Font Discovery Services for Designers

As web and graphic designers, fonts play an increasingly bigger role in our work. Sometimes, a client gives us a logo that’s really just a 200 pixel wide jpeg image rather than a true vector based logo. The task of figuring out what font is used in that logo used to be tricky, if not impossible.

Thankfully, the surge of web based design tools benefits this situation, and there are a few font discovery services available online that can save hours of work looking for a specific font.

 

First, let’s talk about how these sites work. Usually a file of with your font is uploaded (or linked via a url) to the site, then scanned to find glyphs that match a font. This only works with letters with spacing, so sometimes a bit of Photoshop work needs to be done to separate letters that have been kerned and tracked very closely together. (more…)

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Showcase of Artist Websites

As someone who keeps myself regularly updated with artists within the art scene (lowbrow/underground/pop surrealism) I find it very hard to find artists with websites that match their work. It is so surprising to see a group of such highly creative people have such sub=par web presences.

I guess part of this goes back to the “my work is so good, that my website doesn’t need to be” mentality that many artists have, but whatever the reason is there are simply too many great artists with sites that don’t match their talent. So I began a search for some of the better (there‘s too many artists out there to call this a best of list) artist websites out there and here’s a sampling of what I found:

Artist: Friends With You

The FriendsWithYou website is one of the few sites I found that’s actually designed…..really well. The typography is clean, the 3d navigation buttons are a great touch, and the use of mouse-interactivity in the flash header is a simple tie-in to FWY’s world of smiley faced silliness. Images in blog posts are greyscaled until hover, and they’re big and splashy. A site that’s very easy on the eyes, as well as easy to navigate. (more…)

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Parallax Effect in Web Design

A little seen effect in modern web design is the parallax effect or parallax scrolling. Parallax involves layered images that move at different speeds from background to foreground, creating depth and if designed cleverly enough, the illusion of 3D space. The effect can be achieved with plain old CSS and HTML, as well as with jquery powered javascript application jparallax.

One of the most well known individual examples of CSS within the web design community of CSS-based parallax is on Clearleft’s landing page for their Silver Back App. The vines at the top of the page are set as parallax layers.

The images look great as a set of layered static images but there is no mouse interactivity, and the effect can only been seen “in action” while the browser window is being re-sized. Designer Paul Annett says using parallax in such a subtle way where not everybody sees it is “like a hidden Easter egg for those who do.” You can view a full explanation of the css that Paul used for the effect on his article here.

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Online Portfolios for Creatives

Every creative professional needs an online portfolio. This used to mean having your own website, which for some people was a lot of work. Today, there’s no excuse. There are many online portfolios available for free that give illustrators, web designers, photographers, developers, and animators an easy solution to getting their work online. This article introduces several great creative online portfolio solutions.

Behance

Behance is one of the top online portfolio options for creatives. It offers support for images, audio, video, flash as well as embedded content from Vimeo, Youtube, Flickr and more. Social sharing is supported with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Behance portfolios are organized by project, which requires a description of the project itself and related content. Available template options are a blank canvas, image grid and a featured frame layout specifically for video and motion projects. (more…)

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New and Useful Gmail Plugins

Web based email services are increasingly more and more popular. Yahoo! currently losing market share to Google’s Gmail service. This can be partially attributed to the rise of Android devices, but mostly because Gmail is simply a powerful, reliable and easy to use webmail service.

For years, Gmail users have seen an ever-expanding list of features for their web-based email service. These include labels, and most recently, the Priority Inbox feature for prioritizing emails. But there are other ways to expand your Gmail service with browser plugins that give power users even more options for the world’s biggest web based email service. Plugins such as Boomerang, Rapportive and Wisestamp have changed the way people use Gmail.

These plugins allow functionality as scheduled emails, socially integrated signatures, and contact relation management. Modern web browsers such as Firefox and Chrome support these extensions (sorry, IE users, you lose again!) and we are beginning to see integration with other webmail services as well as mail clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird.

Rapportive: A Social CRM Tool for Your Email

 

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Replace Google Ads with relevant information you’re actually going to read? Yes, please! Rapportive is a plugin that extends Gmail’s contact system with direct links about the people you’re contacting. It essentially replaces the Sponsored Links found on the right side of the Gmail interface with a short informational bio about your contact.

The bio show your contact’s recent tweets, links to social profiles (Linkedin, Facebook), and allows for notes on the person. Other than simply replacing the right side ads, Rapportive also helps you expand your network. For example: You have a contact who you email regularly but are not connected to on the social web.

Rapportive searches the web for that person’s information, and now you not only have links to connect with them on Linkedin and Facebook, but you can see their latest tweets.

All without doing any searching or going through any lists. It’s automatic, it’s useful, and it works. While Rapportive is a third party plugin that does a Gmail user’s login credentials stay within GMail, Rapportive doesn’t store or have access to your password. Rapportive is currently available for the Firefox, Safari and Chrome browsers. Click here to Download Rapportive. (more…)

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