"Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. "We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books."

Could higher royalties help push e-reader devices further into mainstream usage? Many think they are going to get much more popular anyway. When authors and publishers can get more money out of Kindle books, it’s going to help push more publication of e-books, if not Kindle-specific titles.

Rory Cellan-Jones at BBC News has an interesting piece, which asks, "Is publishing about to have an iPod moment?" It looks at the very real possibility that e-readers will become much more mainstream.

"…2010 is supposed to be the year that publishing’s digital revolution really gathers pace," he notes. "There is now a wide range of e-readers on the market – in the UK devices like the Sony Reader, the Cool-er, and Amazon’s Kindle are all making it relatively easy to download and read e-books."

We recently got an up-close look at the latest Cool-er devices at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas. You can check that out below.

As for the Kindle itself, DTP authors and publishers will be able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. For that new 70% option, books must meet the following requirements:

- The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99

- This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book

- The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights

- The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.

- Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

The option is only for in-copyright works and is not available for books published previous to 1923, which are public domain. The option will only be available for books sold in the United States.

Related Articles:

> Amazon Sells More Kindle Books Than Real Books On Christmas

> Amazon Kindle Breaks Monthly Sales Record

> Amazon In eBook Deal With Best Selling Author

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T-Mobile

T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G Fender

T-Mobile USA, Inc. announced that it is teaming up with musician Eric Clapton to help market its new T-Mobile myTouch 3G Fender phone.

T-Mobile myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition, which will be available nationwide starting January 20, costs $180 with a two-year contract.

This is not the first time that T-Mobile has used celebrities to pitch and promote its products. The company has recently brought back actress Catherine Zeta Jones for a cellphone-plan campaign and is using Whoopi Goldberg among others in its myTouch ads.

The Android-based device puts a new spin on the original T-Mobile myTouch 3G. It will be equipped with some preloaded songs including Mr. Clapton classics such “Layla,” “My Father’s Eyes,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll Heart,” and “Wonderful Tonight,”

To sweeten the deal further, T-Mobile’s Fender device comes equipped with a 16 GB microSD card, a 3.5mm headset jack for headphones and an enhanced music player, which will allow customers to create ringtones from songs that are playing.

The phone, which runs Android 1.6, Google’s mobile OS, is expected to be updated to Android 2.1 in the spring.

The device will have new accessories for further customization, including Fender-branded shells, a Fender carrying case, and a docking station with speakers. (The phone is designed in partnership with a guitar company called Fender and has a Fender guitar sunburst-finish inspired design.)

“The myTouch 3G, which runs on Android, gives us an open, highly customizable platform to create truly unique experiences that go beyond what’s possible on proprietary platforms,” said Andrew Sherrard, vice president of product development at T-Mobile, in statement.

Like the original T-Mobile myTouch, the Fender device features more than 16,000 applications and one-touch access to the Google mobile services.

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Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.

In this selection we’re glad to present you PT Sans, FF Celeste Sans Offc Black, Secca STD, Cantarell and many other regular and experimental high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.

New High Quality Free Fonts

PT Sans (PDF specimen)
The Russian type design company “Paratype” released an extensive free sans-serif family with 8 font weights: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Caption Regular, Caption Bold, Narrow Regular and Narrow Bold (700+ glyphs each). The family can be used for legal documents on screen and in print. The family contains glyphs to various Cyrillic languages as well Latin glyphs, signs, fractions, numerators etc. A very impressive free font.

FF Celeste Sans Offc Black Set (Registration is required)
FF Celeste Sans Offc Black Set comes in an easy-to-use format optimized for everyday use in Microsoft Office apps. You can use the style-linked (regular and italic in one menu item) FF Celeste Sans Offc for free.

Secca STD (2 Demo fonts) (Registration is required)
Secca is a fine and simple typeface honoring the roots of early German grotesque type designs but mastered for the needs of today. The weights work perfectly for body text. Two weights are available for free downloads: Secca Std Demo Regular and Secca Std Demo Bold. Designed by Andreas Seidel. A registration is required.

Fh_Lentil Regular
For more fonts, and other resources, visit Fictionalhead.com’s Fonts New font created for personal use. Additional families being developed (bold, italic, etc.) to be released at a future date.

Mr Jones Book
Mr Jones was originally conceived as a family for print design consisting of a sans and a headline. The lowercase are wide for legibility at small sizes while the caps are narrower to save space and keep an even balance of negative space when used in body copy. The overall widths of certain characters have been adjusted to almost extremes to keep an even balance of white space around each letter. He works well in body copy, but will need decreased tracking for larger settings. Two weights are available for free download: Mr Jones Book and Mr Jones Book Italic. Designed by Richard Miller.

Clutchee
Clutchee Font is perfect for t-shirts, also applicable for any type of graphic design, web, print, motion graphics etc.

Digitica
A very interesting, original geometric font, designed by Samuel Delabarre and available for free download.

Cantarell
The typeface is designed as a contemporary Humanist sans serif, and was developed for on-screen reading; in particular, reading web pages on an HTC Dream mobile phone. Each font file currently contains 391 glyphs, and fully support the following writing systems: Basic Latin, Western European, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Dutch and Afrikaans. To date, Pan African Latin has only 33% glyph coverage. Since the design is aimed at display on-screen at small sizes, the printed output (especially of the bold and oblique) may not work well.

tribbon ‘Layered’ font
This layered ‘ribbon’ style font was created by Dominic Le-Hair. It is a working ‘ribbon’ style font that consists of several layers and is available in both TTF and OTF font formats for free download.

Exus Pilot
An original geometric free font in True Type format. A good choice for poster design. Designed by Mauro Hernández.

