#I like both names and both fit to him but he's a born Brody still idk XD

[bubblegumflavor]

Lol I still think Brody in my mind when I draw the character now argh XD Okay here's the deal: His name is James Broderick (Andrews as a last name for now but not set in stone yet)

So that's his name okay and once I get to the point where I have to decide finally, I decide if his nickname will be Brody or Jamie but glad it killed my art block to decide an alternative.

[jadeyarts]

you know what Novelmore fans need? headcanons about the main characters’ absent parents, obviously. so here we go.

Arwynn’s mother, Queen Llewella:

since John is an English name but Arwynn is a Welsh name I decided that clearly Arwynn’s mother needed a Welsh name too.

late wife of King John, she died about a decade ago. Arwynn’s memories of her are fuzzy, but he resembles her in a lot of ways.

John had lighter blond hair than Arwynn, so I thought it would make sense for Llewella to be a strawberry blonde.

I haven’t decided how I think John and Llewella would have gotten together - it was either an arranged marriage that worked out well enough for them, or he had some kind of dramatic Married A Peasant For Love arc decades ago.

Brody’s mother, Captain Barabal:

Brody is a Scottish name, but Bayron is ... apparently the Spanish form of an English name? so mom gets a Scottish name!

his birth was a strategic political arrangement - his mother is loyal to Lord Bayron, but the two were never married. he was born out of wedlock and is only tolerated as much as he is by virtue of being of noble blood and the only heir to the throne.

since Brody’s description on the playmobil site said he’d been travelling between kingdoms before the plot begins, I thought it’d be fun if his mom was a privateer and he was on her crew. he doesn’t receive parental affection from her, but she does pay him more respect than Bayron does - she doesnt treat him like a son, but recognizes that he could potentially become her future boss so she’s more strategic in how she treats him. mostly she tries to keep him busy and out of her hair.

Gwynn’s parents, Geoffrey and Bronwen Greystone:

in the show Gwynn’s uncle is named Bran while the figure of her uncle in the toyline is named Geoffrey. these are based on the show, so I’m using Geoffrey as the name of her dad. 

uncle Bran is credited as Lord Greystone so that means he should be Geoffrey’s brother? but since Bran is a Welsh name while Geoffrey is a French name that was converted to English, I like the idea that theyre from two different cultural backgrounds + Bran is Gwynn’s maternal uncle. so mom gets a Welsh name :P

anyways Geoffrey is probably still alive, just living out in the wilderness. I get the feeling that Bronwen is... Not alive, though. Gwynn seems like someone who was heavily influenced by being raised as a woman without a female role model of any kind.

won’t lie to you - I based Bronwen on Snow White (iirc Gwynn means white) while I based Geoffrey on the Huntsman. not for any reason other than I felt allusions to either or both would fit Gwynn, in particular - its just to tie them to her, thematically! :P

Dario’s parents, Ser Claudio and Monna Annabella da Vanci:

Obviously the character with an Italian name, based on an Italian historical figure, is going to have parents with Italian names.

This means that Dario’s full name is actually Dario di ser Claudio da Vanci (meaning “Dario, son of Claudio from Vanci”)

Claudio, naturally, was the son of Dario the first - while he was a talented engineer and inventor like his father before him, he was more passionate about sculpting. He became well-renown for his sculptures, and was often commissioned by King John.

since Dario II is the last of the da Vanci family, we know that Claudio and Annabella must both be dead - or at least Claudio is. Annabella theoretically could still be alive, but likely would have remarried into a different family and become a little distant if so.

Claudio’s design is based on paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, somewhat, while Annabella’s design is based on the Mona Lisa.

Faylinn’s parents, Archer and Nadiye Fletcher:

uh... the thing is, Faylinn isn’t a name I can find previously documented use of, but there are the similar names Faelin, Faelynn, and Faylene. All English. so dad gets an English name. but Faylinn's outfit seems to take inspiration from a different culture, and to me it resembles Ottoman-era Turkish traditional clothing. so her mom gets a Turkish name.

currently thinking Nadiye was a merchant from a small community at the edge of Sal’ahari Sands. she traveled to Novelmore to sell her wares, until she settled down with Archer. she still sells homemade textiles and pottery, but no longer needs to travel such long distances to make a living.

Archer, obviously, being an archer. Faylinn was likely taught how to use a bow and arrow by her dad, given the circumstances...

[itsjustmyfantasyroom]

Riddler part 4

Master List

Warnings: fluff

WC: 1527

Enjoy x

“Wait, wait just one minute” Amanda paused frowning at you. You were both in the break room having lunch.

“You went on a date with Barba last night and you took him to our Mexican place on Sunday? You’re cheating on me and you’re out of line Detective”

“Yes and Yes. Come on Amanda, don’t be a jealous” she laughed at you “And it’s still our Mexican place. He also asked me on a date on Saturday night”

“Have you told him about everything?”

“Yeah I have. He was pretty caring when I told him”

“How about you’re Aunty?”

“Yep. I found out stuff about him as well, his past”

“Well” she paused “I ‘am happy for you. I would give anything to see my best friend happy.” She smiled at you “We need to go shopping for this date. We need to make you look more like a women” you both started laughing.

Rafael had sent you a text early Saturday morning with the address of where he wanted to meet you that night. Amanda was there when the text came in, you were both going shopping.

“Oh wow, look at this.” Amanda lent over your shoulder and seen the picture’s you had on the screen.

“How romantic, a New York roof top bar. Barba has taste”

Amanda ended up staying with you all day and was going to drive you to the bar that night, which was only 2 blocks from your place, but she insisted on her driving you.

“Barba is going to flip when he sees you” she said looking you up and down.

You had a black cold shoulder overlay jumpsuit. The overlay over your bust was seer, the legs of the jumpsuit were the perfect fit between tight and lose enough, your hair was wavy curls and your make up was just enough with very low black heels.

“How did I get here” were so nervous. “It was so much easier when…”

“Don’t do that, get out of your head. You of all people deserve to be happy let’s go”

Amanda dropped you off and you got out of the lift to the bar level. As the doors opened, “Senorita” By Shawn Mendas and Camila Cabello was blasting over the speakers, really the entrance couldn’t have been planned better with a song like that playing. As you scanned the roof, you seen Rafael sitting over near the balcony on a high two topped table. He seen you, and a big smile came to his face as you walked towards him.

“You plan this song to play as I walk in Barba?” you both laughed as he lent over and kissed you on the cheek.

“I don’t plan on running away from you Y/N, But I’ll call you Senorita anytime you want.” he gave you a wink and you bust out laughing.

“Very smooth Counselor, very smooth” you laughed at him again.

You guys ordered drinks and just ordered dinner when you heard your name, you looked up and Rafael turned around to see who it was,

“Blake, what are you doing here?” you jumped off your stool and run into the man’s arms, who lifted you up off the ground in a huge embrace. Rafael didn’t know what to think. Here was this extremely tall dark handsome younger man lifting you off your feet, and you were here with him.

“I almost didn’t recognise you. You actually looked nice for a change”

“No seas grosero primo (don’t be rude cousin). Smart ass” you back handed him on the arm, Rafael was relieved when he heard you call him cousin.  “I ‘am on a date” your cousin’s eyes opened wide with a big smile on his face. “Ven (come), I’ll introduce you” your cousin wrapped his arm around your shoulders, yours around his middle and you led him to the table.

“Blake, this is Rafael Barba, Rafael this is my cousin Blake Y/L/N”

“One of the many, Nice to meet you Rafael” he held his hand out to him, Rafael done the same and they shook hands.

“Like wise” Rafael smiled back, you guys looked a like, same features, he was just really tall, over 6 foot he guessed.

“Blake and I are number 6 and 7, born a week apart, las gemelas (the twins), I’ am older though” you smiled at Rafael

“You wouldn’t think so” your cousin squeezed your shoulder with a smile “Are you still coming next week, por favor dime si (Please tell me yes)” your cousin pulled back from you

“Yeah of course, wouldn’t miss it, is anyone else coming?”

“No, pendejos (assholes). Rafael, you should come with her”

“What I ‘am agreeing too first” he laughed looking at you.

“Blake is a web designer, he has a launch party for his latest project next Saturday, and it’s a big one”

“Por supuesto (of course) I would love to” Rafael smiled at you

“Oh, you speak Spanish Rafael?” Blake asked.

“He is Cuban and the Assistant District Attorney” you informed him

“Bonito (nice). Tia will be pleased with you Y/N, what a catch”

“Relax Blake, don’t plan the wedding yet” you all started laughing.

Blake left not long later after some small talk. You sat back up on the stool and looked at Rafael with a smile.

“So tell me about them”

“About who Rafael?”

“Tus doce primos (Your 12 cousins)”

“You really want to hear about them?”

“Of course they are a big part of your life”

“Sit back and relax Counselor” you both laughed “I’ll just go from oldest to youngest. Oldest is Bard, he is married to Mandy and a Dentist, Craig is married to Brooke and in the Air Force, Lachlan is married to Sally-Anne and an Accountant, Ryan is married to Grace and is also an Accountant. Those two have a business together in Jersey. Brodie is in the Air Force as well, then it’s me, then Blake who is a web designer, Caesar is an ER doctor, Logan is in IT, Nate is anaesthetic nurse, Grayson is a Vet, Emanuel is a pilot and Baby Rodney is in the Navy. So Blake, Logan, Nate, Grayson, Caesar and I all live in Manhattan, we all catch as much as we can, the rest are all over the place. We all keep in touch but usually only all get together at Christmas”

“Wow, that’s a lot to take in” you laughed at him

“Yeah it is a lot to take in, but it will be a lot more when you finally meet them all”

“You want me to meet them?”

“Well, yeah one day I guess, if it gets to that point” you looked at Rafael who had a smile from ear to ear.

The rest of the night was filled with laughter, a lot of drinking and smart ass comments. Rafael wanted to walk you home, even more so when he found out you only lived two blocks away. He grabbed your arm and linked it in his as you walked down the street towards your apartment building.

“I can understand if you don’t want to come next Saturday, it’s a lot to ask.”

“What, no it’s not. Come on Y/N, you have worked with me enough to know if I didn’t want to go, I would have said no.”

“Yeah that’s true, unless I fight with you” he laughed out loud.

There was a comfortable silence as you guys made your way onto your block.

“This is me” you nodded towards your building. “I had a great time again Rafael, thank you”

“I had a great time as well” he smiled at you, taking a step closer.

“Rafael, at risk of being too forward, mi gustas (I like you), a lot”

You looked into his eye, you couldn’t read them. You weren’t sure how he was going to react. He looked into your eyes and lent forward, placing a hand on your cheek and kissed you lightly on the lips. He pulled back, looking deep into your eyes, running his thumb over your cheek.

“Yo demasiado Hermosa (me too beautiful)”

“I know I may be a lot to handle, but I wi-” he lent in and kissed you again. You moved your head to side and opened your mouth slightly to allow his tongue in, he moved his hands on your waist and pulled you into him, and you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him even closer. The kiss was amazing, you had forgot how amazing someone’s touch was. But really not just anyone’s, Rafael’s. He pulled back and looked into your eyes again.

“I don’t want you to do that again. I don’t want you to ever change, I like you just the way you are, and when the time is right, I will take you home to my Mum” you smiled at him and lowered your head to hide your blushing cheeks and your slight tears filled eyes. “And I think I just worked out how to shut you up in the good way” Rafael lent in again.

Tags: @detective-giggles @beccabarba @thatesqcrush @the-baby-bookworm @dianilaws @scarletsoldierrr @lv7867 @permanentlydizzy @averyhotchner @infiniteoddball @ritajammer21​ @madamsnape921​ @word-scribbless

[avengerscompound]

The Hamptons’ House: 2003 - 1

The Hamptons’ House:  A Iron Man Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a coffee with Ko-fi Word Count: 2511

Pairing:  Tony Stark x F!Reader

Warnings:  Smut (MFFF bisexual fourway, oral sex, vaginal sex, daisy chain, face sitting, come play)

Synopsis: You and Tony meet up again for your week again.  You both look forward to spending the time together,  but when it becomes clear Tony’s life is spiraling out of control, you wonder how many more of these meetups you’re going to get.

2003: Part 1

It was strange how as you got older the time between parties seemed to be getting shorter.  Three years was three years yet somehow as you turned your rental car into the driveway of Tony’s Hamptons’ house it felt like you’d only left a few weeks ago.

Not that a lot hadn’t happened in those years.  A lot had happened, but the time might have flown by so fast simply due to half of it being experienced in that half-awake, living zombie phase of new parenthood.

Brody was born on the tenth of February 2001.  While you and Kurt had been thrown into the life of new parenthood, the world had been thrown into turmoil thanks to terrorist attacks and the now named ‘war on terror’.  Stark Industries were booming because of it and he was now listed as one of the top ten richest people on the planet.  Not that that had changed very much.  He had always been obscenely rich but he was still just your Tony.

When you sent him an email telling him about Brody’s birth with photos attached he’d sent you the biggest bouquet you'd ever seen with a blue teddy bear that had Brody and his date of birth embroidered on the foot.

You put the car into park and got out, grabbing your bag from the back.  It was still very early.  A catering van sat at the door and people were unloading things from it under the watchful eye of Happy and the DJ had his station wagon parked beside your ford focus rental, unloading his equipment.

You made your way to the door and Happy grinned at you when he saw you.  “Hey, Cookie,” he said, greeting you with a kiss on the cheek.  “You're early.”

“Yeah, my flight just got in,” you said.  “Figured Tony wouldn't mind if I came early and used his shower.”

Some caterers squeezed passed you holding large trays of vegetables and Happy tickets something off a chart.  “The boss is in his room, I'm sure he won't care if you go straight up.”

“Thanks, Hap,” you said, heading inside.  “It’s good to see you.”

As you passed through the hall you saw Tony’s assistant Pepper overseeing the restocking of the bar.  He had been so sure she hated him and yet three years on and she was still working for him.

You went through the kitchen and up the secret staircase.  Tony was hunched over his desk that looked out over the ocean working on a circuit board.  He was wearing socks and a robe and beside him was an open bottle of Glenfiddich beside an almost empty glass.

You dropped your bag by the bed and approached him.  He was so absorbed in what he was doing he hadn’t even looked up.  You ran your hands over his shoulders and wrapped them around him.

“Woah…” Tony yelped and spun around, making you jump back a little to avoid getting kicked.  “Cookie!  You’re early!”

“I am,” you said.  “You gonna beat me up?”

“You surprised me,” he said, taking your hand and pulling you closer.  “I thought one of the cleaners was trying to get fresh with me.”

You straddled his lap and he ran his hands up your back as he looked up at you.  “Nope, just me.  What are you doing?”

“Oh,” he said looking over his shoulder.  “I’ve been working on creating an AI that can run the house.  I had an idea for it, and I thought I’d see if I could work on it here, but this stuff is all 15 years old.  So then I was looking at one of the things I was working on fifteen years ago…”  He shook his head.  “You know what?  I have no idea.  Where’s Kurt?”

“He’s taken Brody to his parents for the week,” you answered.  There had been talk about both of you coming again, but Brody was only two and so far, while you’d had nights off where you had someone babysitting, you’d never had any time off alone and Kurt had only had a few work trips that had taken him out of town.  You didn’t want to waste your first week away together, not actually together.

“Brody?”  Tony asked.

“Yeah,” you said, furrowing your brow.   “You know?  My son?  The one I had about nine months after I last saw you?”

“Whoa…”  Tony said, that same shock in his voice as when you’d come up behind him.  He pushed you off his lap and got up and started pacing.  “Wait?  You… we… is he…”  He stopped and looked at you and you tried not to break down into hysterical laughter.  “Is he?”

“Tony,” you said, shaking your head and trying to sound somber.

“Oh my god,” Tony said, running his hands through his hair.  “He is, isn't he?  He’s mine?”

You couldn’t hold it.  You burst out laughing and came over to him, wrapping your arms around his waist.  “I was pregnant when you last saw me.  Remember?  I was throwing up every day?”

“Oh… yeah, right,” Tony said, leaning into you slightly.  “I completely forgot.  You sent pictures right?”

“Yes, I did,” you said, poking his side.  “And you sent me flowers.”

“Well, to be fair,” Tony said, running his hands up your back.  “That was Pepper.”

“You’re the worst,” you teased and brought your lips to his.  As you kissed deeply and a little sloppily you became aware exactly why Tony had forgotten about your son.  He tasted strongly of Scotch.  He’d been drinking a lot last time too, it was likely that anything that didn’t affect his day-to-day life was being shuffled into a part of his brain he didn’t access much.

He pulled back and spanked your ass.  “Why are you here so early?”

“Just when the plane got in,” you said.  “I thought I’d grab some lunch, have a nap, and then get ready for the party.  I have the sluttiest dress packed.”

Tony smirked.  “That’s what I like to hear,” he teased.  “Let’s do it.  This place is as much yours as it is mine these days.”

After you napped you took a shower and came out in your towel to find Pepper helping Tony with a pair of cufflinks and going through the list of things he’d wanted at the party.  She looked over to you and smiled before focussing her attention back on Tony.  “The cleaners will be here tomorrow morning, then you’ll have one come through every day until you leave.  On the last day they’ll come and clean and pack up the house,” she said.

“Thank you, Pepper,” Tony said.  “What would I do without you.”

“Starve in your own filth?”  She teased.  “Okay, you two.  Have fun.  I’ll be in Cabo.  So don’t call me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Tony said.  “Enjoy yourself.”

Pepper headed back down the stairs and you started to get ready, starting with doing your hair.  “Come on, slowpoke, we have an orgy to attend.”

“You just sit tight,” you teased.  “You’re gonna get your dick sucked soon enough.”

Tony burst out laughing and flopped down on the edge of the bed, watching as you got ready.

“You’re putting a bra on?”  Tony asked as you put on your matching black lace thong and bra.

“Gravity has started to betray me, Tony,” you said.

“I’m just going to take it off,” he teased.

You laughed and stepped into your dress.  It was loose fit and asymmetrical in shimmering silver and black fabric.  You paired it with a strappy silver heel and Tony got up off the bed.  “Finally!”  He huffed, offering you his elbow.

You giggled and hooked his arm through his and the two of you went downstairs.  The party was in full swing when the two of you entered and there were shouts of ‘happy birthday’ to Tony as he made his way to the bar.  It was just a party so far.  People were drinking and dancing.  A large group had already collected around the pool and a handful were swimming.

Tony got himself a Macallan neat while you got a cosmo.  You stuck with Tony as he mingled with people.  He was royalty in this group of friends, acquaintances, and people who just wanted a chance to touch celebrity, and because he was royalty, you were royalty by association.  It was a nice feeling but not one you particularly wanted to extend and you wondered why you’d never noticed it until this trip.  Tony had always been the center of attention of course, but it never felt like you were part of that.  Perhaps it was because most of the time you arrived well after the party started.  The guests at these events changed a lot each time, but there were people you recognized and names you knew.  Perhaps people knew that Tony considered you special because it always started with you and him.

As people seemed to start things up and other women began to hang off Tony he pulled you close to him and brought his lips to your ear.  “What are we feeling tonight, cookie?”

“It's been a while since I’ve been with another woman,” you said.  “But I'm open to suggestions.”

“Nope,” Tony said and pulled one of the women who had gathered around you closer to him. “Annie, Lilli, shall we?”

The two women closest to him giggled and Annie took hold of Tony’s tie and led him to one of the downstairs bedrooms. She pulled him close and began to undress him as Tony kissed her neck and ran his hands up under your skirt.

You and Lilli turned to each other and began to kiss and slowly undress each other.  Not that there was too much to undress.  You were both completely naked before Tony even had his pants off.

The two of you moved to the bed and you guided her back on the mattress as you kissed her deeply.  You each ground on the other’s thigh as your tongues circled together.  Annie pushed Tony down on the bed and kneeled between his legs pulling his cock free from his pants.  You slowly began to crawl down Lilli’s body, kissing a trail down her skin as you moved further and further down.  You paused at her breasts, sucking and biting at her nipples as you rolled your hips on her thigh.  She mewled and arched her back, grabbing the headboard as her cunt flooded and smeared on your skin.  When both her nipples were like hard pebbles you moved down lower.

