Books are wonderful things, but they are not the only way to read. Reading on an IPad or kindle is wonderful. The biggest issue with reading on a device is their poor optimizations. They try to fake being books, as seen with the IPad’s “page turn”. We need to make books specifically for devices in mind, to best optimize screen space. The movie reminds you how charming books are, but reading on a device can be just as charming.

Martha Stewart’s design style is very colorful and bright. The pictures that she uses for her magazine are very fun and they seem to be fit for family events, such as a barbecue, or family activities, such as pumpkin carving. The typefaces are very bold san serifs for the titles, similar to Franklin Gothic  , and for the subheadings, the text is slim and are serifs. The layouts consist of a large, colorful picture, and a text to the side of the picture.

Besides wearing the same type of shirts all the time (different color), Martha Stewart’s style has always been characterized for addressing the down-to-house business women and appealing to the modern housewife.

Her style feels very homey with generally light typefaces and matte backgrounds mixed with pastel/seasonal tones and themes portrayed with a classic and organized cover layout (Usually portraying herself doing whatever the book says she is doing.)

Very simple and very readable cover usually trying to represent how simple or easy to follow the content of the book might be.

Looking at Martha Stewart’s books and magazines, I realized that her face is in almost all publications. Her image is used almost as an icon. Just by looking at her face on the cover, readers may easily recognize that it’s Martha’s cookbook. In addition, in all of her publications, the graphic designer uses Helvetica typeface for most of her titles. Of course, there is a mix of typefaces but you can notice that most of her titles are in big bold sans-serif typefaces.Also,  the typefaces take a large amount of space, so they are easy to spot from far away. Colors of Martha’s publications are soft bright colors.

Martha Stewart has branded her name and everything that comes with it.  Americans run to buy Martha Stewart towels and linens, read her magazines on how to position the furniture in their homes and memorize the recipes from her books, magazines, tv show and apps.

There is a distinct style that accompanies anything with Martha Stewart’s name.  The goal seems to be to make everything well, beautiful.  Making things more pleasing to the eye, and that goes across all platforms of her brand.  In Living Magazine the design concepts seem simple yet pleasing to the eye.  Different type faces are usually used, combining serifs and san serifs.  More of a feminine vibe is set out to the consumer.  Also, there is not much design elements that make up the covers of Living Magazine, but it seems to work.  There is a simplicity and warm feelings that accompany looking at anything Martha.  From the bright, yet soothing colors to the typefaces used.  Also, small caps are used along with upper and lower case words to make the text more eye catching but still seems well put together and easy to read.

Through the designs of Gael Towey the Martha Stewart brand seemed to become a well balanced system across all media.  Recently Gael Towey was recognized for  “Boundless Beauty”, a special issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine created for the iPad and featuring original and interactive content. It became the number one paid app on the App Store immediately after its launch; it was also recognized by Time Magazine as one of the top 10 magazine covers of 2010.

AWESOME Typeface mixing:

Kerning (terrible haha):

Bad leading:

Marking paragraphs

1. Good example of Mixing Typefaces

2. Bad Kerning and Tracking

3. Good Line Spacing

4.  Good Marking Paragraphs

Typeface Mixing: Mixing typefaces can be successful at times, but unsuccessful at times as well.

Kerning: Some companies are very successful in the way the name looks.

Leading: In order to make text look pleasing to the eye there needs to be proper leading.

Marking Paragraphs: Successful type categories need to be broken up accordingly. In order to stray away from confusion.

One of the purest forms of typography: Lettering is the art of drawing letters to create a unique and customized typography image. This design challenges the creative artist to integrate imagination, typefaces and text by combining them into a fluid and very creative art.  Creating this typographic art form grants the artist a great deal of “creative real estate” because it is done without the assistance of typical typography tools and it often requires diverse techniques to perform (free hand lettering, technical lettering and digital lettering.) Having the freedom to run and design typo by hand without any mold or pattern (paper or digitally) can be a very challenging task for any designer, but if done correctly, the artist can create amazing typography art.

For example: Nolen Strals’s Melt Banana

Another example: Sean McCabe

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As you can see, lettering (Hand lettering) is a very creative and vibrant technique to design in this medium, it is also the basis for many digital typography art forms and typefaces. However, one (the designer) must be very talented in order to design quality and premium lettering art work.

I recommend checking out this web page of an awesome lettering artist: Sean Mcabe http://seanwes.com/category/lettering/