Creattica Blog » Downloads

A is for Apple

Roger — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:18:02 +0000

Thought we’d start this off with an easy one!

Last year a friend recommended I move from Windows PC’s to Apple, I was a skeptic!

Then I did it, and the Apple bug hit me!

I bought a Macbook which was joined by an iPhone then added an iMac and have very recently bought an iPad (O.K it’s my wife’s but it’s still in MY house ;) )

Here are some Apple related sites, images etc to keep any Apple fanboy or girl salivating for more!

Interesting reads!

MinimalMac – Keeping your Mac lean and mean!

Mac.appstorm.net – Mac software reviews and roundups from the Envato network

MacStories – Lot’s of interesting news and reviews.

Cult of Mac – Apple, News, Reviews and How tos.

Smoking Apples – Apple, Mac and iPhone news, views and reviews.

iPhone.appstorm.net – iPhone & iPad Apps, Games, Roundups & Giveaways.

Mac Rumors – Apple Mac Rumors and News you care about.

Awesome apps!

These are some of the apps I use on a daily basis and would recommend, of course there are many many others, and I’ve tried to keep it to Utility like software, obviously there are code editors and ftp apps and design software but we’ll leave that for another time, leave a comment if you feel strongly about a particular app!

AlfredApp – (Free) a quicklaunch application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web.

Cinch – (7$) Cinch gives you simple, mouse-driven window management.

DelibarApp – (18$) Delibar focuses on giving Mac OS X users an easy and quick tool for searching, managing and sharing their bookmarks.

Dropbox – (2Gb Free) Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically.

Skitch – (Free’) Easy screen capture and if you wan’t also sharing via skitch.com.

Notify – (7$) An awesome email notifier for Mac OS X.

TimeMachineEditor – (Free) One simple purpose, to change the default one-hour backup interval of Time Machine.

MagicPrefs – (Free) Improving the functionality and options of your Magic mouse.

TextExpander – ($34.95) saves time by using customised abbreviations for frequently used text eg. email sigs, code snippets.

AppCleaner – (Free) a small app allowing you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.

Fliqlo – (Free) That cool clock screensaver!

Image credit: Charles Brooks

Typefaces, Get Your Free Typefaces Here!!!

Niki — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:25:42 +0000

The creation of a typeface is not an easy feat to accomplish. It’s for this reason that I’m grateful for all the talented designers out there who give their creations away in hopes that we will use them and be inspired. Thanks to all the designers who worked hard on the typefaces in this roundup! Enjoy!

Birra Stout

A lovely chunk slab serif from Darden Studio.

Ripe

A Geometric Postmodern slab seriffed face. The serifs feature simplistic rounded terminals and its stroke is uniform.

Metro

A futuristic looking typeface by Alexey Maslov (maslov.tv)

Tiza

Tiza is a font developed as a means of learning Font design software. It is inspired on the lovely slab-serif Giza . It has been recently used on the website for the Teen Choice Awards 2008… “like,OMG!”

Chunk

Chunk is an ultra-bold slab serif typeface that is reminiscent of old American Western woodcuts, broadsides, and newspaper headlines. Used mainly for display, the fat block lettering is unreserved yet refined for contemporary use.

Flamina

Flaminia is a 2008 opensource project started as a Master Degree Thesis by Andrea Bergamini, an Italian graphic designer annoyed by the chaotic and poorly designed road signage system in his country.

Junction

Inspired by my favorite humanist sans serif typefaces, such as Meta, Myriad, and Scala, Junction is where the best qualities of serif and sans serif typefaces come together. It has the hand drawn and human qualities of a serif, and still retains the clarity and efficiencies of a sans serif typeface. It combines the best of both worlds.

Sniglet

A rounded display face that’s great for headlines. It includes an almost full MacRoman/WinANSI character set.

Quicksand

A nice rounded sans serif

Chocobot

An interesting experiment in display type. This typeface almost hurts my eyes, and yet its intriguing.

Kunchey

Kunchey is elegant and modern at the same time; geometric, but with a subtle calligraphic twist.

Elspeth

Elspeth is a slab serif with a contemporary touch.

Freaktur

Freaktur is an amazing and detailed gothic font made with fontstruct.

