I love web fonts, they have revolutionised what web designers can do with typography in designs. Cufón, Typekit and sIFR have all made our task a little easier and our designs a lot more interesting.

Then there’s Google Webfonts who, at last count, have 436 fonts available for use. They’re easy to implement and your only difficult task is to pick one, or two, or three, or… well maybe you should stop there.

Out doing some competitive analysis browsing today I saw so many sites that have poorly implemented Google Web Fonts.  Shockingly most of these sites are by people who call themselves web designers. So today I want to show you how to avoid their mistake.

By way of example I chose two fonts from Google; Nixie One and Josefin Sans. When browsing fonts on Google Web Fonts you’ll notice under the sample text and next to the font name it will tell you how many styles there are of that font and this is important. Let me start with my 3 Nixie One sentences below… take some time to study them…

1. This is my gorgeous Nixie One sentence at Normal weight.
2. This is my Nixie One sentence at Bold weight.
3. This is my Nixie One sentence at Bolder weight.

Now Nixie One has one style or weight, which is 400 or normal in font speak. So when I use the font as it was intended, in number 1, it looks crisp and clean and dare I say gorgeous. The problem comes when I start adding a weight to the font by making it bold and bolder in my CSS. Can you see it’s slightly blurry or just looks a little strange?

So what’s the fix? I’m glad you asked.

Now let’s ponder my second font, Josefin Sans. This font has 10 styles which translate to varying weights of the font from ultra-light (100) to bold (700) and even accounts for italics. The advantage of using a font like this is I can make use of the varying weights (by their numbers) without the loss of quality. Can you see the difference?

1. This is my Josefin Sans at 400 so that is normal weight.
2. This is my Josefin Sans at 600 so that is semi bold weight.
3. This is my Josefin Sans at 700 so that is bold weight.

The only catch is when using a Google Web Font is make sure you’re telling your stylesheet that you want to use all 10 (or 3 in my example) styles. So you would be linking to it by either
< href=’http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Josefin+Sans:400,700,600′ rel=’stylesheet’ type=’text/css’> in the HEAD of your document or @import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Josefin+Sans:400,700,600); in your stylesheet.

Hope this helps and feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.

When Brandi posed the question what colour are you loving in her Loving :: Emerald Green post this week it was no stretch for me to find an answer. This is the colour I’ve been seeing everywhere and loving at the moment.

At the beginning of this week I spent 2 days in Melbourne with a university client and they’d used it in their new website design it was then I remarked that I’m loving this colour right now, not quite yellow, not quite green. Then an email newsletter from the Gap store and there’s my colour (go have a look at their website right now and you’ll see it) and then yesterday there was some kind of vintage hot rod car thing going on in Canberra and during our trip to Costco I saw 3 cars this colour! Natually I went to ColourLovers to see who owned it and what they’d called it – can you believe it hadn’t been named yet? Now that’s serendipity. So here it is – my autumn approaching. Do you like it?

My flickr finds are from top: Botanic Garden by Cristian Bortes, Rapeseed by Gertrud, 20080712-136_f-1 by Sophies Chen

P.S. – you can also select my colour autumn approaching or #D1DA1B to see it on my ColourLovers page. Are you a ColourLover? Let’s be friends.

I’m so excited to share with you what I’ve been toiling away at for the last couple of weeks. This is my Akai (means red in Japanese) self-hosted WordPress blog theme that you can purchase over on my Crimson Pear site.

This was such fun to create. I had the Indian inspired block prints and Henna Mehnhi medallions swirling around my head for weeks – I love medallions. It took a while for me to put them to use but this is usually my approach, I almost map it all out in my head first before I sit down in front of Photoshop. I like this approach although I do set myself up for coding challenges when I finally cut it up to CSS. The little flag showing the date was my road block this time, more the date than the flag, and it was also one of the things that wouldn’t play nice in IE9. The other was the hover on the menu.

These colours are so strange for me and they are not at all what I set out to use but this gorgeous photo called Spread your love everywhere you go from Melissa Deakin Photography just seem to guide my design. Doesn’t it make you want to go to the beach?

So for the geeks out there if you’re interested – it’s built as a child theme on the Thematic Theme Framework – which I love to use. The title and tagline are driven by WordPress Site Title and Tagline under General settings with the option to override with a logo image. The comments are styled so people who comment can quickly see when the author replies to one of their comments. It makes use of a lot of CSS3 so things like rounded corners don’t work in IE but degrade gracefully.

Let me know if you see it being used because I would just love to see this on someone’s blog.

Yes it’s Australia Day! The F18 have already done their flyover and the cyclist has done his annual 50km coffee ride with some of his cycling buddies. The boys are chilling out with their projects, one which is us attempting to make lamingtons by following this recipe. So all in all a typical Australia Day for us.

In celebration I did an Australia search on Etsy and here is what I found:

1. Vintage Map Cufflinks Handmade Sydney Australia Recycled Sterling Silver by Sherry Truitt Studios(I like this one it features Canberra)
2. Typography Text Map of Australia, Art Print 18×24 inch by artPause(although the ACT doesn’t feature the colours are awesome)
3. Southern Cross Constellation Necklace Ray Trails Motif Sterling Silver Ball Chain by Jesika Jack - my friend Yasmin over at A Pretty Rock blogged about these recently. I just love the Southern Cross.
4. Tin Fishie Beastie wall hanging – a green corrugated iron mobile handmade in Australia by Kuber Store

—- photo styling elements used —-

Blog Bling: Blog Photo Layouts (Part 5) from Pugly Pixel
Freebie: Scallop and Star Burst Medallions from Pugly Pixel
Villa Didot font from stereotypes.de

My flickr finds may be a stretch on my colour but they all really appealed to me and that’s artistic license right? The photos are from top: LINES… by Dick Jensen, Red Barn Paint by Scott Robinson, untitled by rosemary*

P.S. – you can also select my colour veins or #920F2 to see it on my ColourLovers page. Are you a ColourLover? Let’s be friends.