You kissed along her hips and flattened your tongue, running it up her cunt.  The tart musk of her sex filled your senses and your both moaned in unison.  Tony lay back on the bed, his head landing between your legs, and began to suck hungrily on your cunt.  You groaned into Lilli’s pussy, keeping your focus on her, drinking up her juices as she rocked against your face.  The four of you formed a chain down the bed, beginning with Lilli as she gripped the headboard and writhed under you and ending with Annie who was bobbing her head up and down on Tony’s cock.  You pushed two fingers inside of her and began to fuck her with them.  She dripped for you, her arousal ran from her, down your wrist in rivulets.  You drank up what you could and as your fingers worked over the soft spongy spot inside her, her walls began to spasm around your fingers.  Her moans got louder, drowning out the muffled moans you made into your cunt.

With a loud cry and a jerk of her hips, she came on your face.  You sat up and climbed off of Tony’s face.  He looked up at you with a smirk and took Annie’s hand and guided her up.  “Ladies,” he said.  “Start without me.”

The three of you formed a daisy chain on the bed, your head between Annie’s legs, Lilli’s between yours, and Annie’s between Lilli’s.  As the three of you began to suck and finger each other’s cunts, Tony moved around the edge of the bed, watching closely as he pumped his cock.  He grabbed a condom from the bowl and rolled it on as the three of you brought each other closer and closer to the edge.

Your senses were overwhelmed.  It was like they were all being stimulated at once, with the scent and taste of Annie’s cunt, the sounds of their moans, and the way Lilli was expertly working your g-spot.  Tony moved up behind you and Lilli pulled away from your cunt and started sucking his cock.  You moaned needily into Annie’s cunt and bucked your hips.  A moment later, Tony’s cock was pressed at your entrance and he thrust hard inside you.  You gasped and dug your fingers into Annie’s thighs from the sudden intrusion.  Annie began to rock her pussy on your face as you lapped at her clit eagerly and thrust two fingers inside you.  As Tony fucked your cunt, Lilli sucked on your clit.

You began to fall apart between them.  Your whole body buzzed and your clit began to twitch.  Your breath became more and ragged and your head became fuzzy and with a loud cry, you came hard, bucking back against Tony.

Tony pulled out and moved around to Annie, changing condoms as he did.  He thrust into her and began fucking her hard.  You kept flicking your tongue around the base of his cock and her clit.  She was already close before Tony began to fuck her and it wasn’t long before her muscles started tensing and her legs began to shake.  Tony’s breath was coming in labored and you spanked his ass as you nipped at Annie’s clit.  She cried out loudly and came, her whole body shuddering with it.

Tony pulled out and moved again and this time you and Annie did too.  You both sat on either side of Lilli and as you leaned down and began to lick at her clit, Annie sucked and bit at  Lilli’s breasts.  Lilli rolled her hips in time with the thrust of Tony’s hips and arched her back off the mattress.

“Fuck,” Tony groaned.  “You girls are so fucking hot.”

“Cum on my tits, Mister Stark,” Lilli begged, reaching up and holding his wrist.

His hips began to stutter and you focused on her clit, rubbing it harder to bring her along too.  She jerked up and cried out, gushing around Tony’s cock.  Tony pulled out and tossed the condom aside as he jerked his cock hard and with a groan, he came in hot ribbons over Lilli’s tits.

She hummed happily and ran her fingers through the mess and Annie leaned in and licked it up.

Tony smirked at you and held out his hand.

“Cake?”  You asked as you let him help you to your feet.

“You know me so well,” he chuckled and pulled you into a deep kiss.

// NEXT

[fundiesimsfamchallenge]

Big Family Update!!

Our family has gone through a fair amount of changes in the last several years since this was updated! (A/N: long post & ignore any clipping or weird poses :) )

First, Bentley and Michaela now have SIX kids and counting!!!! They want to try to make it to twenty!! I reminded them that it’s up to the LORD, and that he will provide if he SEES fit to do so!!! 

From back to front (L-R) - Bentley, Destiny (5.5yrs), Desiree (4.5yrs), Michaela holding Duncan (10 months),Dana (5.5yrs), David Benji (7yrs), Daniel Jr. (2yrs).

Caylee and Moses have THREE wonderful blessings. Unfortunately, they had a hard time getting pregnant for a few years after marriage. But eventually the LORD saw FIT to provide then with some PRECIOUS BLESSINGS!! First, they had TWIN boys named Jason and Benjamin. A few years later, they had another boy that they named Preston, who is now one. 

Alfie and Layla have had a QUITE difficult time receiving any Blessings. They have recently had a son, Brody Tanner, who is now two years old!! They’ve said that they probably won’t be having more, but I reminded them that that is up to the LORD, and they will have more if he wants them to, which they can’t control!  In other news, a year before Brody was born, they decided to add a dog to their household!! (A/N: Layla & Alfie both rolled ‘hates children’, so they had a child to appease their parents, but generally just ignore him & let him do whatever, so I imagine that he is wandering around a lot outside.)

Maysilee & Jace have been blessed with TWO children through their 4 years of marriage!! Their kids are Matthias (4yrs) & Mackenzie (5 months).

Henry & Sage are living in an apartment in San Myshuno and currently have TWO BLESSINGS!! Sage is pregnant with their third child!

L-R: Sage, Aaliyah (3yrs), Abigail (14 months old), Henry.

Jesse & Stephanie are living in San Myshuno with Henry & his family and unfortunately only have one child, Mya (3.5yrs). Luckily, they can help with Henry’s blessings, living with them.

Finley got married to Marisol about 8 months ago and they moved a few hours away to Windenberg.

Sadie and Jackson moved in together before marriage, but while courting. We allowed that because they wanted to SOLVE the nasty, DEMONIC influence invading Strangerville. Luckily, they managed to do that, and also got a REWARD of MONEY from the Strangerville government. Unfortunately, they forgot to take a camera with them this time, so they didn’t get any pictures there.

Zachary and Zoee save up enough money to move out to an apartment together, which is allowed because they are siblings!

The rest of the kids are still at home right now!!!! They like to chat with their older siblings on the phone, and really seem to miss having them around! 

First picture L-R: Charlie, Riley, Daniel, Levi, Toby, Renee. Second picture L-R: Evie and Jaicie.

[strvngcrs]

『 adam brody. forty. cis male. he/him. 』 oh heavens, is that DANIEL ABRAMS from FAIR LANE i see roaming around mapleview? minnie may’s always calling them -BROODING & -EVASIVE. i happen to think they’re not that bad! they’re a pretty cool HORROR AUTHOR and every time i’ve seen them, they’ve always been +DEBONAIR & +ELOQUENT. i hope i see them around again! 

classically rolls in ridiculously late bc i forgot i had to work last night & then proceeded to sleep in today wooo !!  good afternoon ghouls, it’s ya girl maia, finally here to deliver the definition of hot mess with good intentions.

GENERAL

FULL NAME.    daniel elijah abrams.

NICKNAMES.    dan, danny.

AGE & BIRTHDATE.    40 years old ; may 4, 1980.

GENDER & PRONOUNS.    cis male ; he/him.

ORIENTATION.    heterosexual.

MARITAL STATUS.    estranged.

RELIGION.    jewish ( non-practicing ).

OCCUPATION.    horror author.

INSPIRATION.     bill denbrough ( it ), donnie darko ( donnie darko ), lucas scott ( one tree hill ), stephen king.

PHYSICAL

HAIR COLOUR.    black.

EYE COLOUR.    dark brown.

BUILD.    athletic.

MARKS.     freckles scarcely spread across his entire body.

TATTOOS.    none.

PIERCINGS.    none.

HEIGHT.    5'11".

FACECLAIM.    adam brody.

PERSONALITY

ZODIAC.    taurus.

ALIGNMENT.    chaotic neutral.

HOGWARTS.    ravenclaw.

LABEL.    the arcane.

POSITIVE TRAITS.    cheeky, debonair, driven, eloquent, resilient, solicitous.

NEGATIVE TRAITS.    brooding, evasive, inquisitive, sarcastic, stoic, stubborn.

HOBBIES.    smokes like a chimney while writing until he forgets what day of the week it is, dabbles in hunting & fishing (thanks @ his dad), labels all crime / thriller genres as ‘predictable’ but continues to watch them, obsesses over & relentlessly criticizes his own work, drinks heavily & passionately plays moonlight sonata or fur elise as if he’s betoven’s disciple.

BACKGROUND

PLACE OF BIRTH.    california.

CURRENT RESIDENCE.    mapleview, north carolina.

NATIONALITY.    american.

ETHNICITY.    ashkenazi jewish.

PARENTS.   judith miller & mr abrams.

SIBLINGS.    mia miller.

BIRTH ORDER.    eldest.

CHILDREN.    penelope abrams.

EDUCATION.     university of california, los angeles; bachelor of arts in english.

LANGUAGES.    english, some spanish & french.

HISTORY

EARLY LIFE.    born to THE judith miller and some newspaper editor, daniel was raised by the latter and notoriously abandoned by the former. well, not completely abandoned - there’s an old shoebox containing a few letters as proof - but that was the only source of communication in their otherwise absent relationship. while little danny boy didn’t fully understand why he couldn’t see his mother, he sought out an alternative solution by watching her movies. his father wasn’t aware, at first, and dan created this extravagant fantasy of the person he thought she was based on the roles she played. however, once papa abrams found out his son was watching these movies (which were probably not fit for children in the first place lmao oop), he begrudgingly revealed the bitter truth. being forced to come to terms with the fact that his own mother willingly abandoned him with his father, daniel didn’t fully understand what it meant; he couldn’t properly process why. the hurt of absent mother was expressed more out of anger, feeling as though there must have been something wrong with him. there were fewer and fewer letters sent to judith until he gave up altogether and thus, dan’s out of control behavior was born.

TEENAGE FEVER.    SUICIDE MENTION TW.  he struggled in school. his emotions betrayed him. instead of relishing a happy childhood, daniel found himself pushing everyone away, getting into fights, sneaking out late at night to run around the city streets with his friends and get into all sorts of trouble with them. he couldn’t count on his hands how many times the police picked him up and brought him to his dad’s doorstep. it only got worse once one of his best friends was found dead, written off as a suicide, though it didn’t add up in dan’s eyes and seemed so much more sinister. the young man was nearly deemed to be a lost cause, until he discovered his passion for writing. 

                                  language arts or literature was the last thing anyone would ever think to group with daniel abrams. but his english teacher noticed how well he could articulate his thoughts and feelings on paper, and submitted one of his pieces to a writing contest, which earned dan the win and a cash prize. bewildered by a talent he hadn’t even realized was in him, daniel embraced it. he started writing in a journal ( which he kept safely tucked away beneath the mattress of his bed ), documenting every feeling and thought as a way to express his emotions in a more productive manner. this talent earned him a full ride scholarship to ucla with a major in literature and plans of diving into some sort or creative writing career or perhaps becoming an english teacher, to follow in the footsteps of his high school teacher who he came to idolize.

                                  mere days into his freshman year, however, his high school sweetheart showed up in the middle of the night at his dorm with a positive pregnancy test. it was then the chaotic world as he knew it turned a new leaf, revealing a silver lining in the form of their daughter, penelope, who daniel hadn’t a clue, just yet, would save him. and so a shotgun wedding was quickly planned around the pair, both families either completely supportive or in utter disbelief. it was quick, it was cheap(ish), and it was stressful as all heck. but they were young, and in love, and were looking forward to starting a family together, despite it being a little earlier than initially planned.

“ADULT”HOOD.    fast forward five years, and they’re signing divorce papers. fortunately, it wasn’t messy. the two had simply grown apart as they matured in their respective ways, and remaining together was only causing a rift to develop between the two. the last thing they wanted, for the sake of their daughter, was built up resentment to tear the little family apart. his wife, who daniel initially thought to be the love of his life, blossomed into an absolute goddess; she was ambitious and knew exactly what she wanted. daniel, on the other hand, was still somewhat caught up in his ‘bad boy’ habits of drinking excessively and his career was still pretty up in the air. the two just didn’t compliment each others’ lifestyles anymore.

                                   daniel moved out but remained in california, settling for a bachelor’s apartment where he was able to have penelope every weekend. during this time, he finally cracked down and worked on finishing a novel he’d started years prior. within a year, he found a publisher who took interest in his grotesque works, and by the time daniel was twenty seven, his first bestseller hit the shelves, changing his life for the better with the ability to provide for his daughter without stress of landing another odd job ever again.

                                   as his fame increased, so did his desire to slink back into the shadows away from the limelight. at first, he enjoyed the wholesome book signings by day and grungy celebratory benders by night. but it grew old pretty fast and he certainly didn’t want to end up as another washed up shmuck. so, on a whim, daniel decided to move out of california completely, removing himself from the toxic lifestyle he’d grown accustomed to and shacking up on a beautiful piece of land in the rocky mountains of north carolina. the serenity and scenery certainly aided in his inspiration, as well as his unacknowledged lowkey addictions slowly being rehabilitated from his bloodstream.

OLD YELLER.    now, in his utmost prime at forty years old, he’s written numerous cult classics, a few of which have successful movie adaptations. he was lucky enough to land himself in a second marriage, though.... that one is now deteriorating as well because he literally doesn’t know how to maintain a healthy relationship. he received full custody of his daughter when she was sixteen, under the unfortunate circumstance of her mother’s untimely death. although they’d been separated for nearly twenty years, daniel was still very much affected by the loss, more so empathetically for penelope. he’s still hooked on the drink, though he’s definitely calmed down quite a bit from when he was a young buck. basically a messy, depressy old soul who uses sarcasm to deflect his true feelings.

CONNECTIONS

ESTRANGED WIFE.    first marriage was a bust, and the second is turning out to be no better. they haven’t hit rock bottom just yet, in his opinion (which would be finalizing a divorce lmao), and he’s unsure if they should work things out or not but also really.......doesn’t wanna go through the process of another divorce. plus he likes her and deep down adores their bickering. the reason(s) why things started falling apart between them can be discussed of course. lowkey debating on whippin this up as a big official wc but.... if anybody already here would like to snag it, i would 100% mclove it.

COLLABORATORS.    literally anyone he’s worked with over the years, whether they be fellow authors, publishers/publicists, journalists, screenplay writers, etc. yeehooo the possibilities are endless !!

FOLLOWERS.    anyone hooked on his books, whether devout fans from his early beginnings or people who newly discovered his fictional writings.

FORMER CLASSMATES.    could be from high school or university, but he was in california for the better part of his life aka not a mapleview native. former friends to foes & anything in between. dan’s that one kid who spiked the punch bowl at all the dances and years later probably snuck in party favors to snort off the bathroom sink during their high school reunion lmao whew !!

ANYTHING.    literally anything. i’m my groggy state of mind on my lack of creativity rn so please, i’m beggin. if daniel can enrich your characters’ lives in any way, shape, or form, hit me up and we’ll hatch a plan.

[slash-em-up]

I Was (Not) Born To Be A Cowboy Pt. 2

Last Time:

‘Thank FUCK you’re both here! These ranch-hand bastards are trying to kill me!’

Asa sighed deeply.

“Hello Jesse...”

-------------------------------------------------------------------

You chortled at Jesse’s miserable look. You couldn’t help it.

“Weeelll howdy, partner! Golly, if you ain’t the cutest rootin’est tootin’est lil cow-poke I ever did see!”

Jesse glared at you then looked pleadingly at Asa.

‘Make them stop.’

Asa huffed and moved past you into the bunk house.

“...Oh, to have that power...”

You moved to follow, and judging by the look Jesse was throwing you, if there was a snowbank nearby you’d be tossed in head-first with no hope of rescue.

Thank heaven for little miracles.

Entering the cabin, you couldn’t help the small whimper that left your lips at the shabby conditions. 

You’d stayed in a very similar place during camp one awful summer; but that had been summer. This was a frigid Montana winter, and from the looks of it the only source of heat was a wood-burning fireplace which was giving off the world's most pitiful excuse for a glow.

“Really, Jesse?”  

You moved quickly to save the fire, re-arranging the logs so they didn’t smother the flame, and adding a few pieces of kindling.

Immediately the cabin brightened, and you smiled.

The aggressive unzipping of a duffle-bag brought your attention back to your partners. One of whom was trying his hardest to loom over poor Brody as he stood awkwardly in the doorway.

“Uh... Hey there Mr. Jesse...”

A stony glare answered him.

“You - uh – you look like you’re all recovered from your tumble this mornin’...”

Now he had Asa and your attention.

“No need to worry... everyone falls off their horse at least once... or four times...”

You were pretty sure you heard Asa mumble an annoyed “Jesus Christ, Jesse...” under his breath before carefully refolding his sweaters and placing them in the bedside cubby.

Under Jesse’s baleful gaze, Brody seemed to determine that it was time to beat a hasty retreat.

“Well, I’ll let you folks get settled!” he gave you a friendly nod and Asa an intimidated “Sir..” before turning to leave the bunkhouse.

“Breakfast’s at four!”

Jesse rubbed at his eye in a beleagured motion as you jumped up from your seat.

“Four?! WAIT... Brody, FOUR AM?!?”

But Brody was gone.

A large arm curled around your shoulders and Jesse gave you a sympathetic squeeze.

‘Welcome to Hell.’

*************************************

These bunks were not made to hold more that one person at a time.

You determined that Mr. Ephriam had to be homophobic. You could almost read the sign ‘No Brokeback Mountain-ing On My Good Cattle Ranch’ and it was about to make you cry.  

You were so cold.

And Asa had the audacity to be sleeping like a baby, that bastard.

Jesse looked like he was wearing at least five pairs of socks, because beyond not being anywhere big enough to fit more than one person, the bunks were also clearly not built to hold anyone taller than 6’.

Even Asa was a little smooshed; but somehow he was making due.  

Jesse, on the other hand, could almost plant his feet on the floor if he laid flat and he looked miserable.

“Jesse...” you hissed.

The veritable mountain of blankets covering the bunk to your right shifted, allowing a blurry brown eye to peer out questioningly at you.

“Bring your blankets over by the fireplace, I have an idea.”

Jesse seemed to intuit what you were thinking because he speedily shuffled himself and his pile of coverings in front of the fire, laying several down as a barrier between your bodies and the cold wood floor.

You did a shimmy of happiness as you laid down next to Jesse’s reclining body, already feeling the heat from the fire and the large form of your partner saturate your chilled skin.

Sighing in joy, you let Jesse pull you in tightly so he was spooning you, nearly covering you with his own body in his quest for heat.

His chest rose and fell with a deep exhalation as you both settled into a comfortable position for the first time that night.  

You were so cozy that the pair of you only barely shifted when, a few minutes later, you heard soft grumbles and movement from the other bunk as Asa rolled to his feet and walked over to join you.

The heat of the two large men caging you in had you nearly purring in delight, and the atmosphere had lightened considerably – enough that moments later Asa jolted up and punched Jesse roughly in the shoulder.

“Hands off my ass.”

Jesse’s chest shook with laughter, and you couldn’t contain your tired giggles if you tried.

A hand rose from it’s resting place on your waist to make a dismissive gesture at Asa before spelling out ‘Thanks you two.’

You turned slightly to press a kiss to Jesse’s scarred chin.

“Anytime.”

Asa grunted in acknowledegement before telling you both in no uncertain terms that you had less than three hours before breakfast and he wanted to sleep – so quiet down.

********************

The loud clanging of a bell woke you from what had turned into a rather pleasant slumber.

“Nooooooo...” you groaned, burying your face into Jesse’s chest.

Asa was already up and sorting through his luggage, looking for his glasses as you and Jesse slowly untangled yourselves from your blanket nest and stumbled over to your own bunks.

“What does one wear to a proper chuck wagon breakfast?” you asked jokingly.

Asa smirked but Jesse was less than amused.

‘I think a gunny sack and fur cap would make you fit in perfectly.’

Apparently, Jesse was not at all impressed with the ranch’s dress code.

You played along.

“Aww and here I left my coonskin cap at home...”

The door to the bunk clattered, allowing Spann to enter.

“I have an extra if you want to make an impression...”

“Hey Spann. Love the flannel.”

It seems that Brody handn’t been exagerrating when he said Spann was settling in to the routine of the ranch. You couldn’t recall ever seeing her dressed so casually; and had NEVER seen her without a full face of makeup and jewelry.

Clearly, she was nothing if not adaptable.

“I see you’re making the best of ranch life.”

She gave you a small grin.

“My mom’s family owned a dairy farm. I was pretty handy with a pitchfork before I moved to Florida.”

“Haha, and I guess it’s just like riding a bike?”

“Something like that.”

Jesse interrupted your joking around with a curt ‘cute’ before huffing past the two of you out onto the porch.

You raised an eyebrow at Spann before following her out the door.

Oh, well that explained why Jesse was in such a mood already...

Two horses waited by a hitching post for their riders to join them.