Sketchy

Another sketchy/hand done font with a twist: this was made with fontstruct. Not sure how the creator got all the detail in there!

Foldstruct

Foldstruct is a 3d typeface based on Inbetween

Best of the Week 7/3

Niki — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:23:29 +0000

The internets never stop – even when you are on vacation! I came home to tons of helpful and inspiring links in my inbox and feed readers. I hope you enjoy this link mix of articles, icons, screencasts and copycat designers. Leave a comment and let us know if we you know of any other great content published this week!

The Rebranding of a Company

Sam over at Build Internet has a great write up of how he rebranded his web design business from Cazzu Media to One Mighty Roar. Its always great to read about the reasoning behind others design choices!

Helvetica Moleskine Icon

Bigkobe over at deviant art has some sweet moleskine icons – including the two limited edition Helvetica Moleskines! if you are a swiss-nerd like me you will enjoy these! I’ll be using mine to replace the text edit icon in my dock!

When Free Fonts Aren’t Free

Web typography is about to make another major shift in implementation – weather the font foundries embrace this or not! Typekit has a great blog post about EULA agreements and how they are often times vague and need to change.

Modernizr

Have you ever wanted to do if-statements in your CSS for the availability of cool features like border-radius? Well, with Modernizr you can accomplish just that! Modernizr uses feature detection to test the current browser against upcoming features like rgba(), border-radius, CSS Transitions and many more. These are currently being implemented across browsers and with Modernizr you can start using them right now, with an easy way to control the fallbacks for browsers that don’t yet support them.

XHTML WTF

Web-God Zeldman breaks the news about the death of XHTML and the transition to HTML5. Interesting discussion going on in the comments.

Gridmaker

A sweet grid generator that will help you with your web designs. Just plug in the number of columns and generate a png file to build your designs off of!

You’ve Got 20 Seconds Or Less to Live

At the end of the day, packaging has tobe about substance, not just style, if it is going to be effective. Great article on package design by Ted mininni over at The Dieline.

Table Styling, Fixed Header and Highlighting

Just a couple of quick tricks, from scratch, on coding up tables. We use the proper semantic tags for a table header and then set it to a fixed position so when scrolling the table the header is always visible. Then we implement row AND column highlighting with a bit of semi-clever JavaScript.

Copycat!!!

Looks like the designer of this political campaign website was a little bit more than ‘inspired’ by the iconic Obama design…

Design Boost

Designboost envisions a holistic approach as a condition for sustainable design. To fulfil this vision we believe in upgrading design competence and boosting competitiveness by knowledge sharing. Our four inter-related platforms, BoostUpgrades: BoostEvent, BoostMedia, BoostResource and BoostConcept can be further explored in our periodical table of design knowledge.

Print Design Articles, Tutorials and Resources June 2009

Niki — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:19:02 +0000

I get so caught up in the world of web that I sometimes forget about print design! I thought I would scour the web for helpful print links and articles. Hope you enjoy this round up filled with handy tutorials and resources for all things print!

For Print Only

FPO is a blog dedicated to both the visual stimulus and the detailing of the development and production of printed matter: Annual reports, books, business cards, stationery suites, collateral materials, posters, packaging and anything else where ink meets substrate. A subject matter we know, love and understand.

Blurb

Looking to have a nice printed bound book of your work? Check out Blurb – I had several friends use this service to print their portfolio books to leave behind at job interviews. Very nice and professional!

3 Deadly Sins of Print Design

A great article with some simple and straight to the point tips about print design. Sometimes we all just need to be reminded of the basics.

Setting Up Crops and Bleed

A design destined for print requires setting up to certain specifications to ensure that the work is printed correctly by industrial lithographic or digital print firms. This often starts with the initial document upon which the design is to be created by adding the correct bleed area and crop marks. Let’s take a look at what crops and bleed actually are, why they are required and how to set them up in your favourite Adobe package.

Lovely as a Tree

Lovely as a Tree – the website that tells you everything you need to know to be a more environmentally aware graphic designer.
We give you the low down on how your choices of design, paper and print impact upon the environment.

