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My Kindle Book is Published: Baby Sign Language

Writers always advise, “Write what you know.” Well, after raising a baby for several years, I know a few things about talking with toddlers, both verbally and with baby sign language. And I’m happy to announce my new Kindle book: Sign Language for Babies and Toddlers. It includes 20 clear photos of American sign language (ASL) signs to use with your baby and pre-verbal toddler. The photos almost fill the Kindle screen, so they will be extremely clear.

How to sign "Grandma" in ASL sign language. Teach your baby and pre-verbal toddler to use sign language, with this downloadable Kindle e-book.
How to sign "Grandma" in ASL sign language. Teach your baby and pre-verbal toddler to use sign language, with this downloadable Kindle e-book.

Why Sign With Your Toddler or Baby:

  • It decreases frustration & screaming. (Terrible Twos, anyone?)
  • Your child will bring up topics of conversation (like Daddy at work!).
  • You’ll see how your child is learning: from grouping things, to separating things out from the group.
  • It’s fun to talk about things you see after so many months (12-20) of one-way communication.
  • Increases communication connections in the brain, which leads to better speech communication skills.
  • It will help you care for other kids, and know what they want and need.

Sign Language for Babies and Toddlers is for sale on Amazon now for the Kindle ebook reader.
– Or read it on the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch using this Amazon Kindle iPhone/iPad application free on iTunes.

This short work will help you get started learning sign language quickly. You don’t need to be convinced – you already know you want to learn it.

Photos will appear black and white on the Kindle, and color on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Download the book and start learning the 20 most commonly needed sign language signs today!!


As of December, 2011, I just completed my Amazon.com author profile. In January 2012, I uploaded the same book to Barnes & Noble for the Nook. I also designed a cover for the e-book. The cover has to be readable at very small sizes, especially for the Nook book jacket image.

Wish me luck!

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Modern Printing: Bountiful Colors, Cheaper Price Tag

When I bought business cards over a decade ago, they cost $70 for one-sided black printing on a plain white card. They were… boring!

Fast-forward to the digital printing age: Now I have 2-sided business cards, with full color on both sides. There is a top flap that folds over, reaching 3/4s of the way down the card. A card like this in the past would have taken one pass through the printer for each different color, for each side (front and back). There would be a lot more wasted paper, as the printer tried to perfectly line them all the images up, too. Then they would be cut, and then passed through the folder. And don’t forget the time for each ink color to dry between the runs through the printer.

Cover: 2-Sided Business Card Design for Sproul Creative Graphics and Website Design

Inside: 2-Sided Business Card Design for Sproul Creative Graphic Design, with Fold-over top
Inside: 2-Sided Business Card Design for Sproul Creative Graphic Design, with Fold-over top

Because these were printed digitally, they were much easier to make. So even with the fancy fold-over, they still only cost about $130. That is the world to today’s digital printing: cheaper, faster runs, for less of the printers’ time, too. And there is internet competition from companies like Vistaprint.com and others waiting in the wings, as well.

How Digital Printing Benefits Your Business:
A business owner can print business cards, flyers, or letterhead more cheaply, in smaller runs. Now you don’t have to do a run of 5000 business cards. You can print 250, and try them out. You can revise them before the next printing.

One of my clients, who couldn’t decide on a business card’s final background color, tried out four different ones. And they didn’t have to choose then: the printer just ran the four different designs, and gave them all to the client. I love this modern age!


Contact Sproul Creative today to get started on your new project!

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The Man Who Loathes Arial

This man loathes the Arial typeface:

“It totally sucks but has become the standard for many users and even institutions.”

Why should we listen to him? Because he’s Erik Spiekermann, a graphic designer, typographer, and owner of FontShop.com. And he’s done work for Nokia, Cisco, Bosch, German Railways, Heidelberg Printing, and other brands. He designed the Berlin metro map, and helped change their buses and trams to a bright yellow.

In this interview on WebDesignerDepot.com, the interviewer Debbie Hemley asks:

“What was one of the most challenging typography problems you have ever had to solve?”

