“Mum, I’m not a fashion designer.”

That’s what I always had to explain to my mama.

It went something like this…

Mum: “But you say you are a designer.” 


Me: “Mum, I’m not a fashion designer, I’m a graphic designer. I make words and images look good together.”


Mum: “…and they pay you for that??”

Ole school thoughts from mother.

Well, at last I can actually say I’ve designed my first fashion accessory. Whoop!

I’ve designed a cycle cap for the cycle club that I ride with - Black Women on Wheels (BWOW).

Every year I do a piece of pro bono work. Last year it was a cookbook for my son’s school and this year I’m helping BWOW.

I heard they were ready to design our kit so I said I’d love to be part of the design team.

What I love about BWOW is there are so many women from different walks of life, with lots of different professions. It’s a space where we ride, talk, laugh and share our experiences in life.

Anyway, back to the cap – what’s that got to do with fonts, I hear you say?

Well, the BWOW ladies had already used a designer for their logo before I came along. The designer had used the font Bebas so I used that as the starting point for creating some ideas.

So this newsletter is dedicated to:

Bebas is a typeface of all capital letters. Not a single lowercase letter in sight. It was designed by Ryoichi Tsunekawa and it’s one of the free fonts on Google, so you can use it to your heart’s content.

So, Bebas was my start point. I thought it would be cool to use the outline of the acronym BWOW and incorporate brand colours. I played around with the shapes the BWOW outline formed. Here’s how it turned out.

I use Bebas in one of the publications I design. You might think an all-uppercase font would be limiting, but here’s what can happen when you manipulate it to interact with simple imagery.

It’s been fun working on the cycle caps, and now we’re working on the full clothing kit. So, watch this space… mama… I can now say I have a little fashion design in my portfolio. 😂❤️🚴‍♂️ 🚴‍♂️ 🚴‍♂️

NEED MORE COLOUR IN YOUR LIFE?

Have a look at this colour palette generator, called Coolors.

It’s free to use so you can get creating palettes straight away. There’s a paid option if you want to store your collections, and it integrates with other programmes and plug-ins.

Need more free images that aren’t from Unsplash? It’s a great free resource, but there are other places you can find images.

Have you tried Pexels? Have a look here.

LUNCHTIME LEARNING

Take a break to tune in to these 30-minute sessions by Enterprise Nation.

Last week Steve Folland from Being Freelance was on Enterprise Nations: Lunch and Learn: How to be a better freelancer. It was a good one!

During the week there are different webinar topics to help you and your biz. And yes, they’re FREE!

Sign up to the newsletter to get notified about upcoming events. You can also check out past Lunch and Learn sessions here.

And to end on text and images working together, I’ve got this ad pinned on a board in my office. And not so I can order pizza. It just cracks me up every time I see it.

I know fast food flyers can be produced cheaply. But really? The copy doesn’t match the image at all. And Bill looks like he needs a pizza.

“Hey Pizza GoGo, be smart. Hire a graphic designer or read Font Love Friday for some design tips”.

Or if I’ve missed something, someone please tell me 😉

As always, a gazillion thanks for reading. Do drop me a message if you want to say hi, or if you’ve found another Bill who needs my help.

Have a good one! 🌈