Aug 7 2009
Due to its popularity in current webdesign I put together a collection of 31 impressive ‘hand drawn’ fonts.
Whilst the all-time favorite Helvetica font provides a clean and sharp look, ‘hand drawn’ fonts give your website a more personal and sometimes more interesting touch. They can be used for various elements in web as well as print design.
Most of the fonts are available under a Creative Commons License. But please make sure to check the details before using the fonts for commercial projects.
Sketch Block
Mia’s Scribblings
Rock Show Whiplash
Peixe Frito
3Dumb & 2Dumb
Bearpaw
FFF Tusj
Against Myself
The Quiet Scream
WC Roughtrad Bold
Pointy
Pee Pants Script
Karabine
Sketch Rockwell
Waste of Time
Aug 5 2009
These days every blog has something to share or bookmark and the best way to get attention is with remarkable icons. But you don’t have to spend a lot of money to find the right icons – the best creations are free!
Here is a collection of my favorite social bookmarking icons.
Set of Social Icons
Set of Social Icons No. 2
Hand-drawn Social Media Icons
3D Social Bookmarking Icons
Web 2.0 Origami
Cheers: a set of 12 “social” glasses
Handycons + Handycons 2: hand drawn social media icon sets
Rivet Social: 14 riveted brushed steel icons
Social Media Icons Pack
Function: Unique Set of Social Media Icons
Heart: A free social icon set
Feb 15 2009
Adobe Illustrator has become one of the leading products for vector design, especially icon design. But when you start to create your first icon, you have to keep one thing in mind – bitmap or vector? (As the guys of firewheeldesign point out, vector icons are less work than those made with Photoshop. On the other hand, scaled vector graphics don’t look very nice in comparison to icons created with Photoshop) All in all it’s a decison between saving time and getting the best possible quality.
To understand the basics of icon design, read the following articles:
7 Principles of Effective Icon Design by PSDTUTS
10 Mistakes in Icon Design by Turbomilk
Now that you are a bit familar with Icon design – try these tutorials:
Vectortuts.com
Create a Detailed Camera with Photo Icon
Create a Vector Film Slate Icon
Apr 17 2008
You waste your server resources for web applications? Why don’t accept the help of Google. Just a few days ago Google launched its Google App Engine. Being still in beta it allows you to upload your web application on the Google network and use their computational power. With a free account you are already able to use 500MB space, a CPU usage of 200,000,000 megacycles and a maximum of 10GB bandwidth per day. Also you get several other features:
- Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
- Persistent storage
- Automatic scaling and load balancing
- Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
- Fully featured local development environment
Great – Where do I have to sign in?
Google App Engine is still in beta. There were 10,000 beta accounts available but after ca. 3 hours they were all gone. Google already announced that more accounts will follow in the near future. So don’t hesitate to subscribe to the waitlist.
