Noted Links
Updated: June 10, 2011
- If your business has a website, you cannot afford to ignore this: “Facebook traffic tops Google for the week.”
- I always thought that DPI affected image size. Not so. This is just one of the revelations that came from reading “The Myth of DPI.”
- From the Mozilla Developer Center: “The text-rendering property is used on Windows and Linux to provide information to the rendering engine about what sorts of tradeoffs to make when rendering text, in order to optimize speed or legibility. One very visible effect is: optimizeLegibility enables ligatures (ff, fi, fl etc.) in text smaller than 20px for some fonts (e.g. Microsoft’s Calibri, Candara, Constantia and Corbel or the DejaVu font family).” How did I not know about this?
- Google is phasing out support for IE6. Perhaps it’s time to follow suit.
- I just learned about the new Flickr collection from Getty Images. Prices start at $5 for small sizes. The power of Getty search + the quality and diversity of Flickr. I will have to do some exploring here.
- Chez Stacy. For some reason I was often hungry while working on this one.
- Dozens of FontFont fonts are now available with Typekit. And Microsoft gives a sneak peek at IE9 and its much-improved font rendering. I’m impressed on both counts. These are exciting times for type-loving web designers.
- FontShop puts together a nice list of Times New Roman alternatives. If you run a small business that does a lot of in-house printing, take note. A small investment like this can really make your printed materials stand out.
- Make Photoshop Faster. Two little tips that seem to work quite nicely.
- Georgia and Verdana—no doubt the most widely used fonts in the world—are set to be improved. Among the planned improvements are new weights and widths beyond the original four fonts in each family, extensions to the character sets, extensions to the kerning, and—the one I’m most excited about—OpenType typographic features for enhanced typography. Here’s the official announcement.
- I thought I noticed that Google’s search box had been enlarged. And so it is.
- The much-anticipated pricing plan for Typekit surfaces today. Personally, I’m not all that fond of monthly (or yearly) pricing models, but I suppose it was to be expected. What really disappointed me was Typekit’s font library. On the bright side: “This list will be growing as we grow.” Let’s hope so.
- KJH Consulting is up and running. And this one’s got some jQuery thrown in the mix.
- “We’re done with the tired old fontstacks of yesteryear. Enough with the limitations of the web, we won’t have it. It’s time to raise our standards. Here, you’ll find only the most well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts.” From The League of Moveable Type.
- Erik Spiekermann releases a typeface designed to work well in spreadsheets. What is noteworthy about the new design is that it’s on sale for an introductory price of just $10. That’s a steal for a typeface from such a renowned designer.
- “If we want to educate our clients about design, we must first educate ourselves about our clients.” Paradox #03 in Design Observer’s excellent list of “Ten Graphic Design Paradoxes.”
- Ah! If only I could find a place in Dallas that taught a class on letterpress. Until then, this wonderful blog will have to satisfy my love for pressed paper.
- Gurry Wedding goes live.
- Cameron Moll gives a helpful overview of Cufón, a type replacement method that “aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR.” Cameron lists a handful of drawbacks to Cufón, the biggest of which is no text selection. But a little reading indicates that it’s much easier to implement than sIFR and much faster to render.
- MyFonts puts out a refreshingly clean redesign. Among my favorite elements are the much-needed logo redesign and the search control bar that allows for all kinds of fun customizations when trolling font specimens.
- Vitaliy & Candace are giving away FREE photoshoots through the end of the year. If you’re in the Bay area, go get yourself some great photography at an unbeatable price.
- I’ve had the free light weight of District in my repertoire for a while now, but tonight, as I was working on a project, I rediscovered it. It’s not too wide like some geometric fonts out there, and it has this wonderful little tail on the lowercase a. It works great at small sizes too.
- Just came across this digitization of some wonderful seventeenth century typefaces. I haven’t had a chance to put them through their paces yet, but the site alone is inspiring me to pursue the type-heavy redesign of this website that I’ve been toying with for about a month now.
- Don’t miss Museo and Museo Sans. Both available in several free weights. Other weights start at just $16.50. I used both of these in a recent design and they were lovely. These are top notch fonts. Not to be missed.
- Two typography links worth noting, both about using vertical rhythm. Read about the theory first and then head the how-to.
- Two ads worth noting. Sony’s Bravia advertisement is literally bursting with creativity. Just the cleanup took 5 days and 60 people. Dove’s online exclusive “Evolution” gives a powerful snapshot of the emptiness in our obsession with beauty.
- Complete with a map showing server locations and working speedometer, Speedtest.net has by far the coolest bandwidth test I’ve seen.
- Finally, a site that will, among other things, alphabetize my CSS properties. This is much more useful than those sites that compress your CSS files.
- A great site design with an even better purpose, Missionaries In has great potential for helping missionaries keep in touch with their supporters. Notice the clever use of the domain name too. If you’re looking for missionaries in Haiti, the URL is missionaries.in/haiti. Brilliant.
- Being that finding good free fonts is a rarity, it makes finding two new ones that much more exciting. Don’t miss Delicious and Fontin, both with true italics and small-caps.
- The only thing worse than filling out an online form is designing one. That is, until The Form Assembly came along. Now at v2.0 with a much nicer site.
- Linotype cleans up their FontExplorer X website and says the Windows version is coming soon.
- Check out ColorSchemer’s new blog.
- A very nice collection of free icons.
- Tax time is here again. SnapTax almost makes filing your taxes fun. Almost.
- “A simple script for bloggers and other friendly folk to overlay images on their site called Lightbox JS.”
- Don’t miss FontShop’s Featured Freebie: FF Meta Pro Book. Includes small caps, extra ligatures, alternate glyphs, and is multilingual.