In the last few weeks I have found myself saying, out loud I might add, that I wish I had a bigger ego. That’s not really what I mean but I’ve just noticed some people out there seem to gain success by nothing more than over self promotion.

One of the things I love about blogging is getting to know other bloggers, reading their blogs and watching their journey. A few years ago I embarked on a project that was started by a fellow blogger – I’m not going to name names here as I don’t think that’s fair and this is, after all, just my soap box moment. Anyway in the process of this journey I met some awesome people and I continued to follow the blogger that started it all and then I started noticing things. Suddenly she was everywhere, and I mean everywhere I looked. She’s started another blog, a personal site, a new business and a collaboration and along the way started advising others on all manner of topics. She was definitely garnering success (if that’s what monetary gain is) and I wished her well. Somewhere in all that, though, her ego seems to have taken over and that’s what I mean when asking the question does ego equal success? Actually I think it’s the opposite, I think her ego has actually got in the way and now she comes across as slightly superior and condescending. I’ve been watching it build slowly and my breaking point was last week when I read a tweet from her that just made me mad, which is very usual for me (the getting mad bit not the reading of tweets). I hope, for her sake, that she doesn’t lose any more of her valuable audience since they are the reason for her success.

I think an ego (kept in check) definitely helps because it can turn emotional energy into action. You may be truly inspired but what do you do with that energy? Act on it or let it simmer?

To be honest I could probably do with a healthier dose of ego. I definitely have faith in my abilities but I too often dwell on how much I don’t know instead of how much I know. To quote the movie Valiant – ‘ You need to be yay high and you’re not even hey high’. So what to do? Well I think, for me, I need to heart myself a little more, step outside my comfort zone and engage in some shameless self promotion and ask you my friends to keep me in check if my ego gets a little out of control.

P.S. It won’t surprise you then that I’m enjoying the Marketing for Introverts e-course from Brand Camp

I have an odd obsession with chairs and given the chance our house would be full of them. The cyclist is probably happy that I have not acted on that impulse. I pretty sure when I first laid my eyes on The Stamford chair from Squint Limited my first words were ‘Oh my!’. It’s amazing and such an eclectic mix of colours and fabrics. It has me wondering if I can put my fabric scraps box to good use to recover our sofa, now there’s a thought.

If you’d prefer a functional chair that is also a colour resource then how about his one from the wonderful folks at Spoonflower. This one sits in their office and is made up of the colour charts they use when calibrating their digital textile printers. A yard of this fabric, which is available to buy, equates to 3600 colour chips and their corresponding RGB codes, well if that’s not bliss for the colour nerd in me then I don’t know what is. Needless to say my yard has already been ordered – I’m thinking of putting it on the wall. The best part is this is also available as an Adobe Swatch file to use in Illustrator or Photoshop.

And what about this gorgeous Pushkar Chair from Couch, doesn’t this just make you smile? I really want to run my hands over it as it looks so tactile and I’m digging the pink legs.

—- photo styling elements used —-

Blog Photo Layouts (part from Pugly Pixel
Museo 700 font from MyFonts

My aubergine finds are from top: Thirst Healer by Riza Nugraha, Frozen Statues by Rune Spaans, Accordian by Shawn Allen

P.S. – you can also select my colour to see it on my ColourLovers page. Are you a ColourLover? Let’s be friends.

This adorable picture called Crochet Flowers by Carina Envoldsen-Harris was the source of my palette inspiration today. They just reminded me of spring flowers climbing a trellis. Of course after yesterday’s post I had to make a trellis pattern or two of my own so here are my patterns: Thinking in Circles (top), which I know is not particularly original but it is still a pattern that pleases me. Thinking in Square (bottom) proved to be quite a challenge to get it from Illustrator to Seamless Studio. Click on the pattern image to view the pattern in ColourLovers and you can download them from there as well. Enjoy!

I have such an eye for lattice/trellis patterns at the moment. I think in general I like patterns that make me look at the negative space as well. I’m very aware that all my selections today are cushions and this is because my vintage fabric cushion cover that I blogged about in January 2008, has had a sad demise. Cushions have to made of tough stuff to survive in our house and vintage fabric by it’s nature has been pre-loved and this one started to fray and then developed very large holes. So now I’m on the lookout for something new and I just keep seeing lattice.

My lattice cushion finds are all via etsy, clockwise from top left: Pair of 2 Decorative Pillows – Moroccan Quatrefoil Lattice Pillows – 18 inch – Navy Blue by Willa Skye Home Accessories – Interior Design, Trellis Modern Geometric Designer Pillow 20×20 Yellow / Navy blue / White Accent Throw Cushion Cover by Whitlock & Co, Mid Century Modern – Hollywood Regency Imperial Trellis Style Fabric Cushion Cover Blue & White by Vibe Home Designer Pillows and Fabrics, Decorative Pillow Cover. 18 x 18. Green. Cream. Trellis. Indoor / Outdoor. Accent Pillow by BethDanielleDesigns