by Sunday November 22nd, 1pm, send your 3 favorite variations on the quote you picked for the typography only postcard. 

Quote #1 with only typography:

1. how to get a deeper understanding of the quote.

  • Choose one quote from the list in the project description page that inspires you visually.
  • Look at the sentence carefully, think about its meaning.
  • Write the quote down several times by hand on a piece of paper, to get a good feel of it.
  • What is its structure?
  • What are the most important words?
  • What does it make you think about? What is its mood?
  • Write down the meaningful words that you come up with, like “moody”, “peaceful”, “happy”.

2. how to find visual inspiration to help you develop ideas.

  • Do a quick Google search about the author, see if you find anything related to the meaning of the quote that inspires you.
  • Do a quick Google search using the key words from the quote, like “music art”, or “dream art”.
  • Do a quick Google search using the key words you wrote down earlier.
  • Do a quick search on Pinterest using the key words from the quote and see if you find images
  • Do a quick search on Pinterest using the same words from above.
  • Create a Pinterest board for color inspiration. Find paintings, illustrations or photos, with colors expressing the mood of the quote, like blue for peaceful or yellow for happy for example. Remember the video on the meaning of colors.
  • Create a Pinterest board for typography inspiration. Find posters, album covers, book covers, anything with typography that is expressing the mood of the quote, like in the famous Blue Note album covers I placed on OpenLab.
  • After you gathered a bunch of documentation you will probably have a better idea of how to express with typography and color the meaning of the quote.

3. how to convince people about your ideas.

  • Write down a pitch, a couple of sentences, about what came up during your research.
  • What did you find about the quote that made you like it?
  • What is the meaning of it, its message?
  • How do you want people to react when looking at your design. For example, should they smile, laugh, be touched or shocked?

4. how to look for a typography that will express your quote well.

  • Copy and paste the quote from OpenLab, including the name of the author, into a letter size InDesign file.
  • Choose one Sans Serif font, like Helvetica for example.
  • Make one version lowercase
  • Make one version uppercase
  • Make one version light
  • Make one version medium
  • Make one version bold
  • Do the same with a Serif font like Garamond for example.
  • See how all the fonts look in black on a white background
  • See how all the fonts look in white on a black background
  • Organize the lines nicely, following the meaning of the sentence.
    Here some examples:


“I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh


“I dream my painting & I paint my dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh


“I dream my painting and (or &)
I paint my dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh


“I dream my painting
and (or &) I paint my dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh


“I dream my painting
and (or &)
I paint my dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh

“I dream
my painting
and (or &)
I paint
my dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh

5. start to set up your file and text to make slight variations.

  • Create an InDesign file that is 5X7″ with a bleed of 0.125″ around. See my tutorial video.
  • Copy and paste one of the previous step quote variation that you think work well with the meaning of the words.
  • Come up with a simple, not final visual concept.
  • Then grab all the elements on the page, copy and paste into a new page. (command A + Command C + Command V)
  • Change the font, make it all uppercase, or all lowercase, thin or bold, like the examples I showed you on the review video.

6. start to input colors and make more variations.

  • Pick a color palette from your research
  • Create one variation then it’s opposite, if it’s dark make it light.
  • Create a warm color variation then a cool color variation, just to see.

7. send me your 3 favorites, more if you feel like it. You know how I like seeing how creative you are.

I will post the steps for the postcard with an image in a little while. Or maybe you got the idea and can figure out how to do the same, but using the quote with an image this time.