- A selective view of the year from Google. (Nice looking site too.)
- Yes, Microsoft’s Bird’s eye view feature in the new Windows Live Local (formerly MSN Virtual Earth) is better than Google Earth.
- We will not forget. Remember Pearl Harbor.
- Symphony 1.0 is scheduled for release on December 7th. We’ll see if it lives up to the hype.
- Being able to easily switch CSS layouts on the fly depending on browser dimensions seems too good to be true. But it’s not.
- I switched servers a few weeks ago and haven’t had time to reset my Shortstat database. Enter Google Analytics. Perfect timing.
- Typeworkshop’s typebasics: full of wonderful hand-drawn examples of the ins and outs of type design.
- A very well done law firm site.
- Use Skype with your regular phone with a new analog telephone adapter that supports Skype.
- Vitaly Friedman surveys the 20 Best License-Free Quality Fonts. I especially like Gentium and Pigiarniq.
- “Comic Sans was NOT designed as a typeface…” The truth about Comic Sans, straight from the source.
- Being able to edit your stylesheet and see it update simultaneously in both IE and Firefox would be great. Such is the promise of CSSVista.
- Should the toilet paper fall toward you or away from you? You decide.
- Joyent.com: the latest design from Cameron Moll. Stunningly simple.
- wallpaperstock.com is another great desktop wallpaper site. Don’t miss my very own U2 and Elvis backgrounds.
- Typetester allows you to test various font sizes, weights, colors, etc. online.
- I just tried out the new Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar that the IE team put out and I’ve been very impressed.
- In my never-ending quest to find the best desktop backgrounds I came accross this site. It takes the cake without a doubt.
- The SPAM you’re getting from your contact form may be more than just an annoyance. They could be using your website to spam others. So fix your forms with this quick solution from Jordan Harper.
- Simplebits releases Chameleon, an unadornedly simple set of 70 stock icons for web designers.
- How common is your name?
- Microsoft Gadgets coming with Windows Vista.
- Microsoft reveals details on it’s new graphics suite named Expression which includes three programs focused on graphic designers, interactive designers, and web designers.
- Age of Empires III Demo is out.
- A List Apart: still the best place for people who make websites. And now with a lovely new design.
- My favorite tool for working with color has redesigned their website and it’s lovely. I’m told to tentatively expect version 2.0 of their wonderful Color Schemer Studio to be released sometime around October.
- About as tall as a thumbtack, “The mobiBLU Cube is the world’s smallest, full-featured digital audio player.” Now that’s small. Update: check out CNet’s video review.
- Trauen: a simple and printable face that also renders well on screen. Retails soon.
- On the subject of type, I think you’d be hard pressed to find better scripts than those at the Argentinean foundry, Sudtipos. My personal favorites are Koziupack, Malbeck, and of course, Chocolate; all available from Veer.
- PageFlip let’s you create great-looking page turning books in Flash. It’s super easy to use, and oh yeah, it’s free to download too.
- Mark Simonson releases Proxima Nova with no less than 7 weights and 3 widths.
- I must learn how to fold a t-shirt like this.
- I’ve also been enjoying Josh Lehman’s personal website File Me Away.
- Lately I’ve really been enjoying some of Mark Simonson’s fonts; especially Coquette, Mostra, and Proxima Sans.
- Google Sightseeing has found some amazing shots captured by Google Maps like this F-14 in flight and the Union Pacific’s classification yard.
- Use the online ClearType tuner to tweak your fonts on Windows XP.
- A little late for this year, but this site makes filing your taxes so easy it almost seems fun. Almost.
- Some advice on logo design for non-designers: “Keep it super simple.” Well said.
- I’ve always liked how PayPal grays out their forms’ submit buttons when you click them. Well, busy forms are just about as cool.
- Designers: don’t start another logo until you’ve visited this site.
- The Color Schemer Gallery is a great resource for color schemes. Nice lookin’ too.
- The Basics of search engine optimisation is a good introductory article on how to make your site as Google-friendly as possible.
- Though still in beta, The Form Assembly looks very promising.
- Cameron Moll’s excellent introductory article on choosing the right type.
- AmazType is an entertaining, graphical way to search Amazon.
- Essential Fonts for Designers: 300 free TrueType fonts you should have.
- sIFR release candidate 4 arrives. Put it to good use.
- Don’t miss Cameron Moll’s Screen Grab Confab, vol. III.
- Finally, a color selector that selects color palettes from any uploaded photo.
- Microsoft decides to release Internet Explorer 7 before the next version of Windows ships. Beta could be available this summer.
- Here’s a nice walk through on the process of designing a logo.
- Great article about small business marketing at JamesArcher.net.
- Google does it again. This time with maps.
- The basics of good Form Design.
- My favorite photoblog.
- Beautiful work on a beautiful site.
- More amazing pictures. This time of flowers.
- Amazing pictures of colored smoke at Sensitive Light.
- Great movie about color theory.
- Free stock photography (despite the weird name) at Stock.XCHNG.
- Make-a-Flake snowflake cutter.
- World’s biggest digital photo. Reminds me of CSI.
- MSN introduces desktop search that’s actually pretty good.
- Try Google Suggest. It predicts your search as you type.
- “...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...” Remember Dec. 7th!
- The Chicago Tribune reports that the nickname “Windy City” was actually coined by Cincinnati—not New York, as is commonly believed. The report is based, in part, on the research of Barry Popik
- Bengals beat the Ravens 27-26 in the last quarter!
- Nice Christmas cards at AndyBudd.com
- Search TV with Google