Spiekermann responds:

“It is always the same: to find a visual voice for all the communication of a large corporation. It is supposed to express their identity (whatever that may mean), be legible, pleasant to look at, work technically across platforms, and be applicable across the world.”

Read the full interview of Erik Spiekermann here. You may also want to read Spiekermann’s bio on the FontShop website, which lists the fonts that he has designed. You can look at them on the same website.

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Creative Website Designs from Female Web Designers

I read an interesting article by LeeMunroe.com about 25 best female website designers. Apparently, I am in the 16% minority of women who design websites! Not sure I agree with all of the choices here (sorry!), but I do like the work of the designers Jan Cavaan, the highly illustrative blog portfolios of Gisele Jaquenod, Meagan Fisher, Mourylise Heymer of UnGarbage.com and Kassy (Kat Neville) of Safety Goat, whose website design is different from the one shown on Lee Munroe’s website. I really like her blogs 3D cloud design links that tilt on roll-over. Nice! See Ms. Heymer’s jean design here and her art gallery website.

I also really like Jan Cavaan’s NY presentation at Future of Web Design (FOWD) in 2010 (View Slideshow). It was an interesting presentation – I especially liked the 1920s cartoon historic figures of the priest and mad scientist. The priest (holding bible with pointer finger raised) yells, “Repent! The road to hell is paved with nested tables and spacer GIFs!” The mad scientist is in full goggles with white crazy hair reaching out in all directions. He says “Oncen I have tricked the world into using tables and spacer GIFs for layout they will all be my slaves!! Hahahahahahahaha!!!!” And she makes a clear point (even without their talking on the slideshow) that mobile use is more targeted, direct in its communication. It has to be – There is so little screen space that designers have to get to the point!!

Hoope you enjoy reading about them, too.

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How Are Fonts Designed? Read More in These Interviews

A really great typeface can make or break a website or marketing project. It can enhance and support the look and feel of the design, or fight against it. That’s what makes fonts so important. (Read my earlier blog post on How to Choose a Font (typeface), with samples of fonts that work or don’t with a design. I also have a link to a humorous flow-chart for how to choose a font family (I wish I designed that one!))

I found this archive of font designer interviews on MyFonts.com. I just read the most current one, on Michael Doret, and it was quite interesting. He grew up in the 1950’s in Brooklyn, with all of its fun Coney Island Amusement Park signage. He was also influenced by the 1960s rock posters. If you want to read the interview with typeface designer Michael Doret, among many others, see the full archive of MyFonts.com typeface creator interviews here.

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Favorite Websites from a Website Designer

As you can imagine, surfing the web as a website designer and developer can be both enthralling and painful, as I travel through really great or poorly designed websites. But focusing on the positive, I wanted to talk about a few of my favorite designs, and why I like them.

If you have ever seen the television show Good Eats on the FoodTV cable channel, or on the American version of Iron Chef, then you are no stranger to Alton Brown, and his quirky food-meets-science approach to food. I think his shows would easily be entertaining to non-cooks, since they are full of funny visuals. In one, he compared steak fibers to garden hose cut and lined up in a two foot sections into a large section. He went on the explain that cutting across the grain shortens the fiber, leaving the steak easier to eat. The cutting method could affect the final food, even though it had nothing to do with prep or seasoning! And he did a whole show on beach food with a tiki theme. It was a take-off on Tom Hank’s movie Cast Away, complete with oh-so-silent volley ball.

Alton Brown’s website is a retro Americana theme, with background, left side bar and header images that change by the page. The cow image stays constant, however. I love the funny doodles in the side bar. It’s well organized, and simple to read. There is a lot of space around the design, so one doesn’t feel exhausted just looking at the page. The American theme fits one of his television shows, Feasting on Asphalt, where he travelled on a motorcycle cross-country, cooking and eating his way through small diners. The shop link probably goes to another website, the theme is maintained on that one, too.

