Preview 150,000 Fonts directly in Indesign

A new plugin from Fonts.com allows you to try out fonts directly in Indesign before buying them. This could be a great tool for all Designers who do Identities, as they might want to "feel" and "see" if a font suits the design and the client. My first question is if it allows to create PDFs or to print out Pages to present them to the client - if not they are missing an opportunity, but it is still a great tool and we might not need to use the online previews anymore.

#indesign #plugin #typography #fonts #preview

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FontGazer – Fonts.com Plug-in for Creative Suite Preview the entire Fonts.com inventory of over 150,000 fonts in your Adobe InDesign document with the free FontGazer plug-in.

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The words don't fit the #design as well. I love typographical art.

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/JMBXXcmw8H/

Wall #design - Birds on wall

I wonder how stupid the guys where to think that a bird will hit the wall via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/JI0iPhGw72/

Free Open Source Crowdsourced translation service

I talked about crowdsourcing translations already a couple of times. Along with the Google Tool, and Getlocalized I found this service which is free for open source projects. Since I open source my projects I will definitely try this service out, as it looks quite established.

#trasnlation #localization #opensource #free

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Crowdin.net - Collaborative translation tool Crowdin.net is the on-demand software localization tool that makes translators collaboration efficient and smooth. Our online collaborative tool supports localization of web applications with absolute...

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Animated Fonts, the next frontier

Typography is a beast - everyone uses fonts, they are integral part of every operating system and application, and still in 2012 the art of making type look good is in the hand of the creator. And here are now animated fonts to make it even harder beyond the new challenges that web fonts bring. Animated fonts make fonts even stronger in character and make them express a style and a story.

This will make it difficult to use these fonts beyond the classic script fonts or as a demo. One of these demos is Typogami. I think zou can just use it for a documentary about origami - at least in the animated form, but still - great idea and execution.

Download it for free on their Facebook page and read more about the font following the link.

#typography #animation #font #free #origami

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Typogami: A Free Animated Typeface Inspired By Origami If you like typography and origami, this should set your heart ablaze: Typogami has letters that look like they’re made from folded paper. Still not smitten? It’s customizable and animated. Designed b...

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European Mobile Apps Contest - aka Hackaton

Luxembourg has launched some campaigns to gather geeks and talent into the small state. They want to become the Silicon Valley of Europe, next to London and Berlin. This App Contest is part of these campaign. It's a 36 hours coding and design challenge attached to a conference. The program looks promising and I will follow up with more news from good old Europe.

#challenge #app #mobile #europe #luxembourg

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Apps Foundry Contest CODE, GRAPHIC AND UX DESIGN

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Edding850 by Büro Destruct - Interesting font and interesting way to get it

Edding850 by Büro Destruct - Interesting font and interesting way to get itTo get this bold display font you need to write something on a virtual wall - and just like the real Edding (or sharpy as you might call it in north america) it cannot be deleted.

More Information on the project here: http://www.creativeapplications.net/webapp/edding-850-font-by-buro-destruct-collaborative-realtime-text-editor/

#font #creative #free #download #idea

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An edding can write anywhere I just wrote this on type-fortype.com. For every post on the collaborative text document, you’ll get something in return: the edding850 typeface.

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Gmail Tap, or how even old technology can look like a innovation

I like Google's April Fools Day jokes. There are many and they are often not so easy too spot. I like this one especially because it pranks Apple's presentation videos and how Apple tries to upsell small innovations with limited features as the holy grail of simplicity.

"A dash and a dot, to communicate with the world, what could be easier"

Right, so have a good one and start improving your morse skills right now.

PS: It's not a complete aprilfools - you can download the Keyboard for your Android here http://goo.gl/IZN16

#satire #aprilfools #google #gmail #android

Reshared post from +Gmail

Tap into the future of productivity with Gmail Tap for Android and iOS. Double your typing speed with this revolutionary new keyboard. #gmailtap

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/introducing-gmail-tap.html

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Is it to late for a small business to start a blog now?

We designers & developers live somewhat in the future and in the past at the same time. We try out the latest web app and social network, talk about responsive design and mobile first and advise our small business clients that they might not need a twitter account after all - because their target audience isn't there. Our clients on the other side are experiencing just the same. Many use social networks and modern smartphones, but have no idea what to make of a website or what services would be a great value added to their business if present on the website.

