For years I’ve wanted to design a t-shirt. Actually, I have already designed a t-shirt, and it was worn by over 1000 first year students at my university during my 4th year of a 3 year degree (it actually took me 5 to finish, but that’s another story).

So over the years I’ve come up with a few ideas but haven’t committed them to pixels yet. So in David Airey fashion, here are a few designs I finally chose to put together. Tell me what you think, and if you hang out on any t-shirt design sites, tell me which sites you like best.

I do still have one of the first shirts I helped design. It was done using CorelDraw! 5, one of my all time pieces of software so perhaps I’ll post a pic sometime soon.

Follow me on Twitter here, and check out my Flickr. But like I said, write some comments and let me know what you’re thinking!

I’m now in a mood to really get something creative done, and it is strange that the creative urge gets to me sometimes so strong that I have to do SOMETHING and I have to do it NOW… even if it means the results are poorly done, not thought through, and shoddy. But regardless, here is a new post and some new inspiration for you.

I just became a member of IconBuffet, and I’ve already received 1 free icon set for joining, and you get one every month. Also, you can trade Icon Sets and collect all you want! There is an incredible community of really sharing people, and a need system involving tokens, stamps and awards. I was also given a set just for asking! Or come to think of it, it was offered freely by a total stranger.

So I put this together in Word once I got home from doing the evening running around:

The wreath is just word clipart (but I’m happy about the drop shadow) and those are some pretty sweet icons! Wait till you see how the story ends

On the topic of icons, there is also a tonne of other free sets out there if you are willing to look. Some pretty sweet ones I just came across today were:

Free Hand-Drawn Web Icons: http://camp.woothemes.com/2009/07/hand-drawn-social-media-icons/

Some samples:

(I added the lines since I don’t want to be share without permission, go to the site and download them yourself).

WooThemes Ultimate Icon set: http://www.woothemes.com/2009/02/wp-woothemes-ultimate-icon-set-first-release/

I love icon sets almost as much as I love fonts, so maybe I’ll try my hand at creating them when things aren’t so busy at work.

If you have any favourite icon sites, post a comment below. Or, send an email and I’ll invite you to IconBuffet… that way I’ll get more icon sets to tell you all about!

In celebration of my 1 year wedding anniversary, I wanted to revisit something that completely blew my mind, and renewed inside me my love of typography, font design and letter shapes – my visit to Dublin, Ireland to see the Book of Kells.

One year ago today my wife and I travelled to Ireland for our honeymoon. I really could go on and on about how great it was, and how we wish we were back there even now, one full year later. Perhaps especially now as the weather here is very similar to the weather there last year. But before I digress too much, I wanted to talk about the Book of Kells.

You’ll have to find examples on the sites listed below, but the illustration and illumination of the Book is simply incredible. There is such precision and fine mathematical detail that scholars are still unsure exactly how a 7^th century scribe (or three) could have created the works. The image here shows a page that was never completed… over 1200 years ago. You can see some text through the page on the other side. The image illustrates how a complex illuminated manuscript page was laid out.

I didn’t get to see the Book of Kells until much later in our journey when we returned to Dublin around June 18th, 2008. But when we were in Knowth I picked up a copy of George Bain’s Celtic Art – The Methods Of Construction.

This book *completely* floored me. George Bain is said to have been responsible for the resurgence of celtic inspired art beginning in the early 50′s. Celtic Art contains an entire chapter on Lettering and an incredible collection of copies of the letters and ornamented capitals from not only the Book of Kells, but also the Book of Durrow as well as the Lindisfarne Gospels… two other famous illuminated manuscripts. I counted more than 5 different versions of the letter A! All hand-drawn by George Bain from copies of books as well as stonework he had seen while travelling the countryside.

There are chapters on knotwork, including the use of knotwork for use in clothing, metal and stone carving. There is also a chapter on zoomorphics, which is the inclusion of animal images within the shapes of the letters themselves (like this one) as well as anthromorphs, where images of humans are tied up in the letters such as the ones in the corner shown here.

Bain’s book really is an incredible achievement, and it gives an amazing taste for the type of design found in the Book of Kells. If you want to create celtic art, you NEED Bain’s book Celtic Art.

Ok that’s enough for me. Its late. I could keep writing but I think I should get some sleep

References for this post:

• Book Of Kells DVD - http://www.bookofkells.com – I bought it, its FANTASTIC.
• Kells Travel Info – http://www.myguideireland.com/kells
• History of the Monastery - http://www.heritagetowns.com/kells.shtml
• An article by Michelle Brown of the British Library - http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/c-d/celts07b.html
• Dunn, J. (1910). Book of Kells. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.Retrieved June 11, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08614b.htm
• Wikipedia contains some excellent images and far more references and resources –  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_kells
• Review of the facsimile edition, 1958: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2865000 – man, I would LOVE to have a facsimile of this. Article starts at the bottom of that page, but you’ll need access to JSTOR to read all of it.
• Location of Facimilies – University of Rochester (acquired 1952): http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=2457, University of British Columbia: http://www.library.ubc.ca/spcoll/kells.html (Yay a Canadian copy!)
• Another book about the Book of Kells

Not much here today, but I had found these links in the fall and didn’t want to lose them, so I’m posting them here for you and for me:

Good CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) Tutorial:
http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/six_keys_to_understanding_css_layouts/

Colour Tools for Graphic and Web Designers at AllGraphicDesign.com

Technical Colour Schemer – because we can’t get enough of colour scheme builders can we?

20 Web Design Generators

Adam Kalsey’s Button / Badge Generator ( it made this: )

Being Canadian, I will almost always insist on typing it as “colour”.

Oh and PS! I just bought a new domain so I’ll finally be hosting a WordPress / Thesis blog instead of this old Blogspot thingy! Dang you domain squatters!