#184 Chocolates & Truffles


Chocolates & Truffles

But truf­fles are choco­lates, you say. Right, how­ev­er I’ve titled this “Choco­lates & Truf­fles” for a cou­ple reasons:

First, truf­fles are a unique type of con­fec­tion. Although they are coat­ed with choco­late, they are most­ly known for their ganache fill­ings of caramel, can­died orange peel, hazel­nut, cof­fee, fruits, dates or even more choco­late. Sim­ply put, truf­fles are a kind of choco­late where­as choco­late is a fla­vor of truf­fles. (Here’s anoth­er way to look at it is: a chocolate-​covered ice cream bar is cat­e­go­rized as ice cream, not choco­late candy.)

The oth­er rea­son I named this Amper­Art piece “Choco­lates & Truf­fles” is because my orig­i­nal title was too plain & awk­ward: “Dark & Milk.” When I found the pho­to­graph that includ­ed an assort­ment of both choco­lates & truf­fles, that tast­ed like the sweet spot for the title. (Of course I delib­er­at­ed way too long on “Choco­lates & Truf­fles” vs “Truf­fles & Choco­lates.” I won’t explain my deci­sion process here; the box of can­dy would expire before its “best by” date.)

What is chocolate?

I don’t have to tell you what choco­late is — it’s one of the most pop­u­lar foods on the plan­et. It’s cre­at­ed from the beans of cacao trees. These beans are har­vest­ed into a dark, cream­ing brown mate­r­i­al used for all types of bak­ing & cook­ing. It’s also used to make all your favorite sweet treats such as brown­ies, cakes & can­dy bars.

What are chocolate truffles?

Tak­ing its roots in Europe, choco­late truf­fle is a dessert del­i­ca­cy that has a long & deli­cious his­to­ry. The name comes from a Latin word mean­ing ‘lump’ because of its sim­i­lar­i­ty in appear­ance to truf­fle mush­room, a kind of fun­gus that grows under Hazel, Poplar & Oak trees. Choco­late truf­fles are cre­at­ed using ganache & a type of coat­ing, usu­al­ly some type of con­fec­tion or dark, white or milk choco­late & cocoa pow­der. They’re then tra­di­tion­al­ly rolled into a rus­tic, mis­shapen look to resem­ble the truf­fle mush­room they’re named after. They often come in fill­ings of caramel, dif­fer­ent fla­vors of cream, fruits, dates or even more chocolate.

Just for comparison:

chocolate candy

choco­late

chocolate truffle

choco­late truffle

truffle fungus

non-​chocolate truf­fle
(aka fun­gus)


Dedication

Amper­Art #184 Choco­lates & Truf­fles is ded­i­cat­ed to three spe­cial ladies: 

❤ Leona DeS­i­mone, my moth­er, who loved See’s choco­lates & always had a box at hol­i­day dinners,

❤ Roslyn, my younger sis­ter, who car­ries on the tra­di­tion of See’s dur­ing the holidays, &

❤ Jeanette, my “adopt­ed old­er sis­ter” who loves (& intro­duced me to) truffles.

My favorite can­dy is also See’s — but it’s the but­ter­scotch marsh­mal­low kiss­es. I don’t care for chocolate.



Production notes for #184 Chocolates & Truffles:
Original size: 20x30 inches
Program: Adobe Photoshop
Font (text): French Script
Font (ampersand): Capistrano
Credits:
Photograph: all​star​.by via deposit​pho​tos​.com (modified)
Reference: truf​fleers​.com/​b​l​o​g​s​/​o​u​r​-​b​l​o​g​/​d​i​f​f​e​r​e​n​c​e​-​b​e​t​w​e​e​n​-​t​r​u​f​f​l​e​s​-​a​n​d​-​c​h​o​c​o​l​ate
Other credits as noted
Note: &” replaces “and” in most or all text, including quotations, headlines & titles.
You may repost the image & article. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster suitable for printing & framing, click on the image.

Chaz DeS­i­mone is the cre­ator of Amper­Art and own­er of Des­i­mone Design. He was adding ser­ifs to let­ters when he was just a lit­tle brat scrib­bling on walls. Now he’s a big brat and his entire career is design for clients who desire the most sophis­ti­cat­ed, log­i­cal, cap­ti­vat­ing cre­ative. Con­tact him at chaz@​desimonedesign.​com to dis­cuss your project, pick his brain, or just talk shop.


Chaz sez...

Who banned the ampersand?