It was pretty easy to tell who’s was who’s. 

Spann’s horse was a beautiful little red thoroughbred – already saddled and waiting for the petite woman to mount and take off towards the mess hall.

Jesse’s was... sized appropriately... you guessed.  

The huge draft horse stood untacked, and you could swear it was glaring as Jesse approached it slowly.

Asa joined Spann and you in leaning against the railing, watching the battle about to commence.

“Her name is Sugar...” Spann muttered to the two of you.

“Mr. Cromean’s has fallen off at least twice every day we’ve been here, and he still can’t get his saddle on tight enough...”

You could hear Jesse making clucking noises with his tongue at the huge animal – but you were sure he was simply cussing Sugar out internally.

He’d pulled a large Western-style saddle off the porch railing before approaching the horse, and you watched with amused disbelief as your boyfriend proceeded to charge at Sugar – saddle up – who quickly danced out of reach.  

This chase continued for several minuted before Asa shifted away with a snort of disgust, pushing his glasses up his nose before stepping to intercept Jesse as he tore after the prancing horse once more.

“Give that to me, idiot. We’ll be here all day if we wait for you.”

You had to admit, you were a little turned on watching as Asa swiftly took the saddle out of Jesse’s limp grasp before confidently walking over to settle the blanket and leather tack comfortably on Sugar’s back; pressing his thumb lightly into the horse’s flank as he tightened the girth with swift and sure movements.

One final check, and he’d gripped the reigns and mounted.

Jesse’s back was to you; but you could just imagine the mixture of awe and embarrassed anger that was probably plain as day on the tall man’s face.

Asa rolled his eyes, giving a click of his heels into Sugars sides and trotting over to where you stood.

“Ready to go?”

You couldn’t hold back your stupid grin as you nodded quickly, grasping Asa’s offered arm and holding tightly as he swung you from the porch to sit in front of him on the saddle.

“Hold the pommel and grip with your thighs...” he murmurred into your ear.

“Well you know I’m good at that.” you teased.

“Cheeky...”  

Asa’s eyes sparkled with a hidden grin as he moved the large horse towards the mess.

“Coming, Spann?”

You nearly let out a hoot of laughter at the sound of boots rushing over to catch the two of you.

Jesse skidded in the muddy ground and jerked back as Sugar moved her head to nip at him.

‘Hey, you stole my horse!’

Asa snorted.

“It didn’t look like you were using it.”

‘It’s a quarter mile to the mess hall do you expect me to walk?!’

“I suppose you could round up a posse and arrest me for horse-thieving; but I think breakfast will be over by then...”

Jesse looked like he was about to start stomping his feet in anger.

‘I hate how much you’re enjoying this.’

You giggled as one of Asa’s arms wrapped itself around your waist and he motioned Sugar into a quick canter, Spann and her red mare following close behind.

“Better run, Jesse!”

[faedawayyy]

A Useless Guide to the Carmichaels

DISCLAIMER: this is a bunch of headcanons that i’ve come up with. OBVIOUSLY since synn and katie and nadine and meg in a way have characters that are tied to their family...BUt these are my original headcanons for the family, so if things aren’t quite right or sound different, it’s bc they’re my most developed family and it’s the way i’ve written them in canon verse!

SYLVIA CARMICHAEL - GRANDMOTHER

sylvia’s family are russian and came over to england after the war. her father was a general and her mother was a seamstress and she was raised in a very, very conservative and upper-class family. she went and studied at st andrews in edinburgh and that’s where she met hank carmichael, who her  father always pushed her towards from the moment he knew of him.  sylvia carries a lot of her family values and clashed with her GEN X kids because their ideologies were so different. for example, she sturggled edwin’s sexuality and oliver’s more liberal mannerisms. it doesn’t stop her from trying to “guide” her grandchildren.

HANK CARMICHAEL - GRANDMOTHER

hank was born and raised in england. his father was an extremely wealthy banker, his mother died when he was young but he never really thought about her because his father never spoke of her. he was raised mainly by his aunt while his father worked around the clock. they were an extremely wealthy family and when he was old enough, hank attended boarding school. he never really had parental guidance and his creativity always ran wild. he was trouble at school, but smart enough not to get caught.  after he graduated from st andrews and moved in with sylvia, he invested his entire trust-fund into a book publishing business, which is still successful to this day. he’s a huge family man due to not having one when he was younger

second generation.

EDWIN CARMICHAEL

edwin is the oldest of sylvia’s and hank’s children and always worked hard to be a people pleaser. he was often referred to as the golden child and the absolute brightest star in his mother’s sky. from an early age, he showed interest in entertainment which hank inspired and supported.

things changed for edwin in the middle of high school when he decided to come out about his sexuality. he was severely bullied and his relationship with sylvia broke down. he STILL hasn’t got the best relationship with his mother, especially after he married his husband, but they stay civil for the rest of the family’s sake. 

he now works in property and lost his confidence in acting when he was bullied.

OLIVER CARMICHAEL

SYNN’S CHARACTER, BUT HERE IS HOW I INTERPRET HIM. oliver is the second oldest child of sylvia and hank. he was rebellious from the start. he never enjoyed trying to live up to edwin’s golden standard, he hated the events and the social climbing. he just wanted to be a regular kid and have regular experiences, but it never happened for him.  when he was 18, it hit him that he was an adult and sylvia and hank have 0 influence over him. he took his trustfund, travelled and got the hell out of violet springs. however, just like with everybody else, age caught him up and he ended up settling in london with a woman he met while backpacking in australia.  he likes his children knowing their family, so he reluctantly shows up to family events but you’d never catch either of them in violet springs if they didn’t have to be.

JAMES CARMICHAEL

james is the middle child and arguably the most successful of the carmichael’s. he was never the favourite and had a streak in him that caused him to clash with hank from a young age. he was a loveable rouge who grew into a loveable white-collard criminal. he was smarter than he let on and had endless ambition.  like edwin, he attended university but instead of picking a profession that hid away from his true ambition, he invested his entire trustfund into a studio in los angeles where he planned to make amazing films...it paid off. he married his wife (patricia) who he met when she worked as a set designer on one of his projects, but it wasn’t all happily ever after.  james played around with money a little too much and tried to take out his competition in shady ways. this led to things getting too much for him and he faked his death almost a year ago. all of his family beside mason believe him to be dead.

JOHNATHAN CARMICHAEL

completely synn’s character, the father of theo

SINEAD CARMICHAEL

sinead was the only girl of five children and completely used it to her advantage. she watched the way her brother’s and father knew how to dominate rooms, conversations and other people. she grew up with the mindset that she could have absolutely anything she wanted, as long as she worked (or cheated) hard enough for it.  sinead dropped out of school at 15 and almost gave her mother an hernia. she blew most of her trust fund on a sweet 16 and then a sweet 18, anything that was left went on her 21st. she’s a very “live in the moment” woman and cares little for consequences.  she actually ended up teaming up with james and starring in a few of his earliest projects before becoming an actress in her own right. she’s blacklisted by a lot of hollywood producers for her refusal to submit and listen to direction. she’s head strong and does what she likes. 

third generation.

RUBY ROSINI - ADOPTED DAUGHTER OF EDWIN.

when ruby was adopted by edwin, there was all round excitement from every single member of the family; a little, brown-eyed girl from italy arriving on their doorsteps. she was so different from the majority blue-eyed children who filled the family tree. the cousins all immediately became protective of her and loved getting to know who she was as a person. now they’re grown up, she’s viewed as a cousin and it’s easy to forget that she was ever adopted or came from anywhere else. 

THOMAS CARMICHAEL - SON OF OLIVER 

thomas is the oldest son of oliver and like his dad, he’s a bit of a free spirit but unlike his dad, he’s a lot more laidback and less likely to clash or argue with anyone. as far as carmichael’s go, he’s quite wholesome and kind and oliver will 100% say that it’s because he was raised away from the madness of their family.  however, growing up away from the others isn’t as good in his eyes as it is in his dad’s. he often feels boring and on the outside, he will always do his best to fit in with the other guys and is easily manipulated. as a child, he got into trouble so many times from listening to the shit brody and leo used to tell him to do. even to this day, he’s overly loyal and attached to them because he’s desperate to feel a real part of the family.

KATELYN CARMICHAEL - DAUGHTER OF OLIVER

katelyn is the oldest of the third generation and oliver’s daughter. she’s blunt, witty and doesn’t mince her words. unlike most of the women in her family, she cares little for appearances or staying in certain social circles. she’s a drama teacher in a high school and enjoys living a normal life, but does dip into the funds of her family name every now and then to have a bit of fun.  she’s a blast at family parties and everybody is always excited to see what scandalous or stupid thing she’ll do next to annoy her grandmother. 

ANASTASIA CARMICHAEL - DAUGHTER OF JAMES 

the oldest of james’ children and undeniably the real favourite. she’s an overachiever and type of girl who was good at everything in school and still is; she’s athletic, artistic, academic, a good mother, an amazing business woman, she’s smart, she’s intuitive, she’s healthy and rarely loses in competitions with her siblings or anyone else for that matter.

anastasia has her daughter, darcy, and is engaged to ryder banks. there’s no love there but like her grandmother, she understands the importance of appearances. you’d have to be crazy if you thought she hasn’t had a string of affairs and STILL has them. however, she also has standards and is very selective over who she lets get close. 

darcy is her #1 priority and she’ll fight fiercely to make sure she always stays that way.

LEONARDO CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES

leo is james’ oldest son and again, like anastasia, kind of set the bar in the early days for the rest of his siblings. when it was the two of them and mason, everything was about leo and anastasia, they grew up in constant competition; leo tended to always fall short of his sister’s achievements. however, as they grew and the two of them came into their own, it was clear that leo was never going to be one to be in the shadows for too long - starting with gaining the attention from girls as he grew through high school. even girls in brody’s and miles’s year were heart-eyes over him and he was a few years older.  yet, just like with the rest of his siblings, he was promised and later engaged to somebody that his father handpicked for him to ensure the carmichael wealth wouldn’t dwindle out and fall into the wrong, new money hands.  OOC//i could write more but it doesnt feel right bc he’s now katie’s character. obviously i have my own ideas/fiancee for original leo! 

MASON CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES

mason broke the trend of extroverted, go-getter type kids and ended up being the quietest and youngest of the bunch until miles was born. he was a big momma’s boy growing up, and even though he’s never really felt like the favourite, he always enjoyed the company of adults and quieter environments compared to his siblings who would thrive around kids of their own age.  mason is wise beyond his years and it’s a running joke that he was supposed to be born first. he is the only one that knows james isn’t dead and was trusted with this information because even though brody was the favourite by a longshot, james knew mason would keep it quiet and be less affected by the secret.  mason both hates and loves being a part of the carmichaels. he loves his family but also hates the madness that comes along with it.

BRODY CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES 

brody never really had to work to be the favourite of his parents - he just is. he had the right amount of intelligence, cockiness and charm to keep adults on side throughout his whole life. ironically, out of everybody in the third generation, he’s probably the biggest fuck up too but the adults turn a blind eye to it because it’s him.  a huge reason he’s favoured by james is because he was clearly enough for charles to allow him to marry his oldest daughter, disney. this was such a big deal for james because charles has a LOT of connections (shady and not shady) in the entertainment industry and he knew the merger between the companies would keep the carmichael legacy in tact for generations.  brody usually rises to being the favourite and is slightly smug about it, but he also cracks the most under pressure and has had dozens of meltdowns over the span of his life growing up.

MILES CARMICHAEL - SON OF JAMES

miles is the youngest...son...of james. james has no idea that patricia had an affair and that miles isn’t actually his son. miles has always struggled severely with keeping up with his siblings. he developed common but crippling mental health issues in his pre-teen years such as depression and anxiety. it started with acting out and being a “problem child” but quickly developed in being too scared to leave the house. he locked himself away and wasted away his young years not really interacting with anyone outside of his immediate family. on top of that, he had he achievements of brody, mason, anastasia and leo to remind him of what a failure is...eventually he just stopped trying.  these days his siblings are supportive and aware of how he can get. his cynicism is literally his humour and he’s just taking one day at a time.

BELLA CARMICHAEL - DAUGHTER OF JAMES

bella was dubbed the next brody. all of her siblings adore her and so do her parents and grandparents. she’s the second child who can do absolutely no wrong in anybody’s eyes. bella was a young star and worked in hollywood making tv cameos long before she started school. she had two lives; her school and dance life, and her celebrity life. she grew up with more life experience than other kids and this made her painfully cunning. she knew exactly how to get people on side and had whoever she wanted wrapped around her little finger.  she and brody were hit hardest by james’s death. bella was all over the place and gained a little weight - something she wasn’t familiar with after being petite her whole life. she’s now just trying to stable herself again.

THEO CARMICHAEL - SON OF JOHNATHAN

SYNN’S CHARACTER

HERA CARMICHAEL-RUSH

hera is the middle child of sinead. she too is inteligent and calculated but she’s also the opposite of the james’s girls. hera has never worked a day in her life and has no intention to. she’s a socialite and just like her mother, does what she wants when she wants to. she lives off of mommy’s money (because her dad bailed on them and honestly, fuck him). hera also came out as bisexual at a christmas party because she knew it’d make sylvia uncomfortable. she’s a wind up and enjoys getting a rise out of people.

OPHELIA CARMICHAEL-RUSH

ophelia is old enough to remember the messy divorce of her parents and adopted her mother’s bad-ass and care free attitude towards it from that day on. she hates her dad for what he did to their family but doesn’t let it hold her back and when she turned 18, she took him to court to keep her name on the inheritance of his million dollar winery business...and won. she’s the trailblazer for her quieter and more introverted siblings. she’s someone who knows she’s gorgeous and uses her looks to her advantage. 

LUNA CARMICHAEL-RUSH

luna has always been shy and hid behind the bolder personalities of her sister’s. she used to feel boring because of it but has quickly accepted that’s who she is and she’s happy with it. as she becomes 26, she’s starting to feel extremely embarrassed and insecure about her lack of experience with anybody. yet, her father walking out makes her find it hard to connect with and trust people. she has high standards and no standards at the same time and is really lost in terms of her romantic relationships. HOWEVER, she is thriving in her career and mason has featured her as an actress in many projects. she currently attends rosewell and enjoys the french culture.

DAMUS CARMICHAEL-RUSH

damus is a pastiche of every criminal and calculated act a carmichael before him has committed. he actively seeks out trouble and due to not being able to find his “place” in the family, he seems to like to win the affections of his elders by getting involved in dodgy dealings that they’ve set up - particularly those of james and johnathan. damus gets a rush out of being in on his family’s darkest secrets but he also feels like a spare part - the one who gets put into dangerous scenarios because the others are too precious to do so.

third generation age order: - katelyn  - anastasia  - leo - thomas - ophelia   - mason  - brody - hera - luna   - ruby - miles   - bella  - damus 

fourth generation (work in progress): - darcy and wren, children of anastasia  - fleur and dixie, daughters of brody  - victoria and peter, children of mason  - jacob and harlow, son of theo

[pawpadsalad]

Tell me about your jse verse

Here are the fellas in a nutshell, I am still working on the time line of events

That being said stuff is liable to change and shiiiz

Anti

Anti is a nonhuman entity who stalks victims who are attempting to obtain some form of notoriety in entertainment

They use various means to insert himself into their lives and break them down, so he may posses them and murder them

Once they are dead he traps them in a personalized limbo where they are forced to perform for him for their amusement

Angus

Angus is a Australian Youtuber and the creator of The Survival Hunter a channel that is mainly how to survive in the wilderness

Chase Brody

Chase grew up in a abusive household with his sister Cassandra "Casey" Brody and the two have a good but distant relationship

Their father was out of the picture and their mother allowed many toxic people into her and their lives

Was severely bullied in school

He has dealt with self destructive habits for most of his life

He has followed an Emo lifestyle for most of his life

Does petty crime for fun

He has two jobs, one at McDonald's and one as a the creator for BroAverage a channel that's a variety of irregular vlogs, trickshots, parkour, and other challenges

Both he and Stacy agreed that they both wanted kids and where in a good stable place in life to have them, Cabhan age 6 and Shauna age 3

He is FtM

Henrik Von Schneeplestien 

Henriks father was a French medical student and his mother a all girls German boarding school instructor teaching in France

When Henrik was born his father dropped out of school care for him until his death, upon which he and his mother moved to Germany

While in Germany his mother began to abuse him, trying to mold him into his father's exact image

While in medical school he took many extra extracurriculars, such as art which was his true secrets passion, which lead to him meeting his future wife Henrietta

They kept their relationship a secret and once they both graduated they eloped to Ireland where Henrik worked as a doctor

They would have two kids together, Hulda age 14 and Heinz age 6, Haudwig age 11 was a product of the affair

Once he found out his wife was cheating on him with their tennis instructor Rick, he divorced his wife and left everything to her and cut her out of his life completely

He then reestablished his life by becoming a college professor for theoretical physics as well ad redeveloping a connection with his children

Enjoys cheesy romance novels

Jackie Mann (Present)

His father disappeared when he was a boy and this lead to him and his mom moving in with his moms sister

Once he came out as FtM his aunt kicked him out

He is currently living in his car, working at a pizza shop as well as attending highschool and regularly working out

He has an interest in horror, the deep web, hacking, conspiracy theories, Unfiction and true crime

He has a YouTube channel where he discusses the above along side vlogs, various challenges and fitness

Is aware of his superpowers and currently developing them via the help of a underground group of superheros as The Collection Of Outstanding Legends Patrolling Against Terror Renegades Or Losers (The C.O.O.L. P.A.T.R.O.L. or TCP)

TCP is unaware of Jackie being homeless

Jackie Mann (Future)

Has fully developed superpowers and a Ironman like suit which he built himself

His natural powers include psychokinesis, mind blast and aura manipulation

His suit compensation includes super strength, durability as well as identity protection

Alongside his moderately successful YouTube channel he has both stock in a few very successful tech companies and is a bounty hunter who specializes in the deep web (The bounty hunter is his hero persona)

He is dating Marvin

Jamson Jackson Flynn // JJ Flynn

His mother was Japanese and his father was British, and he had a older brother Shaun

Was fluent in Japanese reading, JSL and BSL

Had two jobs, woodworking/toy making by family trade and playing trumpet for jazz band

He could also play the panio, viloin and accordion

Was a part of an illegal underground bare knuckle boxing ring and enjoyed fighting in general, often breaking up bar fights

Had connections to a fairly large gang in town

Openly political/an activist (He himself is mixed, disabled and gay)

Did hard drugs but in the context of how we would smoke or drink today

Liked to sleep around

Belonged to a cult

Marvin The Magnificent Magician

His mother was a mine and father was a clown and was found and taken from them at age 8 and exiled from magic society at 20 but still seriously practices and studies magic

They got a job as an entertainer in small time magical performances about once he had enough savings he pursued stand up and vlogging

Their cat ears and tail started out as part of their performance attire but they soon grew fond of and kept them

Meet Jackie at one of his first comedy club performances

Likes plants

Has DID

Robbie

Chase oc that he is developing a webcomic for

Follows the zombification and afterlife of Robbie 

Shaun Flynn

Was slated to take over the company

Had a wife Saorise, a daughter of fishers, and a newborn named Siobhan

Often dreamt of taking to the sea with his wife and finding treasure

Stacy Brody

Had a rough childhood, their parents were distant with each other and neglectful with their children as they married not from love but social pressure due to their mother becoming pregnant in highschool

Stacy has a twin sister, Stella Vorheese and they have very strong, close relationship with one another

Was one of Henriks nurses and meet Chase through his friendship with Henrik friendship

Practices witchcraft and is both sensitive and fearful of supernatural going ons

A bit of a jock, snowboards, rides dirt bikes and a fan of hockey

Generally open minded, easy going and up to new experiences

[dcnnafms]

*  taps  the  mic  * testing , testing , 1 , 2 , 3 .... hello ? *  clears  throat  * hi guys & gals & non binary pals  !!  i’m  taylor  weighing  in  at  the  solid  age  of 20  years  old  aka  a  glorified  teenager  because  really  what  can  i  do  that  a  19  year  old  can’t  lmao ?  i’m  from  the  est  & couldn’t  be  more  excited  to  have  found  this  beautiful  gem  of  a  roleplay  !  honestly i haven’t been this excited about a group in ... forever  !  so i cannot wait to start roleplaying with you all  !   but for now i’m going to leave you with this intro because i’m going to the pats game tonight  ?!  and need to run & get ready because my friends are on the way  !  without further ado though , i think it’s time for me to introduce you to my lil baby donna who i haven’t played in like 7 months so please bare with me here while i find my footing with her again !  if you’d like to plot just give this a like or shoot me an im & i promise i’ll get back to you when i get home later tonight !

note : here career is here in this post btw !