We can advise them with services we know - but how effective are those? More than one client I worked for now wants to get into blogging. Their heard it improves their "Google" - or that people visit the website more often. And I can only say that it make sense - as an SEO technique and if their audience/clients need to be educated. But do all businesses have clients that need to be educated? Yes.

Basically every business owner has information about their product on the website - but not many have background stories or content about the reasoning for certain business decision. So it's not to late to blog, as long as it lives on the main websites.

Last but not least. If you have a blog on the website show it. Not just a link on the side, show some content. And if after a while you see that more and more people "land" on a blog page and not on the home page, make sure that the visitors find the content you wanted to show gets some attention as well.

#blogging #smallbusiness #client #website

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User friendly Google Analytics Reports - aka Dashboards

Dashboards are used in many CRM (Customer Relation Management) Solutions to give a quick overview over the most important Data on one page. Often also called "Scorecards" these Dashboard give you broad indicators and detailed information at the same time.

Google Analytics has some Dashboard functionality, but the standard reports are too detailed for the normal user (=your client), and the important information is not often visible at first. The famous "what does this mean" is basically transforming these reports into meaningful ones.

Dashthis helps with this process. Even the Google Analytics Blog writes about them, so have a read and check them out.

http://dashthis.com

#analytics #dashboard

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Google Analytics Blog: Sharing Personalized Dashboards using the Analytics API Web agencies often rely on Excel and Word to create analytics reports for clients. It's a manual process that involves a lot of copy and pasting. Yet an agency's main value-add isn't repor...

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Layered font for old style appeal

I like this concept of creating a separate font for each style element. It helps to achieve a sophisticated look with a couple of easy steps. Nice - and the outline is available for free, almost you pay with a tweet.

#font #free #idea

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Frontage Typeface +freefont on the Behance Network Frontage is a charming layered type system with endless design possibilities.

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Will we use 3D for interaction on our websites?

I like technology demos - I like this one very much, especially the Michael Bay Clouds. But I try also to figure out if there is some immediate use for "normal" web interfaces, not just games. While I can see that cool animations would make a website more desirable, it would also make it slower to use - and if overdone maybe gimmicky.

Not to mention the whole mobile aspect ... yeah I know progressive enhancement - but should I recommend one of my clients to have a website using this technologies? Probably not.

#3d #CSS3 #UX

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CSS3D Clouds An experiment on creating volumetric 3d-like clouds with CSS3 3D Transforms and a bit of Javascript. Move the mouse to rotate around and mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Hit space to generate a new clo...

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Optical Kerning for Webfonts - TypeButter

I'm happy to see that optical kerning has arrived for webfonts. I still see many designers avoiding optical kerning in print design and I wondered why that is. One reason could be lack of education, but then I discovered another thing. Bad fonts. Cheap fonts often lack the proper kerning pairs and are made in a way that freaks out the optical kerning algorithms so beware of cheap fonts and use optical kerning whenever it fits.

#font #webfont #kerning

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TypeButter | Optical Kerning FTW! TypeButter |  TypeButter allows you to set optical kerning for any font on your website. If you’re longing for beautifully laid out text that today’s browsers just don’t provide, this is the plugin for you! Downloa...

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Photoshop CS6 Preview ready for download

Try it out now, stop everything and download the preview edition of Photoshop CS6 ... and while you wait that the download completes look at the videos by Russel Brown and Juleanne Kost.

Web Designers holler - Photoshop CS6 gets Paragraph & Character Styles ... Now let's see if we can import them from other applications. Also the content aware move is great and useful, the other features presented by are meh ... but let's play with them to see how useful they are in real life. #photoshop #cs6 #download #beta

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John Nack on Adobe : Come download Photoshop CS6! Blazingly fast performance and a modern UI — Experience unprecedented performance with the Mercury Graphics Engine, which gives you near-instant results when you edit with key tools such as Liquify, P...

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5 ways to use the SMS Group Service SendHub.com

I've discovered today an awesome service - SendHub.comThis service allows you to create a sort of SMS newsletter service. You create a group and can send messages to this group via mobile text. The best thing is, that people can join this list by texting - just like the big shot text services you see on TV.

This functionality has never been exposed on a self service way and makes it easy for small businesses and organizations to reach their customers/audiences with a tool accessible to everyone.