The New York graphic design company Lounge Lizards uses a sideways Flash website, based on a bar theme. One is looking down at match books, small candles, menus, coasters, notepads, and more, some of which are used as links. Its a very clever design.

The artist and illustrator Frank Grau has a very creative website. I love the retro rocket and moon theme. He has a lot of info there, and yet its very clear to navigate. It looks heavily sliced, which means the pieces of the design are cut up into segments and reassembled. (Watch how it loads at first to see the slices – ) Designers started building websites this way because they were very stable over different platforms. These days, the design community is moving to separate the text from the design, which means the text is styled to look like a button using code. (This is faster to update.)

PBSKids.org, a children’s media website, is very well designed for kids who may not yet be literate. When the child rolls over a link, they hear an audio translation of the link, whether its the word “games” or “videos,” or the name of a television show. I think the navigation would be very clear to even a five year old. Many of the links either have audio on the roll-over, or they bounce. The color is bright and friendly, too. On the “Super Why” Television show sub-page, the navigation continues to be clear, with four link choices on the left hand side. (View Super Why television show webpage)

On the website Slow Food USA, I really like the cork board background, the school bell image, the the type face that screams “legible.” The look and feel evokes a 1940’s or 1950’s classroom setting, doesn’t it?

I am a huge fan of the television show Pushing Daisies. It’s a hard to describe mix of romantic comedy, sleuthing show, and fairy tale. The music, camera work, costuming, and script are all very well done. The Pushing Daisies television show website design shows the characters dropping down into place and bouncing – and this design is light and fun. The website design really captures the feeling of the television show itself. You can find the first season now on Netflix as well as on sale as a DVD set.

The Pirates of the Carribbean Online game website design has changed since I first saw it. The links on the left-hand side of the pages were formatted as wooden signs, connected down the side of the page with old chains. It totally fit the feel of pirates, sea-faring, and spooky. It was really unique its design.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip around a few of my favorite websites.

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My Bleary Eyes! Website Text Tips for Easy Reading

I’ll admit it, I’m getting a bit older… And my eyes need that larger text and higher contrast, even with glasses (especially when using a MacBook, that shrinks that text smaller than normal!!). I used to like the look of gray text on a white page, clean, suave — until I was editing a website for many hours, and couldn’t read it clearly. I have noticed that it just takes more effort to read any website with gray body text.

Compare these two:

Sample 1: Yahoo webpage with gray body text, and this link
Sample 2: a black text website, as an example.

Think about your readers – what age are they? Will they be using modern screens that shrink the whole image or operating in bright conditions that might wash out the screen, for instance? If you want your audience to get your website’s information, keep the contrast between words and background as high as possible.

And keep your text large enough to read. Most books are printed in 10 to 12pt type. 6 pt type? Really?! (Small type web sample 1 and 2) (I noticed this a lot when Flash was more prevalent –) Know that readers can enlarge the font on most pages with HTML text, but Flash remains stubbornly fixed. Websites usually have a body text font size of 14-18pt.

Remember to include white space on your webpages, not only around the body text design, but between the lines. Increase the leading until there is a comfortable white space between lines. (Leading is a printing press term. Strips of lead were included between letter rows on old presses. The web-coding term is “line-height”.)

Keep short paragraphy widths. We all know how difficult it was to read across a wide screen in the days of early web design. Paragraphs that are too short, like the Wall Street Journal’s old format, can also be hard to read. Paragraph widths between three to six inches are easier to read.

Incorporating these simple website tips will help your customers take your message home.

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How To Build Website Links with Wordtracker.com’s LinkBuilder

Ken McGaffin from WordPress.com recently gave a webinar training called “How to Build Links to Your Website.” As you know, adding website links increases your search engine ranking, which means more traffic to your website, without having to pay for it through search marketing. You can now read the full webinar transcript of Ken McGaffin’s website link-building seminar online. WordPress.com’s LinkBuilder software normally costs $59 per month, with a free seven day trial (read more). Enjoy!

