I've never been that big of a fan of most emoji. Apple popularized the the use of gradients in emoji, but I think it just looks so ugly 
. Gradients look nice in a background, but the moment they're put into a character design they just look tacky. The reason I like flat colors so much is because they don't have any ugly gradients, they're easy to draw
, and they're easy to read at small sizes 
.
Lots of emoji use...
Today, I was working on the social media ads for RCP and I needed to space out the numbers in "1,500,000,000". I first clicked "create outlines" so I could move the individual digits around. I knew there had to be a tool to space them automatically, but I didn't know where it was or how to use it. Following a guide I found online titled "How to Evenly Space Objects in Illustrator", I selected my objects, then clicked "Horizontal Distribute Space" in the Align window.
Nothing happened. I tried again and again; Did I select the objects wrong? Eventually, on a whim, I decided to ungroup the objects. It worked perfectly. Illustrator has good tools, but it's frustrating when they're so unintuitive.
I spent a lot of time this week reading the
web accessibility tutorials at MDN and trying to make my website more accessible. I changed the tags, categories, navbar, related posts, and archive to list elements, to make them better for screen readers. I also adjusted the color palette of my website to meet the WCAG AA accessibility guidelines. I'm happy I was able to come up with a color scheme that is both more accessible, and is prettier than the one I had before.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land released last friday, and it's a lot of fun so far. I love the flat color, monochromatic graphics that display during the level loading screens. I've spoken before about how I like flat colors. The definition of a "flat color" appears to be a color with no shading, texture, gradation, or halftones at all. The kind of colors I like fit the definition of flat color, but I'm okay with a bit of texture or...
Out of the new games I've played recently (which isn't that many), Donut County probably has my favorite art direction. While playing it, I realized that it has many of the design points that I mentioned liking in "Talking About My Inspirations". It uses simple shapes with flat pastel colors. The pastel very nicely communicates its status as a relaxing game. The UI uses a color that appears to be black, but is actually a dark, desaturated blue, making it...