Before anyone jumps the gun and tell me about all the super designy stuff that uses a large number of fonts, those are merely the exception and not commonplace. To use a great number of fonts effectively, there must first be a great understanding of typography and how each font can affect one another. Every font that you add to the mix will increase the complexity and difficulty of the design. So use more fonts at your own risk, you’ve been warned!

While the design may have started out innocently enough with the attempt to separate elements in the design, an overuse of fonts usually make it look more like a flea market flyer more than anything else.

If you must use typography to separate areas in your design, try using fonts in the same font family at least. Fonts such as Helvetica or Utopia have a very large breadth of styles, enabling you to use different weights in your design to separate the elements. Such as using “Medium” for body copy and “Bold” for headlines. But even then, still try to keep the different font style usage to a minimum.

After you have mastered using different font weights within one family for your designs, try adding a font from a vastly different font family to create a distinctive difference through the typography. Why use a vastly different font family rather than something more similar, such as Utopia and Garamond? The reason is because the resulting difference might be mistaken for a poorly designed variation of the same font family, rather than a purposely chosen 2nd font family.

The same applies to font sizes that are really close to one another, but not exactly the same. The viewer’s eyes will wonder whether the font size is the same, not quite sure, and it’ll just end up looking sloppy and unprofessional.

Play with your fonts, learn about them, have fun with them, but please do not abuse them. Got any examples of typography that you hate or love? Share them here!

There are many people in various job positions where creativity is frowned upon. That is also one of the reasons why as soon as something goes wrong, the speed of adaptation and response to the situation would be slow. Just do what you’re told and stick to it.

Like the classic sci-fi robot that is only programmed to do certain tasks and nothing else. Something out of the scope happens and you have a headless chicken running around.

On the other hand, The joy of giving birth to that creative moment is priceless. It is a great fulfillment and affirmation of the immeasurable brilliance that humans are capable of.

And besides, creativity can actually lead to job fulfillment. No way… but it’s true! It makes a person feel surprisingly good when they are acknowledged and their ideas actually accepted and implemented. How about stress relief? Or even finally finding a solution to tricky relationship issues? The list goes on, and all it takes is exercising a little creativity.

There is an elitist mindset out there for designers who think that anything not blessed by a designer is sure to be ugly and desperately needs to be saved. Sure, there are many Ads or business card designs that begs to be redone, but the important key is to realize that any one of us can be creative, as long as you let it happen. And that’s exactly what I hope to achieve with this blog.

Having killer graphics software skills is one thing, and having 100% open minded, unbiased creativity, is quite another. You can’t buy that kind of creativity with all the money in the world, yet it doesn’t cost you a single cent.

Do not fall for the stereotype of a creative person as someone that merely has moneymaking skills in a creative area. Creativity is idea sharing based on our individual experiences. You might say, I just use my creativity to think of new ideas, but it doesn’t mean I will share it. Oh right, we don’t share anymore, not unless someone gets billed for it right? The idea will eventually be shared in one form or another, it’s just that we have gotten used to entering money into the equation.

We should nurture creativity in others and in ourselves. With the abundance of problems in relationships and in the world today, we need solutions that actually fixes the problems instead of sweeping them under the carpet for another few years. Creative solutions, not the same old crap that never worked.

I have been wondering what I should write about for my first blog post, or even what this blog should be about. After all, there are already tons of sites out there promising to make you a Photoshop Super Star in 10 easy steps. Or those sites that will deliver crazy Search Engine Optimization for your blog all before dinner time. While I see the benefit of such guides, I just don’t see that as the most worthy goal for me as a person.

*Flashback* Now that I think back, I first started with the idea of using Advertising to convince people to help improve the world. So I went and learned all about marketing and advertising. Well actually, the start wasn’t quite as noble as all that, but it sure made me feel better for having to sell useless corporate crap to people.

Then I realized that perhaps I could distill that idea into using any form of Design to accomplish the same goal. Of course, many media visible designers are already on that boat and I’m definitely not trying to get on that overcrowded vessel.

So that brings us to today. Is it possible to make creativity a wonderfully engaging, amazingly fun, supremely practical lifestyle that anyone and everyone can relate to? Creativity, the life band-aid! I believe that creativity not only empowers you to advance in your career, but it can also bring you a greater joy and fulfillment in every day life. Instead of feeling frustration with a difficult problem, creativity will allow you to connect all the knowledge in your head to many innovative solutions. It’s really a win-win situation.

And who knows, maybe with enough people being happier and able to think of better solutions, we may make this a better world yet.

Hate it? Love it? However you feel, please share it here, I would love to hear it! Welcome to CreativeHerb.com ~