Walking in, walking out
SHOW SOMEONE WALKING from one side to the other in a photograph and you have the potential to tell a story. But the story you tell depends on their position in...
Author: Steve Caplin
Left, right and centre
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHERS will almost always frame their pictures so that the subject is dead centre. is is almost always a bad location, as it’s very static and inactive. Better to...
Printer’s jargon
Whether it’s a simple flyer or a multi-page magazine, at some point you’re going to have to deal with a printer. Every word of jargon you use will knock a…
How much is a million?
We use numbers like million and billion every day, without really thinking about what they mean. Apple sold 70 million iPhones in the last quarter. There are 13 million people…
How music works
ALL MUSICAL NOTES ARE PRODUCED by vibrating air. That vibration can be caused by a plucked string (in the case of a piano or a harp), or by wind bouncing…
Serif or sans?
Caution: design ahead
IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO FIGURE OUT why the designer of this sign in a Shrewsbury hotel chose to set the A in ‘caution’ in upper case, at a larger…
Web leaks 1
IF YOU’RE DESIGNING A QUICK SIGN, then it makes sense to grab an arrow off the internet rather than going through the laborious process of selecting the Arrow tool in Word….
Amateur vs professional
THESE TWO NOTICES appear on adjacent walls in University College Hospital. Both say the same thing. Note how the amateur version goes to great lengths to try to make the text…
Flushing in style
CAN A LAVATORY FLUSH ever be beautiful? Yes, when it’s as elegantly understated as this one. No words are needed: the large and small buttons express their purpose without text, and…