╰   stats .  ◞,

click here for the statistics page  .

╰   pinterest .  ◞,

click here for the pinterest page  .

╰   playlist .  ◞,

1. let you go by machine gun kelly , 2. bmo by ari lennox  ,  3. death by trippie redd ft. dababy  ,  4. agree to disagree by sleeping with siren  ,  5.  night shift by dave east ft. lil baby  , 6. violent crimes by kanye west  ,  7. runaway by aurora  ,  8. love song by lana del rey  ,  9. all the good girls go to hell by billie eilish  ,  10.  i think im okay by machine gun kelly ft. yungblood  ,  11. envy me by calboy  ,  12. cash s**t by megan thee stallion ft. dababy  ,  13. yellow hearts by ant sanders  ,  14. what to do? by jackboys ft. don toliver  ,  15. the git up by blanco brown  ,  16. erase your social by lil uzi vert  ,  17. everything i wanted by billie eilish  ,  18.  bandit by juice wrld ft youngboy never broke again  ,  19. bop by dababy  ,  20. candy by machine gun kelly ft. trippie redd  . 

╰   biography  .  ◞,

an only child born to a secretary for a mother & an often unemployed father in athens , ohio in late 1996 . life for young donna was nothing out of any film you would enjoy watching . a childhood full of neglect & growing up much too fast for your own good . her father , matthew , had fallen into heavy addiction just a year before donna’s birth & her mother , denise , had learned to bury her sorrows with a bottle of alcohol . well below the poverty index there were many nights she knew she wouldn’t come home to food on the table but instead a slew of addicts getting their high in the middle of the living room , keeping the young girl up at all times of the night with their rowdy antics . 

by the time she reached third grade she’d learned that her day at school would go over much more smoothly if she made sure she had her backpack, coat & on the one off chance that there was enough food in the house pack her lunch , because if she waited for one of her parents to do it for her she’d never make it to school on time . her mom often had to rush to work in a hungover state & her father didn’t wake up until after she was already due for school , so donna had relied on the bus to get to & from school each day . 

at twelve she’d realized that she was much happier the less time she spent at home & so she did all she could to stay out with her friends . she became one of those kids you passed wondering where their parents were at that time of night as them & their friends wreaked havoc in the streets of athens . picking up smoking weed at the ripe age of thirteen , she quickly learned nothing was a better fix for how much she’d hated her life than a quick blunt . she’d fallen into a dark place at a very young age & from her perspective there was really no way out of the downward spiral she had fallen into . she blamed her parents for messing her up so badly & often when she was home it turned into blows between herself & her parents the end result always landed her at one of her friends houses for the night. 

it wasn’t until she was fifteen that she befriended a new girl whose parents took a liking to donna & really took her in . it was something like a safe haven spot for her , somewhere she always knew she could go & they’d want to hear about her day or feed her . they’re the ones who learned of donna’s wanting to join the school theater club & urged her to do so . they attended her first performance & her second, third , fourth , etc . 

one of her performances at the school garnered the attention of a screenwriter who felt she was a perfect fit for a character they were in the process of creating . this was when her first hollywood deal came , initially turning it down as she had no means to so much as leave the city of athens forget travel to an entirely different state . the screenwriter offered to take care of her completely & before she knew it she was working on the first installment of the hunger games . 

when she got back to athens after spending a few months in los angeles she’d realized just how much potential there was out in the world . at this point she decided to take things within her life a bit more seriously . there was a life outside of athens , ohio & donna was craving for it now . making the conscious decision to focus on her schooling with the hopes that she’d be able to get into a decent university . college had never been so much as thought for donna before she’d left the city but after filming a movie , she realized almost anything was possible even for someone like her . 

during this same year , her parents split up & her father got back together with his highschool sweetheart , this prompted her father to admit to donna that she had a brother who was three years older than her , who was actually in college . the two got to know one another fairly well when he’d come back home from school during breaks & the two found themselves loving the idea of having a sibling . mutually upset that they’d spent so much of their time not knowing each other so much as existed . donna lived with her father & step-mother amanda in athens & the change in her father was more than visible .  she was more than happy that her father had gotten on the straight & narrow , no matter what had to take place for it to happen & who he needed in his life for it to take place . in this time her mother moved to cincinnati & the separation actually made the relationship between donna & her mother stronger . 

in 2014 , she graduated from highschool & had committed to attending ohio state university as a theater major . during her time in columbus , ohio she & her new found friends took a liking to the downtown area where they found a hidden gem bar that often held open mic nights . this is where donna was really able to cultivate her love for stand up , despite dabbling in it a few times back in high school & whenever she was out in los angeles . she took to college well & somehow managed to juggle her education , career & social life fairly well . if you ask her how she did it , she’ll always give all the credit to her brother brody & maybe some residual credit to weed . 

in her sophomore year she’d fallen in love for the very first time , with one of the quarterbacks at her university . they dated for two years before he’d decided to transfer to lousiana state university . she understood why he did it , he had a career in football he was chasing & she couldn’t be mad at him about that . despite the long distance & at times very hectic schedules between the two of them she worked on being the most supportive girlfriend she could to him & made it out to any & every game she possibly could of his . 

after graduating from ohio state she moved down to lousiana in hopes to be with him more but her career kind of kept going & so she was nearly in louisiana just as often as she had been before moving down there. they made it work for a good amount of time , but the distance just started to become a little too much . donna is someone who craves affection after a childhood of not much affection to be sparred . she caught herself at times during the relationship on the verge of cheating , but she is a staunch believer that if you truly love someone you could never do something of that magnitude to them . it was a mutual break up , that came in the early months of 2019 . 

she’s now been living in calabasas since she moved out of louisiana & is learning to get back onto her feet without someone there to uplift her  . 

╰   scandal  .  ◞,

on december 23rd of 2019 a sex tape with donna’s name plastered all over it had been released online . it was a sex tape of her & her ex who by this time has cemented himself as the likely first round pick in the nfl draft . the sex tape took off & it seemed as though every time her team managed to get it down , it popped up somewhere else . both donna & her ex knew neither one was to blame for the leaking of the sex tape & so they worked together to figure out who was behind it , today their getting closer & closer to finding the person who did it . despite this , the tape is still able to be viewed on the internet it you dig hard enough . although not many have to do that as it had gone vial upon it’s initial release back in december . 

[mydarlingvioletine]

Just a Puppy Crush - Chapter 8

Ship(s): Clementine/Violet Media: The Walking Dead Game (Season 4)

Clementine set up Brody and Louis in the guest room just beside her own room. Louis had plopped himself down onto a big, comfy chair. The kind Violet definitely recognized from her grandparents house. The one with the lever on the side where you could flatten it out, and kick up the footrest.

        Brody turned down Louis’ attempts to cuddle, and threw herself down on the couch, curling up like a cat. Knees nuzzled up to her chin, she only took up one cushion.

It was a really cute habit that completely threw Violet off guard the first time they had a sleepover.

         Violet unrolled her sleeping bag, and went to set it on the ground when Clementine stopped her, frowning.

“I’m not letting you on the floor, Vi.” Clem insisted, swiftly pulling the clumsy blonde behind her, into her room. Clementine knelt down, and pulled the covers back from her bed. “You take my bed, I’ll take the chair.”

       Violet’s gaze landed on the corner chair, stiff and uncomfortably vertical. Her back ached just at the sight of it. “It doesn’t.. look very comfortable.”

Clem nodded, shyly ducking her head as she attempted to sprawl herself out on the chair, bending herself uncomfortably. “It’s Lee’s old crossword puzzle chair.. We brought it all the way from Montana just for Carley to buy him a brand new one. We’ve been keeping it because James said he’d take it in his new apartment.”

       “I’m not letting you sleep on that thing. Scooch over, I’ll sleep here.” Violet attempted to lug her away from the chair, but Clementine was solid, eyes glinted with amusement as Violet tried and failed to lift her up.

“Your spine’s already at a 70 degree angle. No way I’m pushing you over the edge.” Clem teased, causing Violet to straighten her posture involuntarily.

           “Is not!”

“Is too. I’m the daughter of a math teacher, I know my shit.” Clementine giggled, happily staring up at a pouting Violet.

      Violet rolled her eyes, defiantly crossing her arms across her chest. “Clem, I’d feel really fucking bad if you had to sleep there. Take the bed.”

Clementine’s phone buzzed noisily against her dresser, and she picked it up.

            New Message from Beautiful Best Friend.

       When the fuck did Louis have time to change his name across her phone? Sneaky bastard.

          [BBF] Cut the bullshit and share the damn bed.

Clementine rolled her eyes, hearing the muffled giggles from the other side of the thin walls. Vi cocked her head at the laughter, oblivious.

       “How about this?” Clementine proposed, rising to her feet. “We both sleep on my bed and nobody has to suffer at the hands of this chair. Or should I say.. the arms of this chair.”

Violet couldn’t hold back a little snort laugh at the joke, one that sent Clem’s heart to her throat.

       “Yeah, okay,” Violet feigned an attitude like she was being held against her will, trying to hide her nervous excitement from sharing a bed with Clementine. “You’re not a blanket hogger, are you? Louis always pulls that shit.”

Clem shook her head, a careful grin on her face as she tucked herself under the covers, back against the wall. “I guess you’ll find out.”

         Violet groaned, tugging the knitted blanket Brody had made for Clem close to her. After turning to her side and attempting to make herself comfortable, she sat up abruptly.

“You okay?” Clementine asked, a yawn straining her husky voice.

      “Just not really used to sleeping like this, I guess.” Violet admitted, arms uncomfortably held to her sides. Clem responded by pulling the sheets back, and patting a spot closer to her.

“There’s some give in the middle of the bed, since I usually sleep there. It kinda molds around you. Try that spot.”

        Violet swallowed hard, lips pressed tightly together as she inched herself closer to the center. Some give was an understatement. She slumped into the mold Clementine’s body left, hands instinctively across her chest.

The snug fit of the mattress around her brought a sense of warm and safety, and she let out a content hum. Clementine pursed her lips, trying desperately to hold back the smile that crept over her lips, while looking down at Violet, as comfortable and secure as she’d ever seen her.

      She fit. In her spot on mattress, on the cork board, in Clementine’s life, in their family dynamic. In everything Clem was never able to tell there was something missing, it changed in an instant when she saw the warm, woodsy green eyes. Then on, she was fucked.

Acting on its own volition, her hand reached out from under her pillow, lightly brushing a blonde stray piece of hair strewn across Violet’s forehead, gently tucking it behind her ear.

       Violet’s eyes opened, her cheeks red and her expression panicked at the contact. The evidence was there, Clem’s hand still rested by her face. On impulse, Clementine raised her finger and bopped her nose.

“Um, gotcha.” Clementine squeaked, before turning so she faced the wall, burying her face in her pillow.

                Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She felt a shift in the weight beside her, and froze up, eyes wide as Violet sat up beside her.

        Clementine’s veins ran ice cold at the feeling of Violet leaning over her, then a quick motion sent her heart into overdrive.

“Boop! Gotcha back.” Violet giggled, pressing her finger gently against the tip of Clementine’s nose before settling back down into the pile of blankets that had accumulated.

       A sense of relief washed over her, and Clementine shifted onto her back, staring up at the stars above her. Stickers of constellations that created a little galaxy on the ceiling.

Violet’s eyes shifted towards them as well, and she stretched her arm out, pointing at the collection of stars directly above their heads.

       “Oh, sweet. Didn’t notice that.” Violet mused, letting her eyes trace across the patterns of the stars.

“Carley and Lee put them up back when we first moved here. My old room had a skylight, and the first couple of nights, I really missed it. So they set this up for me,” Clementine smiled up at the stars, the ends of her lips pulling upwards in a lopsided manner. “Well, Carley did. Lee isn’t that good with... gravity.”

        A giggle escaped Violet’s lips as she tried to imagine Mr. Everett cursing and getting upset at a task such as menial as putting stickers on the wall. Geometric proofs? No biggie. A little home renovation project? Fuck no.

“Did I tell you about the time we went to a water park and he spent like a minute looking directly at a huge puddle, then slipped in it?” Clem snorted, a tired and rasp embedded in her voice.

       Violet raised her arm and pointed up at an amalgamation of stars, pursing her lips while trying to make something out of it. “It’s a sheep.”

“Oh, it kinda does look like a sheep,” Clementine noted, looking at the stars above her head in a different light. Violet had that effect on her, with every new perspective that Vi would point out to her. Now, Clem couldn’t see the blob of stars as anything other than a sheep. “Up in the corner, there’s a spider.”

       Violet gasped, tugging the blankets over her head with more urgency than Clem’s ever seen in her. “A star spider, not a real one.”

The blonde girl’s wide green eyes peeked over the blanket, gaze darting nervously from Clementine to the corner.

       “I can’t believe you accused me of being a blanket hog.” Clem teased, as Violet wrapped the blanket around her like a tight cocoon.

Violet scoffed and rolled her eyes, but couldn’t cover the smile that tugged at her lips or the pink that colored her cheeks. “Shush.”

        Their gazes returned to the wall, two pairs of eyes eagerly scanning to make something out of nothing, an excuse to keep hearing each other’s voices. To make the other one laugh.

“Oh, there’s a mushroom!” Violet chirped up, gently turning over to Clementine when she didn’t get a response. “Do you see it?”

      Her breathing even, like a melody Louis played on the piano. Her eyes gently closed, hushed and still.

Once Violet was sure that Clementine was asleep, she felt around for her bag at the base of the bed. Grasping the familiar leather, she opened the pouch, and quietly pulled out her stuffed bunny. A sense of tranquility washed over her as she held the soft plush in her arms, stroking the matted fur.

              “Aw, cute.”

The sound of Clementine’s faint whisper stopped her in her tracks, grip tightening on the bunny. She went to pull it into her blanket cocoon, but Clem had sat up, her eyes on it.

            “What’s it’s name?”

Violet’s posture stiffened at the sensation of Clementine brushing against her, slouching her arm around the rigid blonde’s shoulder.

      “Um.. Thumper.” Violet admitted sheepishly, running her fingers along the plushie. “My grandma gave it to me when I was born. Can’t sleep without it.”

Clementine’s expression turned solemn, as she reached under her pillow, revealing the stained, worn old hat that had been resting on her dresser previously. “I... can definitely relate to that.”

        Violet quizzically glanced at her, watching as Clem held the brim of her hat with a tight grip, eyes focused on the tear at one of the seams.

“It was my biological dad’s,” Clementine clarified, setting it on her lap. “It’s too old to wear anymore, but I like keeping it near me when I can.”

        With a grim nod, Violet leaned on her shoulder, her emerald green eyes piercing through Clementine. “It’s nice. Having something to anchor yourself with.”

Clementine pursed her lips together, with a quick nod. She set the baseball cap on the corner of her bed, it’s presence giving her the confidence she needed for her next statement.

         “Violet, I-“ Clem managed to sputter before a soft snore cut her off. She hesitantly glanced down at a passed out Violet, a puddle of drool forming on her pillow. Her grip on the plush had loosened, and it sat comfortably in the crook of her arms. Slow, deep breaths that made her lanky body rise and fall, her eyebrows furrowing and twitching occasionally.

With a sigh, Clementine lowered herself back down, turning herself back towards the wall. “Goodnight, Vi.” She whispered over her shoulder, before wrapping her arms around her own pillow, hugging it tightly to her chest.

         The rest of the night was silent, other than the occasional flickering of the porch light and the raindrops that hit the roof. That and the soft, slight snore that came from Violet, and the sound of crickets in the distance.

[bentwoodhairs]

Sonic meteor who raced across our skies

You'd look around the room and the see the other faces, blanched and wide-eyed, as though subjected to extreme G-forces. The sound of the saxophone, so overwhelming it seemed to hit you with the force of a shockwave, combined with the torrential emotions being conveyed to make a perfect musical storm.

This was a typical concert by Mark Simmonds, perhaps the most potent musician Australia has produced on any instrument in any idiom or era, and one of the world's key tenor saxophonists of the past 45 years.

Simmonds poured every atom of himself into each solo, and the effect across a concert was cumulative, leaving people both traumatised and exhilarated by music that was variously furious, wildly celebratory and devastatingly sad. It was also cumulative in its effect on Simmonds himself.

Simmonds, who has died after prolonged ill health, was born in Christchurch on July 21, 1955, the second son of Jean and Robert Simmonds. His father ran a commercial cleaning company and his mother was a landscape painter. Music pervaded the family, with Robert playing trumpet, Mark's brother, Derek, playing bagpipes and guitar, and Jean's nephews being the Brodie Brothers, a successful 1960s pop act.

When Mark was four, the family moved to Sydney, where Robert's business took on cleaning Sydney's early skyscrapers. Mark attended Neutral Bay Primary School for some six months before going to Burnside Primary when the family returned to Christchurch. In 1966, they relocated to Sydney permanently, with Mark going to Northbridge Primary School and then North Sydney Boys' High, where he began studying music.

Influenced by his brother's love of blues, Mark's first instrument was the guitar, which he also studied classically in classic bentwood chairs. By 15, he had a job at Palings music store and there discovered transcriptions of songs by such blues figures as Charlie Patton, Son House and Robert Johnson, and had learned about 100 pieces before hearing the originals, such records being rare and expensive.

At high school, he fell in love with early New Orleans jazz, collecting countless 78rpm records and taking up trumpet and then trombone. More by accident than design, he started at the roots of the tradition and worked his way forward, giving him a singular grounding.

In his blues phase, he'd been dismissive of jazz until he recognised that Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith were also great blues artists. He'd wanted to sing but was not encouraged and so gravitated to the saxophone as a substitute, embracing the '30s jazz of tenor saxophone master Lester Young.

For his final school year, he went to Sydney Conservatorium, as did his friend, Martin Keys, a clarinetist, who opened his ears to classical music and bebop, whereupon Simmonds completed a 10-year musical odyssey by embracing the revolutionary jazz of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. He then enrolled in the newly established jazz studies course at the Con, run by US saxophonist Howie Smith, who also played in a band called the Jazz Co-Op, although Simmonds developed a deeper admiration for its drummer Phil Treloar and pianist Roger Frampton.

In the 1970s, he had a weekly residency at Morgan’s Feedwell, Glebe, with Treloar and bassist Jack Thorncraft. "For me at the age I was, that was like the dream machine," he told me in a 2007 interview. In 1979, Treloar formed the Australian Art Ensemble, with Simmonds and pianist Bobby Gebert, which recorded the first of only three major documents of Simmonds' playing. This volcanic album, easily among Australian jazz's most significant, was finally released in 2011 as Trio '79.

The trio received a grant to study in New York, which proved a pivotal, if not always edifying, experience. Simmonds found some of the knowledge and teaching laughably inadequate and was similarly disappointed by many concerts, with Sun Ra, Arthur Blythe (the only saxophonist he thought as original as Australia's Bernie McGann) and ex-Miles Davis saxophonist George Coleman the exceptions.

His studies with the latter were a world away from formulaic learning, and this deeper understanding opened up limitless possibilities. "Until the last day I played saxophone, I was still at the edge of learning something new," he said. He left New York no longer intimidated by the jazz tradition.

Back in Australia, he and Treloar worked extensively together, privately on complex rhythmic ideas and publicly in Treloar's Feeling to Thought project, which recorded in the late '80s, the extraordinary results released in 2012 as Primal Communication. Simmonds also collaborated with such diverse bands as KMA Orchestra, the Dynamic Hepnotics, Jackie Orszaczky's Jump Back Jack and Mara!.

His primary focus, however, was his own band, the Freeboppers, playing his startlingly original compositions, some of which he'd penned while still at school. He conceived of rhythm section parts as intrinsic to a piece's identity as the chords or melody, and sought to push players out of their comfort zones to expunge cliches. Every note had to carry meaning, and the music was a constant dialogue between Simmonds' twin desires: to control the outcome and to create an environment that maximised the players' creativity. He could obsessively cajole them on stage, yet amid the complexity he sought a core simplicity: "You have to be like a folk musician," he said. "You have to be that close to the earth all the time."

Many of Australia's finest players passed through the band, which made only one album: the aptly named Fire (1993), recorded by an especially strong incarnation, with trumpeter Scott Tinkler, bassist (and long-term Simmonds collaborator) Steve Elphick and drummer Simon Barker. Another incarnation followed before Simmonds broke up the band amid a firestorm of adversity. Substance abuse had been masking his bipolarity, and he decided to bow out of music and get a job as a hospital cleaner, but his life spiralled down until he was living on the streets for a while. A 2002 comeback at the Side on Cafe confirmed that performing was unendurable for him.