Flogged Magazine

Has a client rejected on of your amazing print designs recently? You keep looking at the design, it excites you, it pisses you off, it excites you, it pisses you off. Send it to flogged! they celebrage good designs that hve been blogged in a monthly magazine.

Rethink Design

Rethink Design is an extensive resource for professionals and students in the field of graphic design. It takes considerable time to research and interpret the information needed to make sustainable choices easily. Today’s fast-paced market makes it difficult to find sufficient time for this. Rethink Design makes this information and helpful tools readily accessible for making smart choices easily.

How to typeset headlines

Headlines can become more than just the biggest piece of text on the page. The way you set the type can be come a defining element for your layout or even the entire campaign. Here are different headline styles you may want to explore or build upon in your next design.

Preflight checking in InDesign

The term preflight check originates from the aviation industry where it is a standard procedure for pilots to go over a checklist before lift-off. Preflight checks (preflighting) for print documents have a similar idea in mind. They run trough all the files you used in the document to see if they’re missing, changed or anything else that might have happened to the file.

11 Essential Tips for Good Print Typography

Typography is a huge part of print design and design is a huge part of type. You can’t just throw text on a page, it has to be laid out and organized in a clean way that adds to the information being presented. Here are 11 tips to help you convey information in print the right way.

DIY screen printing tutorial

A great DIY tutorial on screenprinting! Its always good to get off the computer and play with other areas of print design.

Capturing and Optimizing Screenshots for Print

This tutorial came in handy for me when preparing my portfolio last year. Its always good to know how to set up your screenshots to print well. Nothing looks tackier than pixelation – even if you are a web designer!

Before and After Magazine

Before & After magazine has some great pdf tutorials on several topics relevant to both print and web design.

Best of the Week 6/26

Niki — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:00:39 +0000

This best of the week roundup is heavily influenced by a lovely web design conference I attended in Boston. Lots of great usability and web design links – with a few sprinkles of motion design and mac-related time wasting!

Brush Pilot

Do you have too many photoshop brushes? Have trouble finding that *one* brush that you need? Check our Brush Pilot™ by @bittbox. Brush Pilot is designed to save you time by allowing you to instantly preview your brushes without having to load them into Photoshop.

Silverback

I know Silverback isnt new, but I heard this app mentioned like CRAZY and An Event Apart Boston this week. If you are in need of a way to do some quick usability testing cheaply check this app out!

A Feed Apart

Didn’t make it to An event apart this year? Well you are in luck! The designers that did attend TWEETED like CRAZY! The awesome folks over at Lion Burger made a cool site that aggregates tweets and pics by speaker and session. Go enjoy! Its just like you were there!

Mac Dock Icon Spelling!

I’m not the only geek that notices this: inadvertent spellings in your dock! Check out this gallery of doc arrangements that spell out words. A great time waster :)

Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond

I attended Aarron Walter’s session on building findable websites this past week at An Event Apart boston. This is the companion website that has some valuable tools and tips on making your website findable.

Paul-Rand.com

A Paul Rand tribute site that contains biography information, writings, and his works – great if you are looking for classic logo inspiration.

Cardon Copy

1 find crappy hand drawn poster
2 redesign
3 post

Apple Nav in Pure CSS

Tutorial on how to make the apple nav using nothing but HTML and CSS. Pretty impressive!

Left Channel

Left Channel just updated their portfolio and show reel with some sweet new motion work. Go check it out!

Typography Articles, Inspiration & News June 2009

Niki — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:39:31 +0000

This months typography round up covers some interesting topics: Bearded type, forums, Pixels and Ems and free typefaces out in the wild. Enjoy!

Mustache Typography

A series of posters designed for the University of Brighton 2009 Degree Shows. The theme emphasizes the fact that the University is 150 years old on this year with a Victorian tongue-in-cheek look at University life. Very interesting use of typography with a fake beard… :)

Typophile

Looking to learn the ins and outs of type design? Hand around the pros! Check out Typophile – an active community of type designers. Check our the forums, wiki and blogs.

Exljbris

I’m sure we have all seen and used Exljbris’s fonts:
Delicious, Fontin, Fontin Sans, Tallys, Fertigo Pro , Diavlo, Anivers, Museo and Museo Sans. But have you seen how others are using them? Check out this flickr group of Exljbris fonts in use.

