a girl named fred

My December wallpaper is one part Canadian winter (snow, moose), one part Christmas (the Santa hat) and one part non-denominational celebration (let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me). As always, it’s available for download in four sizes: 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1600×1200 and 1280×960.

You can find it in two places: Smashing (I’m so excited to be featured a second month in a row) or, if you’d prefer the wallpaper without the Smashing logo, you can download it from my site: agirlnamedfred.com.

Enjoy!

FontFeed has posted its initial typographic gift list. All sorts of yummy goodness. 

From the portfolio of Fabien Barral.

Here’s a great Hillman-Curtis short featuring Paula Scher. My favourite bit? When she’s talking about the Citibank logo (pictured in the screen cap below). Apparently she sketched it on a napkin at her first meeting with the client. Said client was a bit disconcerted – all it takes is a second to come up with the idea? Really? And Paula says “yeah, it takes a second… and 34 years of experience and life.” Love it!

Here’s a handy little tool to help you generate some new ideas when the inspiration is running a little dry.

Found at Illustration Friday.

Armin Vit’s been taking us on a graphic design word tour over at Under Consideration. Here are some of his out-takes from Spain.

Graphics.com has a nice little piece on 3-colour logos. As the authors point out, 3-colour logos aren’t that popular, as designers know that if they’re designing for budget, they need to go 1- or 2-colour, and if budget’s not an issue, they’re going to go 4-colour. That said, 3-colour logos can pack some visual punch.

The authors argue the colour palette communicates the following ideas: charming, elegant, dignified and peaceful.

Here are some more examples:

Well, I’m quite taken with these Pop Ink plates. The manufacturer makes similar plates for the US military (I’m thinking without all the fetching designs). So I guess that means they’re bullet-proof?

You can find them (ironically) on the French Paper site, here.

Some nice letterpress work from The Arm of NYC. You can see the full flickr set here.

via iLT (of course!).

Here’s the poster for the Practivism event, designed by Marian Bantjes.