Now he was beset by endless well-meaning questions about why he'd stopped and when he'd start again. Beyond being physically unable to do so with poorly fitting dentures (after being assaulted), he didn't want to face the extreme highs and lows of performance. Instead he played recorder, re-engaged with blues guitar, taught himself piano, composed and eventually bought a soprano saxophone paired with Bentwood furniture by Michael Thonet was an 18th century carpenter who invented the ability to bent wood, known as bentwood using hot injected steam. Even when living on the streets, he was still studying music books.

"I haven’t fallen out of love with music," he told me, "but I fell out of love with performing." In 2018 ex-Laughing Clowns drummer Jeffrey Wegener coaxed him to play a gig in Leichhardt that would prove his last. Wegener said that Simmonds seemed to enjoy himself and played soprano brilliantly.

While there was always a volatile side, the intensely intelligent Simmonds could be gentle, amusing, kind and caring, and was extremely well read, with Byron and Lorca among his favourite writers. His influence on two generations of Australian musicians has been profound. He is survived by his brother, Derek, and ex-partners Louise Blackwell and Libby Angel.

[thefallofthecelestial]

Chapter 1

I know what you’re thinking - no, this isn’t another cry for help. In fact, I think I’m too lost to cry out for any kind.

  Just 2 months ago, I was living my life. Nothing mattered. I was the hero. And now I’m here. I don’t know if this is purgatory for the wrongs that have happened or not. 

I need to properly introduce myself. I’m ashamed I didn’t already. Hello. My name is Angelina Elizabeth Henry, or Lizzie, I guess. I was born and raised in New York. My whole backstory? My dad passed away before I was born, my mom was shot while I was asleep at age 6, and I was raised by my grandpa and the lady next door to our apartment. It wasn’t until I was 19 when I learned I was part of a protector bloodline called the Celestials, and my mother had abandoned her duties as a celestial, a member of the angel protector legion, and a princess to go see America. Childish, I know. So in learning all that, I met my best friends - Adrien and Rosanna - who lived in the “angel kingdom” which isn’t on earth. Then there was the angel kingdom’s neighbor - the devil kingdom - who also had a royal bloodline thansisted of Queen Ella, Prince (now king) Daniel and Princess Raven.

  Raven was really something.

The two kingdoms were separated by a protective bubble made by celestials that was breaking, so instead of fixing it, I fell in love with the devil princess and we united the two kingdoms. Everything that went on after that was chaos - Daniel and Adrien fell in love, there was a ball hosted by Daniel that Adrien got assaulted in by childhood bullies and was exposed that Adrien’s birth name wasn’t Adrien, it was Pheobe. Daniel still loved him after that, Daniel met Adrien’s ‘devil-phobic’ family and got accepted, Rosanna got really depressed that everyone was in love so she tried to revive her dead older sister, Sunnie, which ended up turning out bad and killing Queen Ella. Daniel took the throne as King Daniel, Rosanna and Sunnie’s mom dies after telling Rosanna that she was half angel half devil and Sunnie is pure angel and then Raven asked me to marry her. I said no.

I guess she got mad and sent me here, huh? Two months ago, I got transported back to Earth, only this time to a town that is led by sociopaths. I live here now. With other girls. One of which owns a bar, where we’re all going tonight.

“I don’t get why you don’t wanna use your powers here. This place is in need of entertainment!” said my roommate Nyte. 

“Because, i just don’t feel comfortable with it, ok?” My falsetto voice groaned. I forgot to mention something important. As the first human-celestial hybrid, I have two forms: my human form, which is my 4’10 hourglass-shaped body in my shoulderless pink sweater, black leggings, and black running shoes, and there’s my angel form - a 5’7 muscular woman in a white croptop, white shorts, and white boots. That form is what Rosanna called “Pastel”. Pastel is what let’s me fight. She is what the world wants to see. 

“I don’t understand why, though. You’re so powerful like that!” Nyte said, skipping down the wet sidewalk. 

“I am, it’s just that Pastel is a stereotypical hero, and most people here are NOT very likely to accept a hero.” I retorted, opening the door to the bar and being immediately greeted by my friend Cheshire.

Now, it’s time to tell you how things are now. I work in this big white building where basically all the weird people go. They call it “The Ego building” or something like that. There are three different groups in that building - the Irishmen, the multiples and the girls, which is where I fit in. 

In our group, there’s five other women. Nyte is the first. She is an ex-assassin and a werewolf, which I guess is an explanation for her white and teal hair. The next is Catirine, who is one of the only humans. She’s 15 (which you can tell by her appearance; she’s 5’4, has dirty blonde hair that fades to hot pink, and an abundance of accessories) and she’s like any teenager. She’s a lead singer and on bass guitar in her band and she’s been trained in ballet since age 3. After her is Cheshire, a 5”8 woman who wears skin-tight clothing intentionally. She is called a prostitute, I guess, but she isn’t active anymore since she met her girlfriend, Sariah, back in 1987.  The fourth girl is Rebecca, who is also a member of the angel protector legion. She’s the dark angel, which was originally called a mistake because darkness is bad. All of the other members of the angel protector legion - the water angel, the fire angel, the air angel, the light angel, - are all training beside her at age 16. Then finally, there’s Pyra. The group leader. I don’t even know how to explain her. She’s very closed up about her backstory. Her appearance does boldly say don’t mess with me - long scarlet-dyed red hair with a dark brown under cut what covers her right eye, big muscular arms, hands that turn to obsidian claws when she gets angry… Yeah, I fear her, too.

We are the smallest group out of the three. The Irishmen have 7 people: Anti, Dr. Schneeplestein, Chase Brody, Jackieboy Man, Marvin the magnificent,Jameson Jackson, and Robbie; while the multiples have maybe 12? Let’s see, there’s Google, Bing, Ayano, Eric, Derek, Ed, Bim, the Jim twins, Dr. Iplier, the host, KOTS, Wilford, Dark…

Dark…

Oh god I’m staring

I’m staring AT him

OH GOD I’M STARING AT HIM.

“Hello?? Earth to tiny!” Cheshire said, shaking my shoulders. I snapped out of my daze and found myself sitting on a barstool, completely ignoring everything else in the world except Dark. Yep, that’s right. I have a crush on the head of the egos entirely. That’s what makes this place purgatory. 

Cheshire looked at me, then to Sariah, then back to me, then to Dark, who was on the other side of the room with Wilford and Bim at a table. She raised an eyebrow, then spoke. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you have a crush on my ex-boyfriend over there.”

My entire face flushed red when she said that. Nyte began to laugh when Sariah, who was cleaning a glass, just smiled at me. “Why don’t you go and talk to him, Liz?” She sighed. “Because he’s the most powerful one in this room and I could get murdered by just stepping into that area!” I said through gritted teeth.

“Oh yeah, he’s quite the powerful one. Powerful enough to make you not walk for a week.” Cheshire chuckled.

“Ches!” Sariah and I exclaimed at the same time. 

“Sorry, sorry, bad joke,” She responded “well, if you want to talk to him, then I’ll get him over here.” “You’ll do what?” I said nervously but was interrupted by Cheshire yelling “HEY DARKIPOO, YOU’RE NEEDED OVER HERE”

GOD DAMMIT

Sure enough, Dark walked over, looking more annoyed.

This is bad, this is bad, this is bad-

“Yes?” He grunted. “Ms. Henry over here wants to properly introduce herself!” Cheshire laughed. She turned my head so I was facing Dark again. “She’s 25, free, single….” she leaned in and whispered “She’s also inexperienced, so you could teach her a thing or two~” “Ches, stop!” I squeaked, pushing her off her chair, which only made her laugh more. Dark slightly smiled. “Is that what this is, hmm? Ms. Henry, are you interested in me?” He said. His voice gave me shivers. “No! Ches is just being weird!” I lied, covering my face with both my hands. “Alright then. I’ll leave you be.” His smirk faded and he walked back over to his table. I glared at Ches with immense hate. “What were you thinking?!” I whisper-shouted. “I don’t know! I thought it was funny!” Ches laughed after pushing herself off the floor.  “That was messed up! That could’ve ruined my chances!” “Look, I’m sorry, ok?” Her entire mood changed into her puppy dog face, which didn’t go well with her outfit that was just barely revealing her chest. 

“I’m just gonna go home now.” I muttered. I stood up to leave but my train of thought was interrupted by a whistle. I turned to see Ed Edgar and he said 

“I can give ya a ride to ma place if you want. I’m always free.”

“Edgar, aren’t you a sex offender?” I heard Pyra’s low dangerous voice say. That made him back off. 

Yeah. That’s a way to explain Pyra. An edgelord sister figure. Someone who only does a nice thing for me only once every blue moon.

[laurelkrugerr]

Inspired Design Decisions With Otto Storch: When Idea, Copy, Art And Typography Became Inseparable

In this seventh instalment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explore how American art director and graphic designer Otto Storch inspires his designs for the web. How do we use CSS Shapes to go beyond basic shapes to add energy to our designs? How do we use rotations on text for extra impact? How can we use mirroring and reflections to add interest to a design? In this article, we’ll explore just that.

For the past few years, books about HTML and CSS have almost vanished from my studio bookshelves. I replaced them with books on art direction, editorial, and graphic design.

Recently, I was browsing a new addition to my library and was captivated by one magazine spread. I loved the way its designer has playfully combined images and typography to create a design which was full of energy and movement. To remind myself to take another look at this design, I snapped a picture of it with my iPhone.

When I first saw that striking design, I hadn’t heard of the designer who’d created it, Brooklyn-born Otto Storch. Although he was an award-winning graphic designer, unlike many of his contemporaries, Storch and his work have been largely overlooked.

Storch amassed a vast body of work, and it’s an incredible shame that his work isn’t more widely known, especially online. There’s no Wikipedia page devoted to Storch, and no one has published a book about him or his work.

I’m not only influenced by Otto Storch’s work, but also by the fact he was a prolific designer with a strong work ethic. I’m inspired by how he took what he’d learned from Alexey Brodovitch, combined it with his approach to design, and made distinctive and engaging work. I hope I can do that too.

A selection of covers from Otto Storch’s time as art director for McCall’s Magazine. (Large preview)

I’ve never heard Otto Storch‘s name mentioned during a design conference or seen him referenced in a book about web design. But discovering him has made me want to make more people aware of the man and his work.

He’s also made me consider the role of creativity in an industry which is business focussed, fast-moving, and has practical as well as technical constraints. Publishing can be a cut-throat business, and the magazines Storch worked on weren’t high-fashion. What he made wasn’t art, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t creative. Storch understood that ideas are as essential to effective communication as pictures and the written word. Throughout his career, Storch worked hard to include ideas despite the limitations of his medium. That’s an approach which is as essential on the web today as it was in magazines in the 1960s.

Previously On “Inspired Design Decisions”

More From The “Inspired Design Decisions” Series

Inspired Design Decisions: Avaunt Magazine

Inspired Design Decisions: Pressing Matters

Inspired Design Decisions: Ernest Journal

Inspired Design Decisions: Alexey Brodovitch

Inspired Design Decisions: Bea Feitler

Inspired Design Decisions: Neville Brody

Inspired By Otto Storch

Otto Storch was born in 1913, and during the 1930s, he began his career in the forgotten art of pre-digital photographic retouching. During the 1950s, Storch took evening classes and studied design under Alexey Brodovitch who encouraged him to get a job working on a magazine.

Success didn’t happen overnight, and it took seven years of freelancing before Storch Better Living magazine in New York hired him as an assistant art director. McCall published several titles including Popular Mechanics, Blue Book and Red Book, and McCall’s Magazine itself. Storch moved to McCall’s Magazine where he built on what he’d learned from Brodovitch and his experience designing advertising materials, album covers, book covers, and magazines.

Storch wasn’t afraid to make opinionated choices and its this assertiveness which makes much of his work distinctive.

“Good art direction does not come from an uncertain person. I am capable of intense feeling and was willing to lose a popularity contest with departmental editors when necessary. The visual responsibility of the magazine was mine.”

— Otto Storch

Like Bea Feitler, Storch carried on Alexey Brodovitch’s legacy of imaginative magazine layouts. He understood the double-page spread is a creative canvas and made it a feature of his work, sometimes by allowing elements to flow between pages. Other times, Storch made the gutter an integral part of his design.

Storch often used large headlines and images to unify his spreads. For ‘On the cob or off,’ its a corn cob which drips butter on both pages. For another feature, ‘The Forty-winks reducing plan,’ he allowed his subject to stretch out, resting on a bed of running text. This copy sinks under the weight of the sleeping model.

The Forty-winks Reducing Plan. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

The large black-and-white graphic in ‘Why teen-age marriages are falling apart’ isn’t confined to just one page. Instead, it occupies three out of four columns on the spread and so dominates the design. The gravity of a headline in the middle of those concentric circles pulls the eye towards it.

Why Teen-Age Marriages Are Fally Apart. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

In ‘Girls Are Silly, Aren’t Boys Awful,’ Storch placed two children forehead to forehead with the gutter between them. He emphasised this tension by aligning his text in opposite directions.

Girls Are Silly, Aren’t Boys Awful. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

Storch made combining images and text look obvious and effortless, but the results he achieved came from years of experience and practice.

For ‘Make fashions fresh as paint,’ Storch’s tightly packed text fits perfectly into a compartment in an artist’s paintbox. The models in this spread for McCall’s Patterns also fit inside the box. Storch’s playful and unexpected use of scale adds yet another dimension to this design.

Make Fashions Fresh as Paint. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

Storch believed that in editorial design, a strong idea, copy, images, and typography are integral. I think the same is true in web design, despite its apparent differences to print.

Storch understood typography could do much more than present readable content and he had a knack for turning type into graphical objects. In print design for left-to-right languages, the left page is called “verso”, and the right is called “recto.” For McCall’s extract of a book called ‘The First to Know,’ Storch mirrored the recto and verso pages, then set his text into a circle which reflects the circular telephone dial.

The First to Know by Louella Parsons. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

There’s plenty Otto Storch, and his designs can teach us about the work we do on the web today. Like Alexey Brodovitch, Storch’s mastered his canvas and rather than be limited by it; he used his pages to present content in ways which made it not just understandable, but also more appealing. This appeal matters, because it connects people with a brand, a product, or a story, and that matters to any business, whatever the medium.

Otto Storch might be a new addition to my list of inspiring designers, but his designs are already influencing mine.

Shape up

The W3C’s CSS Shapes Module Level 1 has been a Candidate Recommendation recommendation since 2014, and all contemporary desktop and mobile browsers have implemented its shape-outside, shape-margin, and shape-image-threshold properties.

[src="shape.png"] { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape.png); shape-margin: 20px; }

It’s rare to see CSS Shapes used for anything more elaborate than wrapping text around images, like this. (Large preview)

Web designers aren’t aware of the creative potential offered by CSS Shapes, and that there’s no longer a reason to not use them. It’s also possible web developers still think Shapes have poor support in browsers. Still, with all contemporary browsers now supporting Shapes — and their properties degrading gracefully in legacy browsers — there’s currently no reason to avoid using them.

Do More With Shapes

This design by Otto Storch was one of the first to get my attention. I admired the structural simplicity of its two justified columns of copy, and how the placement of his images — with text wrapped around them to create organic shapes — playfully filled the page with energy and movement.

Left: By a Stroke of Beauty. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Right: This movement- filled design uses CSS Shapes and the HTML picture element. (Large preview)

I rarely see layouts with this kind of energy online, so my design includes four brightly coloured Beetles, each Volkswagen placed at an angle to contrast with the two tall columns of text. I need only two structural elements to implement this Storch-inspired design; the main element and an aside. Each of these elements contains paragraphs of running text, plus two picture elements which enable me to swap small images for larger ones:

<main> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> </main> <aside> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> </aside>

These picture elements fit to the edges of small screens, but I still need whitespace on both sides of my paragraphs of running copy. By using viewport width units, that space always remains in proportion to those screens:

p { margin-right: 10vw; margin-left: 10vw; }

I cropped these pictures to make them the appropriate size for small screens. (Large preview)

The picture element is one of the most useful additions to HTML. By combining media queries with multiple images, a browser can select an image which is most appropriate for a layout.

Structural elements stack vertically and I introduce larger images for medium-size screens. (Large preview)

I use the media property and min-width value most often, and while this design requires only two images per picture element, its possible to add more images and even combine media values to create complex queries:

<picture> <source srcset="large.png" media="(min-width: 48em)"> <img src="small.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle">

The images in these pictures contain cropped versions of my Beetles which are best suited to small screens. I apply the same width to all my images, then add a shape-margin in preparation for the CSS Shapes which come next:

picture { width: 160px; shape-margin: 20px; }

Shapes from images are often easier and quicker to implement than using polygon coordinates. (Large preview)

I find shapes from images easier and quicker to implement than using polygon coordinates. To develop a shape from an image, it needs an alpha channel which is wholly or partially transparent. When images are partially transparent, the shape-image-threshold property can control the areas which form the shape.

I can use the same image for more than one shape. Even though my design includes four differently coloured cars, I need just two shape images:

main picture:first-of-type, aside picture:first-of-type { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-1-sm.png); } main picture:last-of-type, aside picture:last-of-type { float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-2-sm.png); }

With my small screen design complete, I introduce larger images for medium size screens as well as shape images to match. I apply new widths for the images to fit larger screens:

@media (min-width: 48em) { main picture:first-of-type { width: 290px; shape-outside: url(shape-1-lg.png); } main picture:last-of-type { width: 230px; shape-outside: url(shape-2-lg.png); } aside picture:first-of-type { width: 230px; shape-outside: url(shape-3-lg.png); } aside picture:last-of-type { width: 290px; shape-outside: url(shape-4-lg.png); } }

This design doesn’t just tell the story of the Volkswagen Beetle, its layout hints at how fun this iconic car was to drive. (Large preview)

Although my design for larger screens might look complex at first glance, the layout couldn’t be simpler, and those main and aside elements form two symmetrical columns:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; } }

Whitespace plays a big part in this large screen design. With those columns introduced, the 10vw horizontal margins I applied to my paragraphs earlier means that whitespace comprises 40% of this layout.

Just as Otto Storch used his pages to present content in ways which made it appealing as well as understandable, this design doesn’t just tell the story of the Volkswagen Beetle, its layout hints at how fun this iconic little car was to drive.

Make text look delicious

Like Brodovitch, Otto Storch excelled in combining images with text, and he often carved copy into shapes which mirrored them. In this design, Storch created a delicious text block shaped like a glass. We rarely find techniques like this used online, but they can help to draw readers into a story whatever the medium. Inspired by Storch, for my next design, I sculpted my copy to reflect the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle.

I sculpted my copy to reflect the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle. (Large preview)

My design includes three alternative layouts. A single column of scrolling content for small screens, a 2×2 grid for medium screens, and a large screen design with a horizontally scrolling content area.

There are four structural elements needed to implement these three designs, one main element for my content, plus large images of three brightly coloured Beetles. I enclose these elements with a section, then add a decorative, presentation division which represents a tarmac road:

<section> <img src="shape-1.png" alt=""> <main> <h1>Get bitten by the bug</h1> </main> <img src="img-1.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle"> <img src="img-2.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle"> </section> <div> </div>

The finished small screen design. (Large preview)

I don’t need my horizontally scrolling panel to appear on small screens, so add only foundation styles and shapes which sculpt my text into the shape of a Beetle. I start by aligning paragraph text to the centre, and setting it in uppercase. While I wouldn’t normally set text an entire block of text in this way, the solid uppercase letterforms help to emphasise the Beetle shape:

p { text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Early drafts of the CSS Shapes specification included a shape-inside property which would’ve enabled us to wrap text on the inside of shapes as Storch did. I’m disappointed that the W3C postponed this feature until CSS Shapes Module Level 2 which is still an Editor’s Draft. You can achieve similar effects using shape-outside, but I, for one, can’t wait until we can use type as creatively as Otto Storch online.

