Wednesday, November 01, 2006

random beauty

today marks the start of NaNoWriMo. Good luck to everyone participating! years ago i came to the conclusion that a story could be a lot more cohesive if written in one big chunk, or at least thrown down in a short amount of time with very little coming up for air. i had to quit writing like that because i could no longer physically do it. who would think sitting all day could be so crippling, but it's hard on a body.



i've been having a little too much fun with this thing:
typo generator

i decided to try it with book titles. the random generator came up with some pretty cool covers, some titles more obvious than others.













22 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Totally addictive although it often takes a minimalist approach to text. Very good on design though.

Anonymous said...

These are cool!! More cyber toys--yay! haha! Thanks, Anne, love the graffiti girl! All of them are really awesome designs.

I remember in JC, we had to do this in design class, take words or images and make a collage like this. Fun! =D

Bill Cameron said...

Oh my god. My day is finished. I have to take the phone off the hook and turn off the email.

This will capture me for hours...

anne frasier said...

patti, yes the text can be annoying. often it's just one or two letters, but the designs can be such a nice visual surprise.

kelly, i thought the first graffiti girl was pretty nice. the pink is another attempt, and of course the green.
two kiss her goodbyes up there. the first was pretty funny.

bill, i found that the damn site started kicking me off after about five hours. :D

Tami Klockau said...

five hours!? LOL. Man, I don't even want to try that right now. I think I'd be in the same boat. Last time you posted the blogthings site (is that what it's called?) I was on it for hours! :::shakes head:::

anne frasier said...

tami, i wasn't really on there 5 hours. :D
at least an hour though, maybe longer. *blush* the site's been screwy the last couple of times i've tried it.

Jeff said...

It's kind of fun. I messed around with it.

anne frasier said...

i just tried and couldn't get it to work. glad you had some luck, jeff. :)

Sandra Ruttan said...

That's so cool! I like my book cover.

Except my name isn't on it.

Damn, if I'd known about this, I could have saved my publisher a lot of money. ;)

Daniel Hatadi said...

Cool! Nothing like colourful procrastination.

Tami Klockau said...

ahh yes. When you mentioned it didn't work for you Anne, I had to see if it worked. BIG MISTAKE! I just spent the last 30 minutes playing around with titles of manuscripts I'm working on. I got a few good ones that I'll try and post on my blog tomorrow.

Don't you just love sites like this to help procrastinate?

anne frasier said...

sandra, i didn't have much luck when i entered a lot of text, so i gave up on names. i was really surprised your whole title showed up!

daniel, oh yeah. all about procrastination. that's 80 percent of my day. :D

tami, can't wait to see what you came up with!!

Anonymous said...

Some of those are pretty dang cool! That would be pretty sad if it put some graphic artists out of business.

anne frasier said...

jason, i was worried about that too!

Rob Gregory Browne said...

I actually like the Kiss Her Goodbye cover. Maybe they can use it on the "literary" soft cover version...

Stephen Blackmoore said...

I had trouble getting more than a couple of letters at a time to show up. The backgrounds are cool, though.

angie said...

Thanks for the NaNo support/good wishes. Very much appreciated...

The cover tool is cool, but I couldn't get much in the way of whole words to show up.

anne frasier said...

rob, i thought that looked good too. i think they all look like trade paperbacks.

stephen and angie: it seems to have problem with text. i was surprised when whole titles actually showed up a few times.

Tami Klockau said...

Yeah, i got my whole titles to show up a few times. Very cool.

Totally off topic, but does anyone know a cool word count bar? It seems that the one that everyone uses (same one that you have/had up Anne) isn't working anymore. When you click on it to update, it says the page has been suspended. Any suggestions? Of course, right in time for Nano!

anne frasier said...

the bar isn't working? wah!! i have noticed new bars on blogs, so that's probably why. i think i saw one on daniel's blog, but can't tell you what it was.

Tami Klockau said...

Thanks Anne! I hopped over to Daniel's and realized that Nano is supplying them this year! Sweet! Unfortunately, that doesn't help every other month of the year. Hopefully they'll get the normal one up and running.

Mary Louisa said...

Very cool covers.

NaNoWriMo--yep, I am with you there on the decaying body part, sister. Maybe ten (or fifteen) years ago, I could've kept my butt in the chair for hours on end, but not now.