But also consumers can use it in their private life ... how many times where you feed up because you couldn't setup a group on your mobile phone.

Here are 5 uses that I thought of just now

1. A health organization can offer a daily motivational text 2. A Hockey Club can send updates to it's players about training times 3. Friends can use it to schedule meet ups - Yes, they can send a text back 4. A shop can text special offers to this "vip" group and also wishes for the holidays 5. A business can ask questions and mini surveys

Beyond this use cases SendHub.com has a nice API that seems pretty easy to use - Looking forward to see the first integrations ... Maybe ifttt.com might want to do something here.

Have you any other ideas how to use this service? #sms #campaign #inspiration #selfservice #mobile

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SendHub. SMS for Organizations. Send Texts to Individuals and Groups for free. SMS for Organizations. Watch a Video. Easy Communication. Send and receive text messages from individuals and groups with no hassle. Free. Simply Text to Join. Your contacts can text to join your grou...

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Google Authorship - Must have Wordpress Plugin

I've tried a couple of the plugins out there which help you to get your picture next to your articles in Google Search results. To be honest, they don't really work - especially if you have multiple authors. So I kept hacking around - this plugin might be the right answer.

#wordpress #plugin #google #seo

Reshared post from +Fraser Cain

Google Authorship Wordpress Plugin

A few weeks ago I asked the community if anyone knew a way to implement Google's rel=author protocol for Wordpress sites with multiple authors. So, each different author of the blog would get their own little picture in the search results.

Since there didn't seem to be a plugin out there, we created one. This is really basic, but it does the trick. It works on single author blogs too, if you don't feel like hacking your themes to make that work.

Every writer will need to add their Google+ profile to their Wordpress user info, and then "claim" it here in Google+ profile as a "Contributor to".

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Announcing: Rel=Author Wordpress Plugin For Multiple Authors Have you noticed the pictures of authors beside Google search results? These Rich Snippets are displayed by the newly released rel=author tag supported by Google. In order to support this feature, you...

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Facebook New Brand Page Boilerplate

Most of you designers out there have setup Facebook Brand pages for their clients. In two weeks, those pages will get the new timeline design and you have the space on top for making the page look branded more than before. I found this great boilerplate PSD template to make it easier and quicker to create this graphics, as I know - you may have to update more than one page.

#facebook #brandpages #timeline #template #psd

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Free Facebook Brand Page Timeline Cover Photo PSD Template

Get a Free Photoshop template for the new Facebook brand page coverphotos.

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New tool from Adobe called Shadow helps Web and App Developer alike

If you are using tools like Phonegap/Cordova to create apps, you might need to check out this new application from Adobe called Shadow. Ars Technica has a nice write up on the desktop/mobile app tandem and I have tested it.  It works pretty well - and to be honest it is a little bit spooky.

Here is the direct link to the download: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/shadow/

#adobe #html5 #testing #mobile #phonegap

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Adobe Shadow aims to ease mobile Web development headaches with simultaneous browsing Adobe has prereleased Shadow, a new tool that allows developers to control multiple smartphones and tablets from their PCs, so they can test their sites across a wide range of mobile devices with ease...

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Some typographic basics - not just for the web designer

Typography is not only about what font to use, or how it "looks" - it's about making a text easier to read. The rules presented in this great article will help you to make every text more accessible and better looking. In fact, this basic rules work so good, because type designers taylor their fonts to work best when this rules are applied. So go ahead and refresh your memories for a more readable future ;)

BTW: If you are writing or editing text in another language than english, the rules are quite different - so be warned.

#typography #tutorial #guide

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Mind Your En And Em Dashes: Typographic Etiquette - Smashing Magazine | Smashing Magazine An understanding of typographic etiquette separates the master designers from the novices. A well-trained designer can tell within moments of viewing a design whether its creator knows how to work wit...

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Contemporary free display font Archive

I like the all caps display font called Archive because it has a great balance in weight, modern elements and readability. As seen in the examples it works great if you age it, but I think it might show it's best use as a logo font for a tech startup that doesn't want to get lost in the see of soft shapes and script fonts.

#font #free #typography

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Free Fonts Download, Fonts for Free Our goal is to create high-quality Free Fonts which stand in a unique class of their own, and which will serve as a good base for any designer project whether it be web, print, t-shirt design, logo et...

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