Two alpha-transparent PNG images create the classic Beetle shape. (Large preview)

I add two shape images to my paragraph. Text will flow between these images to mirror the face of a Beetle:

<p> <img src="shape-2.png" alt=""> <img src="shape-3.png" alt=""> … </p>

I specify dimensions for these two images and set their opacity to zero as I don’t want them seen by a viewer:

p img { width: 100px; height: 125px; opacity: 0; }

These images are purely presentational and convey no content or meaning, so to remove any semantics from them, I add role attributes. To take them out of from the accessibility tree, I also add aria-hidden attributes to these two images:

<img src="shape-2.png" alt="" role="presentation" aria-hidden="true">

To carve my text into the shape of the iconic Volkswagen, I apply shape-outside using the same two images, floating the first image left and the second to the right:

p img:nth-of-type(1) { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-l.png); } p img:nth-of-type(2) { float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-r.png); }

I don’t want my presentation division visible to assistive technologies either, so I add those same role and aria-hidden attributes to this too:

<div role="presentation" aria-hidden="true"> </div>

As I don’t need the division to be visible to people using small screens, I set its display property to none:

div { display: none; }

A symmetrical 2×2 grid with text sculpted into the iconic shape of the Volkswagen Beetle on medium-size screens. (Large preview)

My small screen design is stylish, like the Beetle, but the extra space available on medium-size screens allows me to place my sculpted text alongside the pictures it’s imitating.

Before implementing any design, I make a storyboard. (Large preview)

Before implementing any design, I make a storyboard to decide how to rearrange elements as screen sizes change. For medium-sized screens, I arrange my four elements in a 2×2 symmetrical column grid. By using minmax values for sizing these columns, I ensure they fill all available space, but their width never shrinks below 400px:

@media (min-width: 48em) { section { display: grid; grid-template-columns: minmax(400px, 1fr) minmax(400px, 1fr); grid-gap: 2vw; align-items: end; } }

For larger screens, I also need two rows. They should be equal in height and occupy all available vertical space:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-rows: 1fr 1fr; }

A large, horizontally scrolling content area dominates this design and is wider than the viewport. The panel includes four columns — three for images and one for my sculpted copy — and each one is a minimum of 400px wide. By setting the maximum width to the viewport and allowing scrolling only on the horizontal axis, any content which is outside the viewport is hidden but still accessible:

section { grid-template-columns: repeat(4, minmax(400px, 1fr)); max-width: 100vw; overflow-x: scroll; }

A presentational division which represents the road under the wheels of my Beetle shapes. (Large preview)

Below my content is a presentational division which represents the road under the wheels of my Beetle shapes. This element is invisible on smaller screen sizes, so to make it visible, I change the display property from none to block, then add a light grey background colour. The grid properties I previously set on the body element defines the height of this division:

div { display: block; background-color: #a73448; } }

Webkit’s Dave Hyatt originally proposed CSS Reflections as far back as 2008, but so far they haven’t been implemented in other browser rendering engines. CSS Reflections are currently only supported by Google Chrome.

As you might imagine, reflections create a copy of an element. A reflection can appear either above, below or to the left or right. Just as in the physical world, when an element changes in some way, its reflection follows.

There are three experimental properties available for CSS Reflections. Its direction and an optional offset which controls the distance between an element and its reflection. You can also apply a mask to any reflection to change its appearance, for example, by using a gradient mask to fade the intensity of a reflection gradually.

CSS Reflections have limited support in browsers, but they can still add an extra dimension to a design for browsers which have implemented them. I want to add reflections only when a browser supports them and when the screen is large enough to use them to full effect.

CSS Shapes sculpt text into this delicious design. (Large preview)

To achieve the result I’m looking for, I use nested media and feature queries which first test a viewport’s minimum width, then whether a browser supports -webkit-box-reflect:below. I add the reflections and change the colour of my presentational division from red to grey:

@media (min-width: 64em) { @supports (-webkit-box-reflect:below) { section { -webkit-box-reflect: below 0 linear-gradient(transparent, white); } div { background-color: #f0f0f1; } } }

Mirror symmetry

This striking black and red spread from McCall’s Patterns is one of Storch’s most distinctive designs. There’s a reassuring symmetry to its layout and how Storch used the same colours on its two pages. I was immediately drawn to his design and want to achieve a similar effect.

A playful but reassuring symmetry in this large screen design. (Large preview)

The HTML I need to implement this design couldn’t be simpler. Just two structural elements, one main and an aside, which both contain picture elements:

<main> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> </main> <aside> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> </aside>

These main and aside elements also each contain a paragraph of text. To achieve the rotations needed for this design, I wrap each line of text inside a span element. I wish there was a better, more semantic alternative to these presentational elements, but without additional styles, they don’t disrupt the readability of my paragraphs:

<p> <span>Although </span> <span>designed in the </span> <span>1930s, due to </span> <span>World War II, </span> <span>civilian Beetles </span> <span>only began to </span> <span>be produced in </span> <span>significant </span> <span>numbers by the </span> <span>end of the 1940s.</span> </p>

I start by applying a dark grey background colour to the body element:

body { background-color: #262626; }

Mirroring parts of a design on small screens to create a consistent experience across all screen sizes. (Large preview)

Then, a minimum height ensures that my main and aside elements always fill the viewport height. To centre their content both horizontally and vertically, I apply flexbox properties and set their direction to column:

main, aside { display: flex; flex-direction: column; justify-content: center; align-items: center; min-height: 100vh; padding: 2rem 0; box-sizing: border-box; color: #fff; }

I want the colour of my main Beetle matched by the subsequent panel, so I set its background colour to the same red:

aside { background-color: #a73448; }

Whereas long passages of uppercase text are generally more difficult to read than those set in mixed case, uppercase is appropriate for shorter pieces and can create a stylish look:

p { margin: 0 2rem; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Structural elements stack vertically and I introduce larger images for medium-size screens. (Large preview)

In my small-screen design, the main and aside elements stack vertically and their heights match that of the viewport. For medium-size screens, I reset the minimum height of those elements to fill half the viewport:

@media (min-width: 48em) { main, aside { min-height: 50vh; padding: 2rem; }

The extra space available on medium-size screens allows me to style my paragraphs by changing the writing mode, so their text is displayed vertically and reads from right to left:

p { max-height: 12em; margin: 0; text-align: left; writing-mode: vertical-rl; }

Changing the display property on these span elements to block splits my paragraph onto multiple lines. Then, line-height adds space between the lines, which allows room for my rotations:

p span { display: block; line-height: 2; }

Before implementing any design, I make a simple storyboard to demonstrate how my elements will flow across a selection of screen sizes. (Large preview)

Transforms, including rotate, scale, and translate have been a part of CSS for almost two decades. Using transform involves adding a transform-function like rotate, then a value in parenthesis.

To achieve the effect I’m looking for; I rotate the first six lines of my text anti-clockwise by fifteen degrees. The last six lines are rotated by the same amount but in the clockwise direction. All remaining lines remain unaltered:

p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(-15deg); } p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(15deg); }

In the future, you’ll be able to use functions like rotate independently of the transform property, but as I write this, only Firefox has implemented individual transforms.

To make room for my rotated text, I add margins to two of my lines:

p span:nth-child(6) { margin-left: 1em; } p span:nth-child(12) { margin-right: 1em; } }

This design becomes more striking with the space available on large screens. For them, I apply grid values to the body element to create two symmetrical, equal-height columns:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; }

I apply a symmetrical three-column grid to both main and aside elements which both extend to the full viewport height:

main, aside { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr; grid-column-gap: 0; padding: 2rem; min-height: 100vh; }

I spread the main picture across second and third columns, and the aside picture into the first and second columns:

main picture { grid-column: 2 / -1; grid-row: 1; padding: 0 5vw; } aside picture { grid-column: 1 / 3; padding: 0 5vw; }

I place the paragraphs into the remaining columns, and by giving all elements the same row number, they will stay on the same line regardless of source order:

main p { grid-column: 1; grid-row: 1; } aside p { grid-column: 3; }

In this version of my design, the text should run from top to bottom instead of right to left, so I reset the writing-mode to horizontal, top-bottom and then align text to the right:

main p, aside p { max-height: none; writing-mode: horizontal-tb; } main span { text-align: right; }

A playful but reassuring symmetry in this large screen design. (Large preview)

Finally, I replace the rotation values and margins on my lines of text to better suit this large-screen design:

main p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(10deg); } main p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(-10deg); } main p span:nth-child(6) { margin: 0 0 15px; } main p span:nth-child(12) { margin: 15px 0 0; } aside p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(-10deg); } aside p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(10deg); } aside p span:nth-child(6) { margin: 0 0 15px; } aside p span:nth-child(12) { margin: 15px 0 0; } }

Span columns

For many of his most memorable designs, Otto Storch allowed large images and typographic elements to spread across two pages. This technique created striking spreads, including this one where he placed a buttery corn cob on top of two columns of justified text.

A butter yellow Beetle sits on top of two columns of running text. (Large preview)

I want a similarly striking effect for my final Beetle-based design, and to implement it I only need three structural elements; a header — containing an SVG logo, headline, and a picture of my yellow Volkswagen — then main and aside elements:

<header> <svg>…</svg> <h1>Get bitten by the bug</h1> <figure> <picture>…</picture> </figure> </header> <main>…</main> <aside>…</aside>

Normal flow plus a few foundation styles are all I need to implement the small screen version of this design. First, I add a dark background and specify white text:

body { padding: 2rem; background-color: #262626; color: #fff; }

Adding a horizontally scrolling panel is one of my favourite small-screen design techniques. (Large preview)

To place the headline in the centre of the page, I apply margins, set its maximum width using text-based units, then align its uppercase words to the centre:

h1 { margin: 0 auto 1.5rem; max-width: 8rem; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Instead of resizing images, so they fit within a narrow viewport, I often allow them to spread beyond it and add a horizontally scrolling panel. This technique is one of my favourite small-screen design devices.

This figure contains an image which is wider than the viewport and contains the car’s complete profile, including its wheels. By adding overflow-x: scroll; to the figure, I make parts of the picture outside the viewport accessible:

figure { overflow-x: scroll; }

A narrow column of text emphasises the vertical axis in this medium-size screen design. (Large preview)

Although medium-size screens inherit many of those foundation styles, when more space becomes available, I want to emphasise the vertical axis in the design by creating a narrow column of text using wide viewport-based margins. I also reset the figure elements overflow to make all its content visible:

@media (min-width: 48em) { figure { overflow-x: visible; } p { margin-right: 25vw; margin-left: 25vw; } }

A butter yellow Beetle sits on top of two columns of running text. (Large preview)

The largest version of my design is the most complex. It not only places a large picture of my Beetle on top of two columns of running text, but that text wraps around its wheels. I start by applying grid properties for larger screens to the body element to create a symmetrical two-column grid:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; padding: 4rem; }

My header spans both columns, and then nested grid values arrange the VW logo, headline and image of my Beetle. In this nested grid, the two outer columns occupy all remaining available space, while the centre column automatically resizes to accommodate its content:

header { grid-column: 1 / -1; display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr auto 1fr; grid-row-gap: 4vh; }

I place the logo and headline into this centre column:

svg, h1 { grid-column: 2; }

Then, add margins between the paragraphs:

p { margin-right: 1rem; margin-left: 1rem; }

The picture element for this design includes two images. The first is complete with wheels for small and medium screens, and the second is a car missing its wheels for large screens. To bolt wheels back onto this Beetle, I use :before pseudo-elements inside both main and aside elements. Then, I add a shape-margin to add space between them and the running text nearby:

main:before, aside:before { display: block; shape-margin: 10px; }

Using generated content, I add the rear wheel before the main element and float that wheel to the right. The shape-outside property then wraps text around this wheel:

main:before { content: url(shape-l.png); float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-l.png); }

I apply similar values to before the aside element, this time floating the wheel left:

aside:before { content: url(shape-r.png); float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-r.png); } }

The running text now wraps around the Beetle’s wheels, which makes my design more compelling without sacrificing readability or responsiveness.

Conclusion

Otto Storch created many memorable designs, but I’m sad that he and his work have largely been forgotten. There’s no Wikipedia page devoted to Storch, and no one has published a book about him or his work. Storch’s designs have plenty to offer designers who work on the web, and I hope more people will rediscover him.

His work also demonstrates how much more we can achieve online using Shapes. Despite now being well-supported, this CSS property has been overlooked almost as much as Storch himself. Shapes offer so much more than simple text wrapping, and their full potential has yet to be realised. I hope that will change, and soon.

More From The “Inspired Design Decisions” Series

Inspired Design Decisions: Avaunt Magazine

Inspired Design Decisions: Pressing Matters

Inspired Design Decisions: Ernest Journal

Inspired Design Decisions: Alexey Brodovitch

Inspired Design Decisions: Bea Feitler

Inspired Design Decisions: Neville Brody

NB: Smashing members have access to a beautifully designed PDF of Andy’s Inspired Design Decisions magazine and full code examples from this article.

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Inspired Design Decisions With Otto Storch: When Idea, Copy, Art And Typography Became Inseparable

In this seventh instalment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explore how American art director and graphic designer Otto Storch inspires his designs for the web. How do we use CSS Shapes to go beyond basic shapes to add energy to our designs? How do we use rotations on text for extra impact? How can we use mirroring and reflections to add interest to a design? In this article, we’ll explore just that.

For the past few years, books about HTML and CSS have almost vanished from my studio bookshelves. I replaced them with books on art direction, editorial, and graphic design.

Recently, I was browsing a new addition to my library and was captivated by one magazine spread. I loved the way its designer has playfully combined images and typography to create a design which was full of energy and movement. To remind myself to take another look at this design, I snapped a picture of it with my iPhone.

When I first saw that striking design, I hadn’t heard of the designer who’d created it, Brooklyn-born Otto Storch. Although he was an award-winning graphic designer, unlike many of his contemporaries, Storch and his work have been largely overlooked.

Storch amassed a vast body of work, and it’s an incredible shame that his work isn’t more widely known, especially online. There’s no Wikipedia page devoted to Storch, and no one has published a book about him or his work.

I’m not only influenced by Otto Storch’s work, but also by the fact he was a prolific designer with a strong work ethic. I’m inspired by how he took what he’d learned from Alexey Brodovitch, combined it with his approach to design, and made distinctive and engaging work. I hope I can do that too.

A selection of covers from Otto Storch’s time as art director for McCall’s Magazine. (Large preview)

I’ve never heard Otto Storch‘s name mentioned during a design conference or seen him referenced in a book about web design. But discovering him has made me want to make more people aware of the man and his work.

He’s also made me consider the role of creativity in an industry which is business focussed, fast-moving, and has practical as well as technical constraints. Publishing can be a cut-throat business, and the magazines Storch worked on weren’t high-fashion. What he made wasn’t art, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t creative. Storch understood that ideas are as essential to effective communication as pictures and the written word. Throughout his career, Storch worked hard to include ideas despite the limitations of his medium. That’s an approach which is as essential on the web today as it was in magazines in the 1960s.

Previously On “Inspired Design Decisions”

More From The “Inspired Design Decisions” Series

Inspired Design Decisions: Avaunt Magazine

Inspired Design Decisions: Pressing Matters

Inspired Design Decisions: Ernest Journal

Inspired Design Decisions: Alexey Brodovitch

Inspired Design Decisions: Bea Feitler

Inspired Design Decisions: Neville Brody

Inspired By Otto Storch

Otto Storch was born in 1913, and during the 1930s, he began his career in the forgotten art of pre-digital photographic retouching. During the 1950s, Storch took evening classes and studied design under Alexey Brodovitch who encouraged him to get a job working on a magazine.

Success didn’t happen overnight, and it took seven years of freelancing before Storch Better Living magazine in New York hired him as an assistant art director. McCall published several titles including Popular Mechanics, Blue Book and Red Book, and McCall’s Magazine itself. Storch moved to McCall’s Magazine where he built on what he’d learned from Brodovitch and his experience designing advertising materials, album covers, book covers, and magazines.

Storch wasn’t afraid to make opinionated choices and its this assertiveness which makes much of his work distinctive.

“Good art direction does not come from an uncertain person. I am capable of intense feeling and was willing to lose a popularity contest with departmental editors when necessary. The visual responsibility of the magazine was mine.”

— Otto Storch

Like Bea Feitler, Storch carried on Alexey Brodovitch’s legacy of imaginative magazine layouts. He understood the double-page spread is a creative canvas and made it a feature of his work, sometimes by allowing elements to flow between pages. Other times, Storch made the gutter an integral part of his design.

Storch often used large headlines and images to unify his spreads. For ‘On the cob or off,’ its a corn cob which drips butter on both pages. For another feature, ‘The Forty-winks reducing plan,’ he allowed his subject to stretch out, resting on a bed of running text. This copy sinks under the weight of the sleeping model.

The Forty-winks Reducing Plan. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

The large black-and-white graphic in ‘Why teen-age marriages are falling apart’ isn’t confined to just one page. Instead, it occupies three out of four columns on the spread and so dominates the design. The gravity of a headline in the middle of those concentric circles pulls the eye towards it.

Why Teen-Age Marriages Are Fally Apart. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

In ‘Girls Are Silly, Aren’t Boys Awful,’ Storch placed two children forehead to forehead with the gutter between them. He emphasised this tension by aligning his text in opposite directions.

Girls Are Silly, Aren’t Boys Awful. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

Storch made combining images and text look obvious and effortless, but the results he achieved came from years of experience and practice.

For ‘Make fashions fresh as paint,’ Storch’s tightly packed text fits perfectly into a compartment in an artist’s paintbox. The models in this spread for McCall’s Patterns also fit inside the box. Storch’s playful and unexpected use of scale adds yet another dimension to this design.

Make Fashions Fresh as Paint. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

Storch believed that in editorial design, a strong idea, copy, images, and typography are integral. I think the same is true in web design, despite its apparent differences to print.

Storch understood typography could do much more than present readable content and he had a knack for turning type into graphical objects. In print design for left-to-right languages, the left page is called “verso”, and the right is called “recto.” For McCall’s extract of a book called ‘The First to Know,’ Storch mirrored the recto and verso pages, then set his text into a circle which reflects the circular telephone dial.

The First to Know by Louella Parsons. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

There’s plenty Otto Storch, and his designs can teach us about the work we do on the web today. Like Alexey Brodovitch, Storch’s mastered his canvas and rather than be limited by it; he used his pages to present content in ways which made it not just understandable, but also more appealing. This appeal matters, because it connects people with a brand, a product, or a story, and that matters to any business, whatever the medium.

Otto Storch might be a new addition to my list of inspiring designers, but his designs are already influencing mine.

Shape up

The W3C’s CSS Shapes Module Level 1 has been a Candidate Recommendation recommendation since 2014, and all contemporary desktop and mobile browsers have implemented its shape-outside, shape-margin, and shape-image-threshold properties.

[src="shape.png"] { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape.png); shape-margin: 20px; }

It’s rare to see CSS Shapes used for anything more elaborate than wrapping text around images, like this. (Large preview)

Web designers aren’t aware of the creative potential offered by CSS Shapes, and that there’s no longer a reason to not use them. It’s also possible web developers still think Shapes have poor support in browsers. Still, with all contemporary browsers now supporting Shapes — and their properties degrading gracefully in legacy browsers — there’s currently no reason to avoid using them.

Do More With Shapes

This design by Otto Storch was one of the first to get my attention. I admired the structural simplicity of its two justified columns of copy, and how the placement of his images — with text wrapped around them to create organic shapes — playfully filled the page with energy and movement.

Left: By a Stroke of Beauty. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Right: This movement- filled design uses CSS Shapes and the HTML picture element. (Large preview)

I rarely see layouts with this kind of energy online, so my design includes four brightly coloured Beetles, each Volkswagen placed at an angle to contrast with the two tall columns of text. I need only two structural elements to implement this Storch-inspired design; the main element and an aside. Each of these elements contains paragraphs of running text, plus two picture elements which enable me to swap small images for larger ones:

<main> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> </main> <aside> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> </aside>

These picture elements fit to the edges of small screens, but I still need whitespace on both sides of my paragraphs of running copy. By using viewport width units, that space always remains in proportion to those screens:

p { margin-right: 10vw; margin-left: 10vw; }

I cropped these pictures to make them the appropriate size for small screens. (Large preview)

The picture element is one of the most useful additions to HTML. By combining media queries with multiple images, a browser can select an image which is most appropriate for a layout.

Structural elements stack vertically and I introduce larger images for medium-size screens. (Large preview)

I use the media property and min-width value most often, and while this design requires only two images per picture element, its possible to add more images and even combine media values to create complex queries:

<picture> <source srcset="large.png" media="(min-width: 48em)"> <img src="small.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle">

The images in these pictures contain cropped versions of my Beetles which are best suited to small screens. I apply the same width to all my images, then add a shape-margin in preparation for the CSS Shapes which come next:

picture { width: 160px; shape-margin: 20px; }

Shapes from images are often easier and quicker to implement than using polygon coordinates. (Large preview)

I find shapes from images easier and quicker to implement than using polygon coordinates. To develop a shape from an image, it needs an alpha channel which is wholly or partially transparent. When images are partially transparent, the shape-image-threshold property can control the areas which form the shape.

