Saturday 30 April 2016

Mothers Day Again

Okay here's my attempt to restore the colors that disappeared when I exported the svg created in #Inkscape to a png.

Corrections made in #GIMP


It's a freebie so if you need a last minute ecard download and edit it to match your printer and paper. 

May I ask though in exchange that you at least consider using Paypal or visiting my Redbubble gallery? I need help to get the word out about the new Chiffon top range! Thank YOU!

Wednesday 27 April 2016

Mothers Day 2016

#mothersday #ecard #freebie #freestuff

Here's a png for you to play with. You may want to do a color edit in GIMP or whatever. There should be more color than this but it disappeared when I exported to png! But I like the letter shapes.

I'm going to try to change the colors later. See what you can do!


Saturday 23 April 2016

The Curious case of Barred D

 The Curious Case of Barred D in #Vietnamese #Orthography


Barred D Đ đ is used in Vietnamese Orthography 
to express a sound English speakers hear as / d / but linguists say is / ɗ /
whereas D in modern Vietnamese is the sound /z/ or /j/ depends on which dialect you use.

Why is this so?

I'm not sure if it was brilliant design or someone trying too hard to please a variety of users, European and Vietnamese.

The Jesuit scholar and priest who created the first Portuguese Latin Vietnamese Dictionary published in 1651 Alexander Rhodes was one of those geniuses who can learn new languages in weeks or months and was fluent in French Portuguese Spanish Greek Latin Chinese Vietnamese and other languages too. 

In the 17th century Vietnamese had a "Dh" sound  now written as D the implosive sound now written with a barred D a T and a 'th" which was aspirated.

The "dh" written as D later split into Z and J sounds and was used in Spanish and Portuguese though its now written z  in Spanish and never printed or written as any form of D with a bar or stroke.

The distinction is very important in Vietnamese not so much in Romance languages.

He needed a form that could be both written and printed.

No record that I know of has survived explaining why barred D was chosen for D and D as a sound probably already shifting in popular speech? 

Perhaps the simplest explanation is that barred D was available as part of a printers font set because it was used as a form of shorthand by scribes to shorten long Latin words in texts? 

Also new fonts being cast in metal ... adding one stroke was a simple change and z and j were still not fully established in font sets with printers still using y or i for j.

I think he opted for the simplest solution cos he had to please the printers, native Vietnamese scholars and converts with mixed feelings about European alphabets, the Vatican, various missionaries and merchant captains, his fellow Jesuits, or possibly after working on diacritics to express six different tones only having to change one consonant symbol was a sheer relief?

And despite overhand doing a great job on adjusting the Roman ABc to write Vietnamese people still argued for several centuries over this ABC orthography versus using Chinese characters to use write an Austroasiatic language top heavy with loan words from several Chinese dialects! 

Why no one thought to try to bridge the factional differences by creating a French Vietnamese Chinese character dictionary before the 20th century ... oh politics! If the French had been less ...arrogant and thought to undermine the conservative mandarins by trying to make learning Chinese Characters easier because there were printed reference texts available ... would Vietnamese history have differed?  

Barred D a letter with one stroke making it different to D.

Design can have a political nationalistic context especially when your design aim is to get people to learn and switch forcibly or by choice from one script to another or to acquire literacy more easily in a national or regional  language competing with an older script in that or another prestige language.

Something to consider? 

As a designer though before politics or religion or culture the aim should be a script and letter shapes that are easy to learn yet also elegant and shapely pleasing to look at and read yet accurately represent sounds and can be printed and also hand written or brushed! 










Wednesday 20 April 2016

YA Red Bubble now has Chiffon Tops !


Awesome #redbubble now has Chiffon Tops .

Here are links to some of mine.

My Red Bubble designs on Chiffon Tops

I'm probably going to change my mid about some of these designs and the tilings so if you visit again on the weekend and its changed plus I still have a couple of more to add but I was so pleased as to how they look so far ... show you more soonest!


Friday 15 April 2016

Starting a new pattern!

This is the start of a new #pattern.
Yes I'm discussing #technique.


Copyright Julie Vaux 2016



So clearly I have taken a photo of a color study of felt tip marker on paper and enlarged and cropped one section. 

What to do next.

First the color values!  ... the paper should be white so Thresholds or Curves 

Next I'll tile this section into a pattern using Small Tiles in Gimp and save it as a jpg or png to export and upload to #redbubble to go on scarves and other items.

BUT maybe I'll do something different using Gimp filters?

Follow me to watch for my next experiment with this file and see the finished result!

Saturday 9 April 2016

TEAM THE OTHER GUY

#teamtheotherguy #teamcap #politics #civilwar #marvel #movie

Is anyone hassling you about who you support.

Here's something red white and blue to wear !  Or get a sticker!

Red Bubble TEAM THE OTHER GUY



Saturday 2 April 2016

Pretty Equations One E=mc2

My latest #redbubble design #maths #physics #e=mc2

Pretty Equations One

E=mc2 ... yes there's a lot of maths art using this formula so why have I added to it?

Well I wanted to see if I could do something #typographic that was elegant and strong in a fancy font that was still readable as an equation.

Lets just say some merged shadows and layers were involved and fused for the final result.

I hope you like it.

You can get #stickers and stuff on redbubble.

Please look out for the next one in the series!