On the first Wednes­day of every month, I’m going to pull togeth­er some inspi­ra­tions and resources I have around and make some sweet desk­top wall­pa­pers. It’s usu­ally just going to be one or two at a time. They will be all over the place, from type relat­ed to what­ever cool pat­tern I might be dig­ging at the moment. As always, let me know what you like or if there is some­thing you want to see.

Melville and Miltonian

I showed off Miltonian last month and its been stew­ing in my head to do some­thing with it. I start­ed in the tat­too direc­tion but after play­ing with it for a bit that seemed to cliche. Working off the tat­too heart idea, then for some rea­son sailors — which led to Moby Dick — all to end up with this. A shout out goes to Bittbox and the awe­some tex­tures put out over there. The start­ing point for the back­ground tex­ture came from a free­bie over there. Go check it out.

Wallpaper Preview — Melville and Miltonian

2560 x 1440
1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
960 x 640 (iPhone 4)

On the first Wednesday of every month, I’m going to pull togeth­er some inspi­ra­tions and resources I have around and make some sweet desk­top wall­pa­pers. It’s usu­al­ly just going to be one or two at a time. They will be all over the place, from type relat­ed to what­ev­er cool pat­tern I might be dig­ging at the moment. As always, let me know what you like or if there is some­thing you want to see.

Say it Fat by Timo Titzmann

I men­tioned this font in a post a week or so ago and decid­ed to try and come up with some­thing of a wall­pa­per using it. I played off its heav­i­ness of course and let that carry the piece with just a few extra effects to spice it up.

Wallpaper Preview — Say It Fat type­face by Timo Titzmann

1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
960 x 640 (iPhone 4)

Stop Staring at my Ascender

This next one is a trade­marked phrase. It’s mine — DIBS!!! I haven’t seen it or heard it any­where else. I’m also going to claim its close cousin, “Stop star­ing at my aster­isk!” A sim­ple Adobe Caslon with a lit­tle manip­u­la­tion and posi­tion­ing and you have some­thing nice. I need­ed some­thing for the back­ground and decid­ed on a ruled notepa­per kind of thing. I was­n’t sure about that at first but I after I used it on the desk­top for a week and came back to it looked alright. What do you think?

I think I might have found my first prod­uct idea for pro­mo­tion­al posters and t‑shirts. Hmm…

Stop Staring at my Ascender Preview

1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
960 x 640 (iPhone 4)

On the first Wednesday of every month, I’m going to pull togeth­er some inspi­ra­tions and resources I have around and make some sweet desk­top wall­pa­pers. It’s usu­al­ly just going to be one or two at a time. They will be all over the place, from type relat­ed to what­ev­er cool pat­tern I might be dig­ging at the moment. As always, let me know what you like or if there is some­thing you want to see.

Exclamation One

So I want­ed to do some­thing with the excla­ma­tion icon from my SpareType logo. I lay­ered up a few scrap papers I had scanned to get a nice back­ground tex­ture to com­ple­ment the logo and col­ors. I want­ed to play around with a emboss/deboss effect so a lit­tle tweak­ing around and came up with a style I liked. I’m going to pack­age up the style to share so look for that post in the next day or two.

Exclamation One Preview

1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
960 x 640 (iPhone 4)

Floral Deboss

I loved the deboss effect I came up with on the above wall­pa­per, I decid­ed to do some more with it. I matched up a cus­tom shape I had in Photoshop with a nice back­ground paper scan and then BAM! — DEBOSS! I like the ele­gance, the slight­ly mod­ern lime color, and how the focus of the one cen­tral ele­ment real­ly takes over the whole thing.

Floral Deboss Wallpaper Preview

1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
960 x 640 (iPhone 4)

Give me some SpareType

Something sim­ple this time. A lit­tle bit of a gra­di­ent, some fun type stacked nice­ly in the cor­ner. And that’s all there is to it. For those curi­ous, the type used is Aeronaut and MEgalopolis Extra.

Give Me Some SpareType Preview

1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
960 x 640 (iPhone 4)

Uh-oh, only the sec­ond one and I’m already a day late on my sched­ule. I decid­ed to do these on the first Wednesday of the month. It seemed like a good first addi­tion for start­ing an edi­to­r­i­al cal­en­dar. I’m work­ing on fill­ing out the rest of my month for some recur­ring post types; any sug­ges­tions you want to offer are great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Now, on to the wallpaper.

Scattered Metal Type

This comes from an old school project I did back in the day. I plan on putting it up here for every­body to see because it was one of my bet­ter projects. For one of the spreads I need­ed a pic­ture of metal type and we had some lying around in the class­room. I threw a hand­ful in a light box, sort­ed them around a bit, and snapped the pic­ture. I tweaked the gra­di­ent aspect a bit in Photoshop to put the whole thing togeth­er as a wall­pa­per. It was a much tighter crop for the project along with being inte­grat­ed with some other elements.

Scattered Metal Type Wallpaper Preview

1920 x 1200
1440 x 900
1280 x 1024
1024 x 768
960 x 640 (iPhone 4)