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A Truly Graphic Novel: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I want to share with you a truly amazing novel, but if you can’t take my word for it, please believe the Caldecott award judges; author Brian Selznick was awarded the 2008 Caldecott Award. (The Caldecott is the “oscar” prize for children’s book illustration.)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a novel about a young boy who suddenly left alone by his irresponsible uncle. Afraid to tell anyone, he keeps doing his uncle’s job: tending the clocks in a massive Paris train station, much like New York City’s Grand Central Station. The young boy, Hugo, finds a broken automata. There’s a mystery about an old man, who turns about to be Georges Méliès, an automata collector, and the filmmaker behind that famous early black and white film where the moon gets hit in the eye by a rocket (View the wikipedia image of A Trip to the Moon).

All of the illustrations are in black and white with a film noir feel – charcoal or pencil crosshatching. What’s truly amazing, is that this long novel has a full page illustration on each right page! The novel is two or three inches thick, with 550 pages. This book almost reads like a comic book or graphic novel, it is so rich with imagery. It really looks almost like a film story board (a plan of a movies shots in sequence.) This would be a fantastic book for anyone having trouble reading or a “reluctant reader” – someone who isn’t that interested in classic fiction. (And let’s be honest here – when we have free time, do we reach for The Scarlett Letter or Dickens? -No. The answer is ‘no.’)

You can peek inside The Invention of Hugo Cabret on Amazon’s website. There is also a video interview with author Brian Selznick on the book’s Amazon webpage, which shows a lot of the illustrations. He talks a lot about film in the interview, and I can see that this book is very filmic in its storytelling. He had another children’s book about film, where a young man ended up in the movies. On the book’s Amazon webpage, there ia also an illustration about two thirds down the page, that had to be cut from the book (ouch! the author knew it was painful, but wrote that the camera shop setting was wrong.)

If you get a chance, get your hands on this book. It was a pleasure to read, and the illustrations make it a fun romp. I can’ wait to share this with some kids.

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LinkedIn Labs: LinkedIn.com Thinks Outside the Box

Much like Google’s workforce, LinkedIn employees are now taking time off from their normal work to think “outside the box.” Employees held a contest call InDays, where employees pitched their LinkedIn hacks to other employees. They were only given firve minutes to demo it.

The 2007 winner was NewIn, which shows new members’ location on Earth, using the Google Earth website. Another feature called “Signal” streams news feeds and updates. Read more and see visuals of LinkedIn’s Signal here. Visiting the LinkedIn website, I don’t see these features listed, so perhaps they are not yet implemented.

Read the full article by Kristin Burnham, published in PC World Magazine, ‘LinkedIn Labs’ Showcases Experimental Projects.

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A New Medieval Castle Rises in Arkansas

Today we’re not goign to talk about graphics, website design, SEO, or any of the things I normally talk about. It’s something far more magical and wondrous: there is a castle that’s being raised in the U.S., in Arkansas, of all places. The Ozark Medieval Fortress is being built, using the same tools and techniques that were available in medieval times. That means hand-cutting of stone, ladies and gentlemen.

They picked a site where the requisite building materials were already available (earth, sand, water, stone, and wood). The site was originally owned by a retired French couple, the Mirat family. They knew about Michel Guyot, who bought and restored the castle Saint-Forgeau castle in Burgundy, France. They invited him to come, sold him the site, and voila! The project’s home page has architectural drawings in a twenty year plan.

The site provides teaching from workers to “time traveller” tourists each day. They will also be teaching visitors how to make wattle and daub homes (for the peasants), flaxen rope, terracotta roof tiles, and lime-based mortar. (Interestingly, Mayan pyramids are made of lime. Althought they crack from the earthquakes, they also self-repair, because the lime runs off during rains and often fixes the walls.) And last, but not least, full scale catapults, the medieval seige weapon of choice, will be in existence by 2011.

I heard about the project from an Arkansas architect, Steven Hurd, who’s involved with the project. His wonderful wooden cathedral and castle toys, are on sale in the museum shop. His website is Westworks Designs.com.