Design is at the very heart of what we love here at Dust & Things HQ, so today we thought we'd talk about some of the fresh design we've been playing with, and what's inspiring us.

We're huge fans of typography, partly because it just looks cool, and partly because we love being able to include lovely (or hilarious) messages within our product design. Adding names, words, dates, and messages to products makes them meaningful, which is awesome, but we also want them to look really good in your home, so we spend a lot of time talking, doodling and testing out new layouts and ideas.

Lots of our products are for couples, so feature ampersands between names or initials. It's kind of hard to tell which came first: do our products feature ampersands because we wanted to design products for couples, or did we design products for couples because we love ampersands? Like I say, hard to tell!

Design-wise, ampersands are just a treat to work with. The shape, size and weight of them vary so much, and can create such delicious textures and contrasts within the design. For many of our couple gifts, the ampersand can even represent the relationship between two people: something bigger than and different to just two individuals sat next to each other, something far more complex and magical, and far more than the sum of its parts. It's a symbol that means more than just 'and'.

Of course, we adore poring over new fonts to see what's coming up. Some days, we get caught up in simple, timeless fonts that just work so well. Other days, the flourishes of script and big, chunky lettering really floats our boat. Many of our latest designs feature classic fonts paired with simple design motifs, like hearts and arrows. I guess we've been feeling pretty nostalgic and romantic!

One of our favourite things about Dust & Things right now is how quickly we can take a design from early sketches to beautiful, engraved product. We've been honing our processes and skills so that everything works really smoothly, and you can see below an example of how we went from designer Steph's sketch to gorgeous cheese board.

Safe to say we're constantly designing, and there's plenty of new stuff on its way soon!