This week I’ll be looking at the work of Joe Davis. This second inspiration post is less about punchy visuals and more about intricate detail, thinking and an appreciation of typography, which can be just as important in design.

I’m not sure how I came across him but his Telescopic text site about making a cup of tea pinged my interest.

If you want to see what I’m talking about have a look here. It’s a simple site which to begins with has only five words but can be expanded out to a two hundred and fifty five word story. Each time you click on the text it expands out and develops the story more and adds detail.

It is a fun process but the story’s complete in the below image. I could have just written it out here but it look a lot better in its natural state, it looks a lot lot better if you take the time to unwrap all the words.

With such a simple setting the Georgia typeface gets plenty of attention and it certainly deserves it being one of my favourite serif fonts, along with Garamond. If you’re ever wondering what a font is you can easily find out by either uploading an image of it to WhatTheFont​.com or having a look at the source code.

You can generally do this by right clicking and click ‘View Source’ or ‘View Page Source’ depending on your browser.

As we move to his home page you’ll find the same intricate thinking has gone into the first page with many little tidbits to play with from playable guitar strings to the date and weather. I found this to be more interesting than his work mind but each to their own.

What I take away from seeing his work counts however and that is that a simple idea can still be a very good idea. Thanks for reading.