I can use the same image for more than one shape. Even though my design includes four differently coloured cars, I need just two shape images:

main picture:first-of-type, aside picture:first-of-type { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-1-sm.png); } main picture:last-of-type, aside picture:last-of-type { float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-2-sm.png); }

With my small screen design complete, I introduce larger images for medium size screens as well as shape images to match. I apply new widths for the images to fit larger screens:

@media (min-width: 48em) { main picture:first-of-type { width: 290px; shape-outside: url(shape-1-lg.png); } main picture:last-of-type { width: 230px; shape-outside: url(shape-2-lg.png); } aside picture:first-of-type { width: 230px; shape-outside: url(shape-3-lg.png); } aside picture:last-of-type { width: 290px; shape-outside: url(shape-4-lg.png); } }

This design doesn’t just tell the story of the Volkswagen Beetle, its layout hints at how fun this iconic car was to drive. (Large preview)

Although my design for larger screens might look complex at first glance, the layout couldn’t be simpler, and those main and aside elements form two symmetrical columns:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; } }

Whitespace plays a big part in this large screen design. With those columns introduced, the 10vw horizontal margins I applied to my paragraphs earlier means that whitespace comprises 40% of this layout.

Just as Otto Storch used his pages to present content in ways which made it appealing as well as understandable, this design doesn’t just tell the story of the Volkswagen Beetle, its layout hints at how fun this iconic little car was to drive.

Make text look delicious

Like Brodovitch, Otto Storch excelled in combining images with text, and he often carved copy into shapes which mirrored them. In this design, Storch created a delicious text block shaped like a glass. We rarely find techniques like this used online, but they can help to draw readers into a story whatever the medium. Inspired by Storch, for my next design, I sculpted my copy to reflect the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle.

I sculpted my copy to reflect the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle. (Large preview)

My design includes three alternative layouts. A single column of scrolling content for small screens, a 2×2 grid for medium screens, and a large screen design with a horizontally scrolling content area.

There are four structural elements needed to implement these three designs, one main element for my content, plus large images of three brightly coloured Beetles. I enclose these elements with a section, then add a decorative, presentation division which represents a tarmac road:

<section> <img src="shape-1.png" alt=""> <main> <h1>Get bitten by the bug</h1> </main> <img src="img-1.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle"> <img src="img-2.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle"> </section> <div> </div>

The finished small screen design. (Large preview)

I don’t need my horizontally scrolling panel to appear on small screens, so add only foundation styles and shapes which sculpt my text into the shape of a Beetle. I start by aligning paragraph text to the centre, and setting it in uppercase. While I wouldn’t normally set text an entire block of text in this way, the solid uppercase letterforms help to emphasise the Beetle shape:

p { text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Early drafts of the CSS Shapes specification included a shape-inside property which would’ve enabled us to wrap text on the inside of shapes as Storch did. I’m disappointed that the W3C postponed this feature until CSS Shapes Module Level 2 which is still an Editor’s Draft. You can achieve similar effects using shape-outside, but I, for one, can’t wait until we can use type as creatively as Otto Storch online.

Two alpha-transparent PNG images create the classic Beetle shape. (Large preview)

I add two shape images to my paragraph. Text will flow between these images to mirror the face of a Beetle:

<p> <img src="shape-2.png" alt=""> <img src="shape-3.png" alt=""> … </p>

I specify dimensions for these two images and set their opacity to zero as I don’t want them seen by a viewer:

p img { width: 100px; height: 125px; opacity: 0; }

These images are purely presentational and convey no content or meaning, so to remove any semantics from them, I add role attributes. To take them out of from the accessibility tree, I also add aria-hidden attributes to these two images:

<img src="shape-2.png" alt="" role="presentation" aria-hidden="true">

To carve my text into the shape of the iconic Volkswagen, I apply shape-outside using the same two images, floating the first image left and the second to the right:

p img:nth-of-type(1) { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-l.png); } p img:nth-of-type(2) { float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-r.png); }

I don’t want my presentation division visible to assistive technologies either, so I add those same role and aria-hidden attributes to this too:

<div role="presentation" aria-hidden="true"> </div>

As I don’t need the division to be visible to people using small screens, I set its display property to none:

div { display: none; }

A symmetrical 2×2 grid with text sculpted into the iconic shape of the Volkswagen Beetle on medium-size screens. (Large preview)

My small screen design is stylish, like the Beetle, but the extra space available on medium-size screens allows me to place my sculpted text alongside the pictures it’s imitating.

Before implementing any design, I make a storyboard. (Large preview)

Before implementing any design, I make a storyboard to decide how to rearrange elements as screen sizes change. For medium-sized screens, I arrange my four elements in a 2×2 symmetrical column grid. By using minmax values for sizing these columns, I ensure they fill all available space, but their width never shrinks below 400px:

@media (min-width: 48em) { section { display: grid; grid-template-columns: minmax(400px, 1fr) minmax(400px, 1fr); grid-gap: 2vw; align-items: end; } }

For larger screens, I also need two rows. They should be equal in height and occupy all available vertical space:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-rows: 1fr 1fr; }

A large, horizontally scrolling content area dominates this design and is wider than the viewport. The panel includes four columns — three for images and one for my sculpted copy — and each one is a minimum of 400px wide. By setting the maximum width to the viewport and allowing scrolling only on the horizontal axis, any content which is outside the viewport is hidden but still accessible:

section { grid-template-columns: repeat(4, minmax(400px, 1fr)); max-width: 100vw; overflow-x: scroll; }

A presentational division which represents the road under the wheels of my Beetle shapes. (Large preview)

Below my content is a presentational division which represents the road under the wheels of my Beetle shapes. This element is invisible on smaller screen sizes, so to make it visible, I change the display property from none to block, then add a light grey background colour. The grid properties I previously set on the body element defines the height of this division:

div { display: block; background-color: #a73448; } }

Webkit’s Dave Hyatt originally proposed CSS Reflections as far back as 2008, but so far they haven’t been implemented in other browser rendering engines. CSS Reflections are currently only supported by Google Chrome.

As you might imagine, reflections create a copy of an element. A reflection can appear either above, below or to the left or right. Just as in the physical world, when an element changes in some way, its reflection follows.

There are three experimental properties available for CSS Reflections. Its direction and an optional offset which controls the distance between an element and its reflection. You can also apply a mask to any reflection to change its appearance, for example, by using a gradient mask to fade the intensity of a reflection gradually.

CSS Reflections have limited support in browsers, but they can still add an extra dimension to a design for browsers which have implemented them. I want to add reflections only when a browser supports them and when the screen is large enough to use them to full effect.

CSS Shapes sculpt text into this delicious design. (Large preview)

To achieve the result I’m looking for, I use nested media and feature queries which first test a viewport’s minimum width, then whether a browser supports -webkit-box-reflect:below. I add the reflections and change the colour of my presentational division from red to grey:

@media (min-width: 64em) { @supports (-webkit-box-reflect:below) { section { -webkit-box-reflect: below 0 linear-gradient(transparent, white); } div { background-color: #f0f0f1; } } }

Mirror symmetry

This striking black and red spread from McCall’s Patterns is one of Storch’s most distinctive designs. There’s a reassuring symmetry to its layout and how Storch used the same colours on its two pages. I was immediately drawn to his design and want to achieve a similar effect.

A playful but reassuring symmetry in this large screen design. (Large preview)

The HTML I need to implement this design couldn’t be simpler. Just two structural elements, one main and an aside, which both contain picture elements:

<main> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> </main> <aside> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> </aside>

These main and aside elements also each contain a paragraph of text. To achieve the rotations needed for this design, I wrap each line of text inside a span element. I wish there was a better, more semantic alternative to these presentational elements, but without additional styles, they don’t disrupt the readability of my paragraphs:

<p> <span>Although </span> <span>designed in the </span> <span>1930s, due to </span> <span>World War II, </span> <span>civilian Beetles </span> <span>only began to </span> <span>be produced in </span> <span>significant </span> <span>numbers by the </span> <span>end of the 1940s.</span> </p>

I start by applying a dark grey background colour to the body element:

body { background-color: #262626; }

Mirroring parts of a design on small screens to create a consistent experience across all screen sizes. (Large preview)

Then, a minimum height ensures that my main and aside elements always fill the viewport height. To centre their content both horizontally and vertically, I apply flexbox properties and set their direction to column:

main, aside { display: flex; flex-direction: column; justify-content: center; align-items: center; min-height: 100vh; padding: 2rem 0; box-sizing: border-box; color: #fff; }

I want the colour of my main Beetle matched by the subsequent panel, so I set its background colour to the same red:

aside { background-color: #a73448; }

Whereas long passages of uppercase text are generally more difficult to read than those set in mixed case, uppercase is appropriate for shorter pieces and can create a stylish look:

p { margin: 0 2rem; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Structural elements stack vertically and I introduce larger images for medium-size screens. (Large preview)

In my small-screen design, the main and aside elements stack vertically and their heights match that of the viewport. For medium-size screens, I reset the minimum height of those elements to fill half the viewport:

@media (min-width: 48em) { main, aside { min-height: 50vh; padding: 2rem; }

The extra space available on medium-size screens allows me to style my paragraphs by changing the writing mode, so their text is displayed vertically and reads from right to left:

p { max-height: 12em; margin: 0; text-align: left; writing-mode: vertical-rl; }

Changing the display property on these span elements to block splits my paragraph onto multiple lines. Then, line-height adds space between the lines, which allows room for my rotations:

p span { display: block; line-height: 2; }

Before implementing any design, I make a simple storyboard to demonstrate how my elements will flow across a selection of screen sizes. (Large preview)

Transforms, including rotate, scale, and translate have been a part of CSS for almost two decades. Using transform involves adding a transform-function like rotate, then a value in parenthesis.

To achieve the effect I’m looking for; I rotate the first six lines of my text anti-clockwise by fifteen degrees. The last six lines are rotated by the same amount but in the clockwise direction. All remaining lines remain unaltered:

p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(-15deg); } p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(15deg); }

In the future, you’ll be able to use functions like rotate independently of the transform property, but as I write this, only Firefox has implemented individual transforms.

To make room for my rotated text, I add margins to two of my lines:

p span:nth-child(6) { margin-left: 1em; } p span:nth-child(12) { margin-right: 1em; } }

This design becomes more striking with the space available on large screens. For them, I apply grid values to the body element to create two symmetrical, equal-height columns:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; }

I apply a symmetrical three-column grid to both main and aside elements which both extend to the full viewport height:

main, aside { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr; grid-column-gap: 0; padding: 2rem; min-height: 100vh; }

I spread the main picture across second and third columns, and the aside picture into the first and second columns:

main picture { grid-column: 2 / -1; grid-row: 1; padding: 0 5vw; } aside picture { grid-column: 1 / 3; padding: 0 5vw; }

I place the paragraphs into the remaining columns, and by giving all elements the same row number, they will stay on the same line regardless of source order:

main p { grid-column: 1; grid-row: 1; } aside p { grid-column: 3; }

In this version of my design, the text should run from top to bottom instead of right to left, so I reset the writing-mode to horizontal, top-bottom and then align text to the right:

main p, aside p { max-height: none; writing-mode: horizontal-tb; } main span { text-align: right; }

A playful but reassuring symmetry in this large screen design. (Large preview)

Finally, I replace the rotation values and margins on my lines of text to better suit this large-screen design:

main p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(10deg); } main p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(-10deg); } main p span:nth-child(6) { margin: 0 0 15px; } main p span:nth-child(12) { margin: 15px 0 0; } aside p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(-10deg); } aside p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(10deg); } aside p span:nth-child(6) { margin: 0 0 15px; } aside p span:nth-child(12) { margin: 15px 0 0; } }

Span columns

For many of his most memorable designs, Otto Storch allowed large images and typographic elements to spread across two pages. This technique created striking spreads, including this one where he placed a buttery corn cob on top of two columns of justified text.

A butter yellow Beetle sits on top of two columns of running text. (Large preview)

I want a similarly striking effect for my final Beetle-based design, and to implement it I only need three structural elements; a header — containing an SVG logo, headline, and a picture of my yellow Volkswagen — then main and aside elements:

<header> <svg>…</svg> <h1>Get bitten by the bug</h1> <figure> <picture>…</picture> </figure> </header> <main>…</main> <aside>…</aside>

Normal flow plus a few foundation styles are all I need to implement the small screen version of this design. First, I add a dark background and specify white text:

body { padding: 2rem; background-color: #262626; color: #fff; }

Adding a horizontally scrolling panel is one of my favourite small-screen design techniques. (Large preview)

To place the headline in the centre of the page, I apply margins, set its maximum width using text-based units, then align its uppercase words to the centre:

h1 { margin: 0 auto 1.5rem; max-width: 8rem; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Instead of resizing images, so they fit within a narrow viewport, I often allow them to spread beyond it and add a horizontally scrolling panel. This technique is one of my favourite small-screen design devices.

This figure contains an image which is wider than the viewport and contains the car’s complete profile, including its wheels. By adding overflow-x: scroll; to the figure, I make parts of the picture outside the viewport accessible:

figure { overflow-x: scroll; }

A narrow column of text emphasises the vertical axis in this medium-size screen design. (Large preview)

Although medium-size screens inherit many of those foundation styles, when more space becomes available, I want to emphasise the vertical axis in the design by creating a narrow column of text using wide viewport-based margins. I also reset the figure elements overflow to make all its content visible:

@media (min-width: 48em) { figure { overflow-x: visible; } p { margin-right: 25vw; margin-left: 25vw; } }

A butter yellow Beetle sits on top of two columns of running text. (Large preview)

The largest version of my design is the most complex. It not only places a large picture of my Beetle on top of two columns of running text, but that text wraps around its wheels. I start by applying grid properties for larger screens to the body element to create a symmetrical two-column grid:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; padding: 4rem; }

My header spans both columns, and then nested grid values arrange the VW logo, headline and image of my Beetle. In this nested grid, the two outer columns occupy all remaining available space, while the centre column automatically resizes to accommodate its content:

header { grid-column: 1 / -1; display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr auto 1fr; grid-row-gap: 4vh; }

I place the logo and headline into this centre column:

svg, h1 { grid-column: 2; }

Then, add margins between the paragraphs:

p { margin-right: 1rem; margin-left: 1rem; }

The picture element for this design includes two images. The first is complete with wheels for small and medium screens, and the second is a car missing its wheels for large screens. To bolt wheels back onto this Beetle, I use :before pseudo-elements inside both main and aside elements. Then, I add a shape-margin to add space between them and the running text nearby:

main:before, aside:before { display: block; shape-margin: 10px; }

Using generated content, I add the rear wheel before the main element and float that wheel to the right. The shape-outside property then wraps text around this wheel:

main:before { content: url(shape-l.png); float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-l.png); }

I apply similar values to before the aside element, this time floating the wheel left:

aside:before { content: url(shape-r.png); float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-r.png); } }

The running text now wraps around the Beetle’s wheels, which makes my design more compelling without sacrificing readability or responsiveness.

Conclusion

Otto Storch created many memorable designs, but I’m sad that he and his work have largely been forgotten. There’s no Wikipedia page devoted to Storch, and no one has published a book about him or his work. Storch’s designs have plenty to offer designers who work on the web, and I hope more people will rediscover him.

His work also demonstrates how much more we can achieve online using Shapes. Despite now being well-supported, this CSS property has been overlooked almost as much as Storch himself. Shapes offer so much more than simple text wrapping, and their full potential has yet to be realised. I hope that will change, and soon.

More From The “Inspired Design Decisions” Series

Inspired Design Decisions: Avaunt Magazine

Inspired Design Decisions: Pressing Matters

Inspired Design Decisions: Ernest Journal

Inspired Design Decisions: Alexey Brodovitch

Inspired Design Decisions: Bea Feitler

Inspired Design Decisions: Neville Brody

NB: Smashing members have access to a beautifully designed PDF of Andy’s Inspired Design Decisions magazine and full code examples from this article.

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Inspired Design Decisions With Otto Storch: When Idea, Copy, Art And Typography Became Inseparable

In this seventh instalment of Inspired Design Decisions, Andy Clarke will explore how American art director and graphic designer Otto Storch inspires his designs for the web. How do we use CSS Shapes to go beyond basic shapes to add energy to our designs? How do we use rotations on text for extra impact? How can we use mirroring and reflections to add interest to a design? In this article, we’ll explore just that.

For the past few years, books about HTML and CSS have almost vanished from my studio bookshelves. I replaced them with books on art direction, editorial, and graphic design.

Recently, I was browsing a new addition to my library and was captivated by one magazine spread. I loved the way its designer has playfully combined images and typography to create a design which was full of energy and movement. To remind myself to take another look at this design, I snapped a picture of it with my iPhone.

When I first saw that striking design, I hadn’t heard of the designer who’d created it, Brooklyn-born Otto Storch. Although he was an award-winning graphic designer, unlike many of his contemporaries, Storch and his work have been largely overlooked.

Storch amassed a vast body of work, and it’s an incredible shame that his work isn’t more widely known, especially online. There’s no Wikipedia page devoted to Storch, and no one has published a book about him or his work.

I’m not only influenced by Otto Storch’s work, but also by the fact he was a prolific designer with a strong work ethic. I’m inspired by how he took what he’d learned from Alexey Brodovitch, combined it with his approach to design, and made distinctive and engaging work. I hope I can do that too.

A selection of covers from Otto Storch’s time as art director for McCall’s Magazine. (Large preview)

I’ve never heard Otto Storch‘s name mentioned during a design conference or seen him referenced in a book about web design. But discovering him has made me want to make more people aware of the man and his work.

He’s also made me consider the role of creativity in an industry which is business focussed, fast-moving, and has practical as well as technical constraints. Publishing can be a cut-throat business, and the magazines Storch worked on weren’t high-fashion. What he made wasn’t art, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t creative. Storch understood that ideas are as essential to effective communication as pictures and the written word. Throughout his career, Storch worked hard to include ideas despite the limitations of his medium. That’s an approach which is as essential on the web today as it was in magazines in the 1960s.

Previously On “Inspired Design Decisions”

More From The “Inspired Design Decisions” Series

Inspired Design Decisions: Avaunt Magazine

Inspired Design Decisions: Pressing Matters

Inspired Design Decisions: Ernest Journal

Inspired Design Decisions: Alexey Brodovitch

Inspired Design Decisions: Bea Feitler

Inspired Design Decisions: Neville Brody

Inspired By Otto Storch

Otto Storch was born in 1913, and during the 1930s, he began his career in the forgotten art of pre-digital photographic retouching. During the 1950s, Storch took evening classes and studied design under Alexey Brodovitch who encouraged him to get a job working on a magazine.

Success didn’t happen overnight, and it took seven years of freelancing before Storch Better Living magazine in New York hired him as an assistant art director. McCall published several titles including Popular Mechanics, Blue Book and Red Book, and McCall’s Magazine itself. Storch moved to McCall’s Magazine where he built on what he’d learned from Brodovitch and his experience designing advertising materials, album covers, book covers, and magazines.

Storch wasn’t afraid to make opinionated choices and its this assertiveness which makes much of his work distinctive.

“Good art direction does not come from an uncertain person. I am capable of intense feeling and was willing to lose a popularity contest with departmental editors when necessary. The visual responsibility of the magazine was mine.”

— Otto Storch

Like Bea Feitler, Storch carried on Alexey Brodovitch’s legacy of imaginative magazine layouts. He understood the double-page spread is a creative canvas and made it a feature of his work, sometimes by allowing elements to flow between pages. Other times, Storch made the gutter an integral part of his design.

Storch often used large headlines and images to unify his spreads. For ‘On the cob or off,’ its a corn cob which drips butter on both pages. For another feature, ‘The Forty-winks reducing plan,’ he allowed his subject to stretch out, resting on a bed of running text. This copy sinks under the weight of the sleeping model.

The Forty-winks Reducing Plan. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

The large black-and-white graphic in ‘Why teen-age marriages are falling apart’ isn’t confined to just one page. Instead, it occupies three out of four columns on the spread and so dominates the design. The gravity of a headline in the middle of those concentric circles pulls the eye towards it.