Typographic Posters Directory

Looking for typographic poster inspiration? Check out this massive directory of posters submitted by designers.

Suprb

Suprb has some interesting experimental and custom type work.

PX to EM Conversion

PX to EM helps you convert your text sizes based on a body font size.

Birra Stout

Darden Studio is giving away Birra Stout! This font is bold and chunky and has lots of quirky character.

Sessions

Another free font for you guys! This font was made with the online type tool fontstruct.
Via ILT

Moo

Another free super bold blocky font available for free download. I’ll admit that there are alot of these fonts out there, but you can’t argue with free!
Via I’m Just Creative

Best of the Week: Handy Tools & Apps Edition 6/12

Niki — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:33:42 +0000

There are alot of apps out there that will help you get things done, work faster and have fun. I have gathered a small collection of the apps that I have found helpful and use on a daily basis. Enjoy!

GrabUp

Grabup is a handy screenshot/uploading app. Take a screenshot…wait a second and then paste a URL to the image! I just purchased the pro version of this app a few days ago that allows me to upload to my own sever. Very handy!

Mousepose

Mousepose is a great little app that draws attention to your mouse. I have found that when presenting something to a client on screen this really helps direct their attention.

Firebug lite

I’m sure all your web designers and developers out there use Firebug religiously, but did you know theres a lite version for those *OTHER* browswers? *cough IE cough*

IconFinder

Need an icon? Go search for it at IconFinder – a handy search engine of icons.

HTML-Ipsum

I talk about this website all the time…because I use it all the time. Lorem Ipsum + HTML = WIN!

Tweetie

Tweetie is one of the newer twitter clients on the block and does not quite beat tweetdeck, but its user interface is BEAUTIFUL. Go check it out!

Ego

Are you constantly checking the # of twitter followers, hits on your site, and feedburner stats? Check out Ego app – all your handy important stats in one place!

Rocket Dock

Rocket dock is a nice windows app that emulates the mac dockbar. I have this app running on my little EEEpc and I love it!

Balsamiq

Balsamiq is a handy app that allows you to create mockups that can be shared and worked on with a team.

Press Check

Last but not least another designy-fun iphone game! PRESS CHECK is a designer ode to the old-school art of print plate alignment re-imagined as a challenge of speed and accuracy on your iPhone/iPod Touch. Show off your non-digital skills with levels ranging from the beginner 2-color set-ups to the expert 5-color jobs.

10 Inspiring Designers & Developers You Should Get To Know

Niki — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:59:20 +0000

Its always interesting to see other designers under the spotlight – being interviewed about their work process, inspiration and their thoughts on the future. Hope you enjoy this round up of 10 talented and inspiring designers and developers.

Adelle Charles on My Ink Blog

Adelle talks about multi-tasking, productivity, and how she manages to squeeze more than 24 hours out of a day.

Chris Coyier on Line25 Blog

Chris Spooner of the new Line25 blog interviews Chris Coyier. Chris talks about how he got started blogging and designing and where he is headed in the future.

Soh Tanaka on CSS-Tricks

Next up we turn the tables and Chris from Css-Tricks interviews Soh Tanaka. Soh talks about his education, personal projects and his education and background.

David Leggett on Fuel Your Creativity

David talks about how he got his start at age 10, his freelancing life and his background.

Collis Ta’eed on The Design O’Blog

Collis talks about bananas, his favorite projects and how he got his start in design.

Liam McKay on Fuel Your Creativity

Liam discusses inspiration, freelancing, and how he named his business.

Fabio Sasso on PSD Fan

Fabio talks about his work/life/blogging schedule, his favorite projects, and where he thinks the design industry is headed in the future.

Jonathan Snook on Net Tuts

Jonathan discusses his favorite programming language, taking the freelance plunge and his pet projects.

Zeldman on .Net Magazine

Zeldman talks to .Net Mag about web standards (how’d you guess?), surviving the dot com bubble and how he is surviving this recession.

Cameron Moll on Net Tuts

Cameron talks about speaking at An Event Apart, HTML5 and where he sees the web design industry headed.

