on for one night only next Thursday 28th June, 6pm at the Lo-Fi Bar, 383 Bourke Street (above Kinselas on Taylor Square), Darlinghurst. It's called The Art For Jungle Project, and it's an eclectic collection of art, design and jewellery with contributions from artists across Australia. The purpose of the exhibition is to raise funds for Greenpeace, so they're collecting $5 donations at the door. I've handed over a couple of my etchings as well as two of Boheem's not-yet-launched typographic screen prints. Hope to see you there!

The Cake Pop-up Bar, Fraser Studios

Just one more 'places' entry before I return faithfully to all things design. I went to an opening a couple of weeks back at the Fraser Studios, and the atmosphere was positively buzzing. The space is only open for another few weeks and apparently as a last hurrah, they're serving wine, beer and cider as well as a few tasty morsels from Bourke St Bakery at The Cake pop-up bar Thurs (5-10pm) – Sun (3-10pm) each week until the end of June. It's right near the Clare Hotel off Broadway.

Color Collections

Designers, have you ever found yourself moving the CMYK dials mindlessly back and fourth, hoping to land the perfect colour harmony for your next design project, but feel they just don't want to land as naturally and as beautifully as you'd like? I found myself in that situation recently, and soon after came across these wonderful and very helpful colour blogs, which I'm certain will prove to be extremely useful for future design projects.

At the top we have Design Seeds, which displays palettes inspired by God Himself, and the amazing combination of hues which can be found in winter vegetables, moments of stillness in the African countryside... and some human-made beauty. What I love most about this site is that you can search for the colour by hue which you can define as a RGB value, as well as browse by theme.

In the middle we have Color Collective, which is one person's collection of palettes derived from mostly fashion shoots, where someone else has obviously already curated the colour. It is handy having it all in one place, though, and I like the way that the mood is set by the colour combinations.

Lastly there's Just Jaime – not offering as many and without links to photography, but a lovely little collection nonetheless.

Matching CMYK to Pantone

For those of us out there doing any colour picking for design projects, you might be familiar with the frustration of needing to find a Pantone colour to match the CMYK you used in your draft, half way through a job. I have at best spent aaaaages thumbing through our Pantone Swatch books trying to find a good match, but often I'm wanting a Pantone number when I'm not in the studio.

Here are two great sites which will help us all when we find ourselves in this predicament in the future. The first one at font.is gives a pictorial step-by-step instruction of how to match colours in Adobe Illustrator. But my favourite is this very ordinary, unassuming page at ginifab.com – which simply provides four boxes for us to type our CMYK breakdown, and then promptly delivers the Pantone equivalent. Not always completely accurate, but pretty close!