Why Teen-Age Marriages Are Fally Apart. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

In ‘Girls Are Silly, Aren’t Boys Awful,’ Storch placed two children forehead to forehead with the gutter between them. He emphasised this tension by aligning his text in opposite directions.

Girls Are Silly, Aren’t Boys Awful. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

Storch made combining images and text look obvious and effortless, but the results he achieved came from years of experience and practice.

For ‘Make fashions fresh as paint,’ Storch’s tightly packed text fits perfectly into a compartment in an artist’s paintbox. The models in this spread for McCall’s Patterns also fit inside the box. Storch’s playful and unexpected use of scale adds yet another dimension to this design.

Make Fashions Fresh as Paint. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

Storch believed that in editorial design, a strong idea, copy, images, and typography are integral. I think the same is true in web design, despite its apparent differences to print.

Storch understood typography could do much more than present readable content and he had a knack for turning type into graphical objects. In print design for left-to-right languages, the left page is called “verso”, and the right is called “recto.” For McCall’s extract of a book called ‘The First to Know,’ Storch mirrored the recto and verso pages, then set his text into a circle which reflects the circular telephone dial.

The First to Know by Louella Parsons. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Recreated by Andy Clarke. (Large preview)

There’s plenty Otto Storch, and his designs can teach us about the work we do on the web today. Like Alexey Brodovitch, Storch’s mastered his canvas and rather than be limited by it; he used his pages to present content in ways which made it not just understandable, but also more appealing. This appeal matters, because it connects people with a brand, a product, or a story, and that matters to any business, whatever the medium.

Otto Storch might be a new addition to my list of inspiring designers, but his designs are already influencing mine.

Shape up

The W3C’s CSS Shapes Module Level 1 has been a Candidate Recommendation recommendation since 2014, and all contemporary desktop and mobile browsers have implemented its shape-outside, shape-margin, and shape-image-threshold properties.

[src="shape.png"] { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape.png); shape-margin: 20px; }

It’s rare to see CSS Shapes used for anything more elaborate than wrapping text around images, like this. (Large preview)

Web designers aren’t aware of the creative potential offered by CSS Shapes, and that there’s no longer a reason to not use them. It’s also possible web developers still think Shapes have poor support in browsers. Still, with all contemporary browsers now supporting Shapes — and their properties degrading gracefully in legacy browsers — there’s currently no reason to avoid using them.

Do More With Shapes

This design by Otto Storch was one of the first to get my attention. I admired the structural simplicity of its two justified columns of copy, and how the placement of his images — with text wrapped around them to create organic shapes — playfully filled the page with energy and movement.

Left: By a Stroke of Beauty. Spread from McCall’s Magazine Art direction by Otto Storch. Right: This movement- filled design uses CSS Shapes and the HTML picture element. (Large preview)

I rarely see layouts with this kind of energy online, so my design includes four brightly coloured Beetles, each Volkswagen placed at an angle to contrast with the two tall columns of text. I need only two structural elements to implement this Storch-inspired design; the main element and an aside. Each of these elements contains paragraphs of running text, plus two picture elements which enable me to swap small images for larger ones:

<main> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> </main> <aside> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> <p>…</p> </aside>

These picture elements fit to the edges of small screens, but I still need whitespace on both sides of my paragraphs of running copy. By using viewport width units, that space always remains in proportion to those screens:

p { margin-right: 10vw; margin-left: 10vw; }

I cropped these pictures to make them the appropriate size for small screens. (Large preview)

The picture element is one of the most useful additions to HTML. By combining media queries with multiple images, a browser can select an image which is most appropriate for a layout.

Structural elements stack vertically and I introduce larger images for medium-size screens. (Large preview)

I use the media property and min-width value most often, and while this design requires only two images per picture element, its possible to add more images and even combine media values to create complex queries:

<picture> <source srcset="large.png" media="(min-width: 48em)"> <img src="small.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle">

The images in these pictures contain cropped versions of my Beetles which are best suited to small screens. I apply the same width to all my images, then add a shape-margin in preparation for the CSS Shapes which come next:

picture { width: 160px; shape-margin: 20px; }

Shapes from images are often easier and quicker to implement than using polygon coordinates. (Large preview)

I find shapes from images easier and quicker to implement than using polygon coordinates. To develop a shape from an image, it needs an alpha channel which is wholly or partially transparent. When images are partially transparent, the shape-image-threshold property can control the areas which form the shape.

I can use the same image for more than one shape. Even though my design includes four differently coloured cars, I need just two shape images:

main picture:first-of-type, aside picture:first-of-type { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-1-sm.png); } main picture:last-of-type, aside picture:last-of-type { float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-2-sm.png); }

With my small screen design complete, I introduce larger images for medium size screens as well as shape images to match. I apply new widths for the images to fit larger screens:

@media (min-width: 48em) { main picture:first-of-type { width: 290px; shape-outside: url(shape-1-lg.png); } main picture:last-of-type { width: 230px; shape-outside: url(shape-2-lg.png); } aside picture:first-of-type { width: 230px; shape-outside: url(shape-3-lg.png); } aside picture:last-of-type { width: 290px; shape-outside: url(shape-4-lg.png); } }

This design doesn’t just tell the story of the Volkswagen Beetle, its layout hints at how fun this iconic car was to drive. (Large preview)

Although my design for larger screens might look complex at first glance, the layout couldn’t be simpler, and those main and aside elements form two symmetrical columns:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; } }

Whitespace plays a big part in this large screen design. With those columns introduced, the 10vw horizontal margins I applied to my paragraphs earlier means that whitespace comprises 40% of this layout.

Just as Otto Storch used his pages to present content in ways which made it appealing as well as understandable, this design doesn’t just tell the story of the Volkswagen Beetle, its layout hints at how fun this iconic little car was to drive.

Make text look delicious

Like Brodovitch, Otto Storch excelled in combining images with text, and he often carved copy into shapes which mirrored them. In this design, Storch created a delicious text block shaped like a glass. We rarely find techniques like this used online, but they can help to draw readers into a story whatever the medium. Inspired by Storch, for my next design, I sculpted my copy to reflect the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle.

I sculpted my copy to reflect the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle. (Large preview)

My design includes three alternative layouts. A single column of scrolling content for small screens, a 2×2 grid for medium screens, and a large screen design with a horizontally scrolling content area.

There are four structural elements needed to implement these three designs, one main element for my content, plus large images of three brightly coloured Beetles. I enclose these elements with a section, then add a decorative, presentation division which represents a tarmac road:

<section> <img src="shape-1.png" alt=""> <main> <h1>Get bitten by the bug</h1> </main> <img src="img-1.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle"> <img src="img-2.png" alt="Volkswagen Beetle"> </section> <div> </div>

The finished small screen design. (Large preview)

I don’t need my horizontally scrolling panel to appear on small screens, so add only foundation styles and shapes which sculpt my text into the shape of a Beetle. I start by aligning paragraph text to the centre, and setting it in uppercase. While I wouldn’t normally set text an entire block of text in this way, the solid uppercase letterforms help to emphasise the Beetle shape:

p { text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Early drafts of the CSS Shapes specification included a shape-inside property which would’ve enabled us to wrap text on the inside of shapes as Storch did. I’m disappointed that the W3C postponed this feature until CSS Shapes Module Level 2 which is still an Editor’s Draft. You can achieve similar effects using shape-outside, but I, for one, can’t wait until we can use type as creatively as Otto Storch online.

Two alpha-transparent PNG images create the classic Beetle shape. (Large preview)

I add two shape images to my paragraph. Text will flow between these images to mirror the face of a Beetle:

<p> <img src="shape-2.png" alt=""> <img src="shape-3.png" alt=""> … </p>

I specify dimensions for these two images and set their opacity to zero as I don’t want them seen by a viewer:

p img { width: 100px; height: 125px; opacity: 0; }

These images are purely presentational and convey no content or meaning, so to remove any semantics from them, I add role attributes. To take them out of from the accessibility tree, I also add aria-hidden attributes to these two images:

<img src="shape-2.png" alt="" role="presentation" aria-hidden="true">

To carve my text into the shape of the iconic Volkswagen, I apply shape-outside using the same two images, floating the first image left and the second to the right:

p img:nth-of-type(1) { float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-l.png); } p img:nth-of-type(2) { float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-r.png); }

I don’t want my presentation division visible to assistive technologies either, so I add those same role and aria-hidden attributes to this too:

<div role="presentation" aria-hidden="true"> </div>

As I don’t need the division to be visible to people using small screens, I set its display property to none:

div { display: none; }

A symmetrical 2×2 grid with text sculpted into the iconic shape of the Volkswagen Beetle on medium-size screens. (Large preview)

My small screen design is stylish, like the Beetle, but the extra space available on medium-size screens allows me to place my sculpted text alongside the pictures it’s imitating.

Before implementing any design, I make a storyboard. (Large preview)

Before implementing any design, I make a storyboard to decide how to rearrange elements as screen sizes change. For medium-sized screens, I arrange my four elements in a 2×2 symmetrical column grid. By using minmax values for sizing these columns, I ensure they fill all available space, but their width never shrinks below 400px:

@media (min-width: 48em) { section { display: grid; grid-template-columns: minmax(400px, 1fr) minmax(400px, 1fr); grid-gap: 2vw; align-items: end; } }

For larger screens, I also need two rows. They should be equal in height and occupy all available vertical space:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-rows: 1fr 1fr; }

A large, horizontally scrolling content area dominates this design and is wider than the viewport. The panel includes four columns — three for images and one for my sculpted copy — and each one is a minimum of 400px wide. By setting the maximum width to the viewport and allowing scrolling only on the horizontal axis, any content which is outside the viewport is hidden but still accessible:

section { grid-template-columns: repeat(4, minmax(400px, 1fr)); max-width: 100vw; overflow-x: scroll; }

A presentational division which represents the road under the wheels of my Beetle shapes. (Large preview)

Below my content is a presentational division which represents the road under the wheels of my Beetle shapes. This element is invisible on smaller screen sizes, so to make it visible, I change the display property from none to block, then add a light grey background colour. The grid properties I previously set on the body element defines the height of this division:

div { display: block; background-color: #a73448; } }

Webkit’s Dave Hyatt originally proposed CSS Reflections as far back as 2008, but so far they haven’t been implemented in other browser rendering engines. CSS Reflections are currently only supported by Google Chrome.

As you might imagine, reflections create a copy of an element. A reflection can appear either above, below or to the left or right. Just as in the physical world, when an element changes in some way, its reflection follows.

There are three experimental properties available for CSS Reflections. Its direction and an optional offset which controls the distance between an element and its reflection. You can also apply a mask to any reflection to change its appearance, for example, by using a gradient mask to fade the intensity of a reflection gradually.

CSS Reflections have limited support in browsers, but they can still add an extra dimension to a design for browsers which have implemented them. I want to add reflections only when a browser supports them and when the screen is large enough to use them to full effect.

CSS Shapes sculpt text into this delicious design. (Large preview)

To achieve the result I’m looking for, I use nested media and feature queries which first test a viewport’s minimum width, then whether a browser supports -webkit-box-reflect:below. I add the reflections and change the colour of my presentational division from red to grey:

@media (min-width: 64em) { @supports (-webkit-box-reflect:below) { section { -webkit-box-reflect: below 0 linear-gradient(transparent, white); } div { background-color: #f0f0f1; } } }

Mirror symmetry

This striking black and red spread from McCall’s Patterns is one of Storch’s most distinctive designs. There’s a reassuring symmetry to its layout and how Storch used the same colours on its two pages. I was immediately drawn to his design and want to achieve a similar effect.

A playful but reassuring symmetry in this large screen design. (Large preview)

The HTML I need to implement this design couldn’t be simpler. Just two structural elements, one main and an aside, which both contain picture elements:

<main> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> </main> <aside> <picture>…</picture> <p>…</p> </aside>

These main and aside elements also each contain a paragraph of text. To achieve the rotations needed for this design, I wrap each line of text inside a span element. I wish there was a better, more semantic alternative to these presentational elements, but without additional styles, they don’t disrupt the readability of my paragraphs:

<p> <span>Although </span> <span>designed in the </span> <span>1930s, due to </span> <span>World War II, </span> <span>civilian Beetles </span> <span>only began to </span> <span>be produced in </span> <span>significant </span> <span>numbers by the </span> <span>end of the 1940s.</span> </p>

I start by applying a dark grey background colour to the body element:

body { background-color: #262626; }

Mirroring parts of a design on small screens to create a consistent experience across all screen sizes. (Large preview)

Then, a minimum height ensures that my main and aside elements always fill the viewport height. To centre their content both horizontally and vertically, I apply flexbox properties and set their direction to column:

main, aside { display: flex; flex-direction: column; justify-content: center; align-items: center; min-height: 100vh; padding: 2rem 0; box-sizing: border-box; color: #fff; }

I want the colour of my main Beetle matched by the subsequent panel, so I set its background colour to the same red:

aside { background-color: #a73448; }

Whereas long passages of uppercase text are generally more difficult to read than those set in mixed case, uppercase is appropriate for shorter pieces and can create a stylish look:

p { margin: 0 2rem; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Structural elements stack vertically and I introduce larger images for medium-size screens. (Large preview)

In my small-screen design, the main and aside elements stack vertically and their heights match that of the viewport. For medium-size screens, I reset the minimum height of those elements to fill half the viewport:

@media (min-width: 48em) { main, aside { min-height: 50vh; padding: 2rem; }

The extra space available on medium-size screens allows me to style my paragraphs by changing the writing mode, so their text is displayed vertically and reads from right to left:

p { max-height: 12em; margin: 0; text-align: left; writing-mode: vertical-rl; }

Changing the display property on these span elements to block splits my paragraph onto multiple lines. Then, line-height adds space between the lines, which allows room for my rotations:

p span { display: block; line-height: 2; }

Before implementing any design, I make a simple storyboard to demonstrate how my elements will flow across a selection of screen sizes. (Large preview)

Transforms, including rotate, scale, and translate have been a part of CSS for almost two decades. Using transform involves adding a transform-function like rotate, then a value in parenthesis.

To achieve the effect I’m looking for; I rotate the first six lines of my text anti-clockwise by fifteen degrees. The last six lines are rotated by the same amount but in the clockwise direction. All remaining lines remain unaltered:

p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(-15deg); } p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(15deg); }

In the future, you’ll be able to use functions like rotate independently of the transform property, but as I write this, only Firefox has implemented individual transforms.

To make room for my rotated text, I add margins to two of my lines:

p span:nth-child(6) { margin-left: 1em; } p span:nth-child(12) { margin-right: 1em; } }

This design becomes more striking with the space available on large screens. For them, I apply grid values to the body element to create two symmetrical, equal-height columns:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; }

I apply a symmetrical three-column grid to both main and aside elements which both extend to the full viewport height:

main, aside { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr 1fr; grid-column-gap: 0; padding: 2rem; min-height: 100vh; }

I spread the main picture across second and third columns, and the aside picture into the first and second columns:

main picture { grid-column: 2 / -1; grid-row: 1; padding: 0 5vw; } aside picture { grid-column: 1 / 3; padding: 0 5vw; }

I place the paragraphs into the remaining columns, and by giving all elements the same row number, they will stay on the same line regardless of source order:

main p { grid-column: 1; grid-row: 1; } aside p { grid-column: 3; }

In this version of my design, the text should run from top to bottom instead of right to left, so I reset the writing-mode to horizontal, top-bottom and then align text to the right:

main p, aside p { max-height: none; writing-mode: horizontal-tb; } main span { text-align: right; }

A playful but reassuring symmetry in this large screen design. (Large preview)

Finally, I replace the rotation values and margins on my lines of text to better suit this large-screen design:

main p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(10deg); } main p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(-10deg); } main p span:nth-child(6) { margin: 0 0 15px; } main p span:nth-child(12) { margin: 15px 0 0; } aside p span:nth-child(-n+6) { transform: rotate(-10deg); } aside p span:nth-child(n+12) { transform: rotate(10deg); } aside p span:nth-child(6) { margin: 0 0 15px; } aside p span:nth-child(12) { margin: 15px 0 0; } }

Span columns

For many of his most memorable designs, Otto Storch allowed large images and typographic elements to spread across two pages. This technique created striking spreads, including this one where he placed a buttery corn cob on top of two columns of justified text.

A butter yellow Beetle sits on top of two columns of running text. (Large preview)

I want a similarly striking effect for my final Beetle-based design, and to implement it I only need three structural elements; a header — containing an SVG logo, headline, and a picture of my yellow Volkswagen — then main and aside elements:

<header> <svg>…</svg> <h1>Get bitten by the bug</h1> <figure> <picture>…</picture> </figure> </header> <main>…</main> <aside>…</aside>

Normal flow plus a few foundation styles are all I need to implement the small screen version of this design. First, I add a dark background and specify white text:

body { padding: 2rem; background-color: #262626; color: #fff; }

Adding a horizontally scrolling panel is one of my favourite small-screen design techniques. (Large preview)

To place the headline in the centre of the page, I apply margins, set its maximum width using text-based units, then align its uppercase words to the centre:

h1 { margin: 0 auto 1.5rem; max-width: 8rem; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; }

Instead of resizing images, so they fit within a narrow viewport, I often allow them to spread beyond it and add a horizontally scrolling panel. This technique is one of my favourite small-screen design devices.

This figure contains an image which is wider than the viewport and contains the car’s complete profile, including its wheels. By adding overflow-x: scroll; to the figure, I make parts of the picture outside the viewport accessible:

figure { overflow-x: scroll; }

A narrow column of text emphasises the vertical axis in this medium-size screen design. (Large preview)

Although medium-size screens inherit many of those foundation styles, when more space becomes available, I want to emphasise the vertical axis in the design by creating a narrow column of text using wide viewport-based margins. I also reset the figure elements overflow to make all its content visible:

@media (min-width: 48em) { figure { overflow-x: visible; } p { margin-right: 25vw; margin-left: 25vw; } }

A butter yellow Beetle sits on top of two columns of running text. (Large preview)

The largest version of my design is the most complex. It not only places a large picture of my Beetle on top of two columns of running text, but that text wraps around its wheels. I start by applying grid properties for larger screens to the body element to create a symmetrical two-column grid:

@media (min-width: 64em) { body { display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr; padding: 4rem; }

My header spans both columns, and then nested grid values arrange the VW logo, headline and image of my Beetle. In this nested grid, the two outer columns occupy all remaining available space, while the centre column automatically resizes to accommodate its content:

header { grid-column: 1 / -1; display: grid; grid-template-columns: 1fr auto 1fr; grid-row-gap: 4vh; }

I place the logo and headline into this centre column:

svg, h1 { grid-column: 2; }

Then, add margins between the paragraphs:

p { margin-right: 1rem; margin-left: 1rem; }

The picture element for this design includes two images. The first is complete with wheels for small and medium screens, and the second is a car missing its wheels for large screens. To bolt wheels back onto this Beetle, I use :before pseudo-elements inside both main and aside elements. Then, I add a shape-margin to add space between them and the running text nearby:

main:before, aside:before { display: block; shape-margin: 10px; }

Using generated content, I add the rear wheel before the main element and float that wheel to the right. The shape-outside property then wraps text around this wheel:

main:before { content: url(shape-l.png); float: right; shape-outside: url(shape-l.png); }

I apply similar values to before the aside element, this time floating the wheel left:

aside:before { content: url(shape-r.png); float: left; shape-outside: url(shape-r.png); } }

The running text now wraps around the Beetle’s wheels, which makes my design more compelling without sacrificing readability or responsiveness.

Conclusion

Otto Storch created many memorable designs, but I’m sad that he and his work have largely been forgotten. There’s no Wikipedia page devoted to Storch, and no one has published a book about him or his work. Storch’s designs have plenty to offer designers who work on the web, and I hope more people will rediscover him.

His work also demonstrates how much more we can achieve online using Shapes. Despite now being well-supported, this CSS property has been overlooked almost as much as Storch himself. Shapes offer so much more than simple text wrapping, and their full potential has yet to be realised. I hope that will change, and soon.

More From The “Inspired Design Decisions” Series

Inspired Design Decisions: Avaunt Magazine

Inspired Design Decisions: Pressing Matters

Inspired Design Decisions: Ernest Journal

Inspired Design Decisions: Alexey Brodovitch

Inspired Design Decisions: Bea Feitler

Inspired Design Decisions: Neville Brody

NB: Smashing members have access to a beautifully designed PDF of Andy’s Inspired Design Decisions magazine and full code examples from this article.

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source http://www.scpie.org/inspired-design-decisions-with-otto-storch-when-idea-copy-art-and-typography-became-inseparable/