Other places to look for interviews

Design Interviews
This site has a great collection of interviews with designers of all types – from web design to type design to print design.

Best of the Week 5/22

Niki — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:46:21 +0000

From airlines to illustrations with some sprinkling of jQuery thrown in – this roundup is sure to take you places you’ve never been before (on the internets….SILLY) Ok…that was really cheesy, but these links are pretty freaking cool. Enjoy!

Behind The Websites

Illustrator Ricardo Gimenes has come up with a clever little idea: Illustrate the people and ideas behind popular websites! These illustrations rage from clever, to funny, to freaking cute! Go check out his blog (updated every weekday) and suggest a website!

Dear American Airlines…

User interface designer Dustin Curtis gives AA a piece of his mind regarding his experience with their website.

The Response…

In response to the blog post directed towards American Airlines – a UX architect responds to Dustin Curtis. Interesting read!

Neutron Creations

I was out searching for single page design inspiration this week and stumbled upon the Neutron Creations site. Simple, colorful, beautiful. Lovely design!

Milton Glaser

Looking for poster inspiration? Take a look at the work of Milton Glaser – a poster artist who’s work has spanned more than 50 years!

Free Icons by Mezzo Blue

We Love Icons!

Mezzo Blue has recently released a set of free payment icons. Great resource for e commerce projects!

Make the Logo Smaller

I’m sure we have all experienced clients that suffer from ‘make-my-logo-bigger-itis’ . This t-shirt by Typography Shop is definitely a cure to that horrible, horrible disease.

Resizable Image Grid with jQuery

I’ve never seen anything quite like this! This tutorial would be pretty useful for a photo galleries or portfolio sites!

Typojungle

Typojungle is a new typography based design blog with a focus on clean, minimal design.

Mod Font by Font Fabricn

Mod Font by Font Fabric

Another free font by Font Fabric – Mod Font is a lovely blocky font that has some interesting applications when used as masks for photographs.

Typography Articles, Inspiration & News – May 2009

Niki — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:40:42 +0000

Everyone loves typography. It’s one of the most inspiring (and difficult) areas of graphic design. Hope you love this roundup that includes new typefaces from HF&J, lovely illustrated type, ligatures, typographic portraits and more!

Blackletter Type

Great article about the history and beauty of blackletter type.

Typography Served

Typograhy Served

Great site from the guys over at Behance -Hand picked typography from the behance.net portfolios. Also check out Motion Served, Fashion Served, and Photography Served

Type Faces

I’m blown away by the detail in these typographic portraits. Great roundup post by Abruzeedo.

Font Squirrel

Squirrels and fonts, can’t get much better than this right? Ok, how about free (non-crappy) fonts! Yes!

Lovely Lovely Ligatures

Ever wonder where ligatures came from? Check out this article that goes into a bit of the history and showcases some really lovely ligatures.

Spell With Flickr

Ever wanted to spell with flickr photos? This site lets you spell out words in flickr photos. Click on the photo to change out the letters. Very cool!

Alex Trochut

Check out the decorative lettering and illustration of Alex Trochut.

FontStruct

Fonstruct is not new by any means, but its still cool to tinker around with and make a typeface.

Typographic Marks Unknown

Alex Charchar has written a great article explaining the history and use of lesser known typographic marks.

Tryout

‘Tri Out’ is my maiden voyage into display typeface design.
This face was created from a simple block form cut into
with a right angled triangle and comes in 2 styles.

Rasterman

A cool dot-matrix style font made with fontstruct. This would be sweet at large sizes!

Marian Bantjes

Looking for super-ornate hand lettering insipration? Check out the work of Marian Bantjes.

Vegur

Nice free simple geometric sans with 3 weights – light, regular and BOLD.

FF Reminga Bold Italic OT

Fontshop is always friendly to designers and gives away a free weight of one of their typefaces every once in a while. Check out FF Reminga Bold Itallc. A nice bold font that is sure to get your attention.

Sentinel

Sentinel: the slab serif that works.

New Typeface by H&FJ: For everyone who wishes Clarendons had italics, and everyone whose favorite slab serif is shy a few weights: Sentinel was designed for you.