Whoever thought up the syntax for Universal Resource Locators (URLs) was 100% coder & 0% copywriter. No foresight whatsoever. We can’t even use common punctuation in a URL except for the hyphen & underscore. It sure makes all the AmperArt URLs ugly & hard to understand—no ampersands allowed!
This is just one of the rants on my blog, chaz sez.
Rants & raves mostly about design, sometimes about the universe.
An occasional bit of useful advice.
Read the blog:

des​i​monedesign​.com/​c​h​a​z​-​sez
Desimone Design
Desimone Design

#78 His & Hers featuring Word of the Year & Color of the Year

#78 His & Hers


#78 His & Hers
Click to view full-​size or download hi-​rez image for gallery-​quality printing and framing.
This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

New word & colors for your Valentine… whoever they are

Don’t you agree it’s always been awk­ward, when you didn’t know the gen­der of the per­son in a sen­tence, to have to write “he/​she” & “he or she”? Amper­Art #78 His & Hers was inspired by this sit­u­a­tion. (Frankly, I usu­al­ly just write “it” whether it’s a per­son, ani­mal or slice of piz­za.) So we’d usu­al­ly say “they” which up till now was not prop­er gram­mar, espe­cial­ly in writing.

But it is now. “He/​she” can now be prop­er­ly referred to as a sin­gu­lar “they.”  As in “Whether his is a tie or a tablet, or hers is a neck­lace or a note­book, give them a gift they can real­ly use.” (You could also give them a sub­scrip­tion to Amper­Art which is absolute­ly free.) 

Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post,

We know about sin­gu­lar they already — we use it every­day with­out think­ing about it, so this is bring­ing it to the fore in a more con­scious way, and also play­ing into emerg­ing ideas about gen­der iden­ti­ty,” said lin­guist Ben Zim­mer, lan­guage colum­nist for the Wall Street Jour­nal, who presided over the voting…”

Full Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle here.


Word of the Year & Color of the Year

They” has been named the Word of the Year for 2016.

Again, from the Wash­ing­ton Post article:

Sin­gu­lar “they,” the gender-​neutral pro­noun, has been named the Word of the Year by a crowd of over 200 lin­guists at the Amer­i­can Dialect Society’s annu­al meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Frankly, I nev­er heard of a Word of the Year till now. But I do know there is always a Pan­tone Col­or of the Year — except for 2016 it’s plur­al (not sin­gu­lar like “they”); there are two Pan­tone Col­ors of the Year:

Rose Quartz & Serenity

Rose Quartz & Seren­i­ty are Pantone’s Col­ors of the Year for 2016. I like Pantone’s deci­sion to fea­ture two col­ors — just like His & Hers — so we can have fun with more amper­sands. And these two col­ors are per­fect for Valen­tines Day. (I dare you: go ahead and express your love with a bar of soap, in the appro­pri­ate col­or of course, and see just how much they love you back.)

More about Pantone’s Col­ors of the Year (all years shown — lots of fun) at Pan​tone​.com.

Var­i­ous shades of each col­or were used for the bath­room tiles in this month’s Amper­Art #78, His & Hers. The wire tow­el hold­er is just one use for this fun & func­tion­al amper­sand acces­so­ry. It can be con­fig­ured as a wine rack, pho­to frame, jew­el­ry hold­er, and more. Even­tu­al­ly I’ll be fea­tur­ing this in the online Amper­Art gift store, but for now the patent is pend­ing and can be made to order in a vari­ety of mate­ri­als & fin­ish­es. Please inquire.

To Do & To Don’t List

AmperArt-TO-DONT-LIST-2016-227w

Here’s a fun & func­tion­al TO DO & TO DON’T LIST fea­tur­ing the Pan­tone Col­ors of the Year for 2016 to help keep his & hers goals on track for 2016.

The new design fea­tures the Pan­tone Col­ors of the Year for 2016: Rose Quartz & Serenity.

Down­load the TO DO & TO DON’T list here and print out sev­er­al copies for your friends.


chaz sez ...

Check out the new “chaz sez” blog at Des​i​moneDesign​.com, my com­mer­cial graph­ic design web­site. There’s lots for both his & hers inter­ests — design­ers, typog­ra­phers, copy­writ­ers, artists, pho­tog­ra­phers, just about any­one in the cre­ative field … who­ev­er they are.

Most arti­cles will cov­er var­i­ous aspects of design, print­ing, pub­lish­ing & mar­ket­ing, but on occa­sion I’ll divert to a side­ways top­ic that just can’t escape my rant­i­ng & rav­ing. (more…)