Orbitron
A geometric sans-serif typeface intended for display purposes. It features four weights (light, medium, bold, and black), a stylistic alternative, small caps, and a ton of alternate glyphs. Orbitron was designed so that graphic designers in the future will have some alternative to typefaces like Eurostile or Bank Gothic.

Ripe Font Family
A geometric post-modern slab seriffed face. The serifs feature simplistic rounded terminals and its stroke is uniform. Ripe was designed to be a practical typeface. Each character is distinct, yet consistent. Its subtle differences are clear enough to be easily read at both high and low resolutions, perfect for print, web and screen media. The family has 4 weights (Regular, Light, Semibold, Bold) containing 577 characters in each weight.

Goudy Trajan Regular
Goudy Trajan Regular Goudy Trajanô is based on the drawings by American type designer Frederic W. Goudy of his rendition of the capital letters inscribed on the Trajan column. One of the most elegant typefaces in the CastleType library, Goudy Trajan works especially well at large sizes. The Regular weight (shown above) contains many alternate letters and discretionary ligatures for more versatile typography. It also includes the Cyrillic alphabet and over 100 classic fleurons. Click here to view all glyphs. Download specimen. “Goudy Trajan is possibly the finest font I have discovered” (D.S. from Omaha, Nebraska.) The Goudy Trajan family includes: Regular, Medium, and Bold. A single font is available for free download.

St Transmission (free for personal use only)
This free font is available in two weigths: thin and extrabold. It has standard OpenType features such as ligatures, slashed zero, contextual alternates and lining figures. The Extrabold weight is ideal for bold headlines. Designed by Sascha Timplan.

Keeparty (Large preview)
A very original, colorful typeface created by Eugene Rudyy.

LOT (large preview)
LOT is a free font applicable for any type of graphic design – web, print, motion graphics etc. It is a good fit for T-shirts and other items like logos or pictograms. Format: Opentype (.otf) Compatible: PC and Mac. The font contains 78 glyphs.

Recycle it font

Denne’s aliens
A hand-written, original, playful font with basic glyphs set. Designed by Denise Bentulan.

Pac Font
An older, yet quite original and attractive free font. Free for personal use only.

Merge
A very simple, yet playful and nice looking free font, designed by Philatype type foundry and released for free download in the OpenType format.

Further useful font colletions

previous Smashing Magazine’s collections

24 high quality free and stunning symbol fonts
Fonts are the vital need of any designer. But now a days font demands are increasing in regular computer users as well. Depending on the needs and modern trend we are going to list down some really beautiful and unique examples of 24 High Quality Free And Stunning Symbol Fonts. We hope these fonts will be useful for you.

40 free unique cartoon and comic fonts
Have you ever feel that traditional fonts are a little too boring and plain for your designs and artworks? Ever wanted to use fonts that are funkier, stylish and fun to look at? Cartoon and comic fonts are very popular and most people are only familiar with Comic Sans MS and thatís about it. We have now discovered 40 unique and refreshing cartoon and comic fonts for you to give your artwork and design that extra ummmppphhh. Here are a few for sneak preview and the full list is right after the jump.

5 Excellent Calligraphic Fonts

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Groteskaa-Free-Typeface/252559
http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Gordala-Free-typeface/252229

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Be the first to comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: Fonts, typography

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This round of funding might be particularly significant for the company. "We believe this latest round provides ChaCha the cash required to reach profitability," says CEO Scott A. Jones.

Over the past four years, since its inception, ChaCha has raised about $52 million from prominent tech leaders, venture capitalists, and angel investors. The company says its text service passed Google in mobile text traffic in Q3 2009. According to ChaCha, when the company’s mobile service launched in January 2008, Google SMS had nearly 100% of he mobile text search market, but ChaCha now has more text traffic, coming from users mostly under the age of 25.

That may be why ChaCha is considering itself the "#1 way for advertisers to reach teens and young adults on their mobile phones."

"Given that we started our mobile text service less than 2 years ago, that also makes us the fastest-growing mobile text service that provides advertisers with a way to reach elusive teens and young adults," says Jones. " We have been monetizing from national brands and local businesses who want to be ‘in the conversation.’  We have provided a successful advertising venue for brands, including The CW Network, IKEA, Paramount Pictures, McDonald’s, Palm, Coca Cola, AT&T, J&J, P&G, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and hundreds of other businesses."

"ChaCha acts as a ‘smart friend’ to answer any question via text (or voice, iPhone, or twitter), particularly from college-age and high school-age students," adds Mr. Jones.  "While many headlines frequently report ‘mobile web’ search traffic stats, the reality is that ‘smart phones’ represent less than 20% of phones that are in users’ hands today (iPhones represent about 6%).  For the vast majority of mobile phone users, the common denominator of texting, which works on virtually all phones, is the more universal way to get answers.  Interestingly, our new iPhone app gets MORE engagement from users than our mobile text service, which leads us to believe that ChaCha will be even more successful as smart phones (iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc…) continue to proliferate."

Between its mobile and online services, ChaCha has answered over 300 million questions in the past two years. The company cites data from Quantcast, which indicate it gets over 10 million unique monthly visitors in the US.

Related Articles:

> Need Answers? Text ChaCha!

> ChaCha Gets Extra-Important $10M In Funding

> ChaCha Receives $6 Million To Keep Dancing

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So if we work so much in our daily lives, shouldn’t we be making out like bandits? Umm, honestly, I’m not hitting on you, silly. I’m talking about our success. We work and work and work. Shouldn’t we be filthy, stinking rich? Well… okay, that’s not quite what I mean either. I’m not necessarily talking about money (though that could potentially be a part of it). I’m talking about success — as in feeling a true sense of accomplishment and feeling happy about what we do and why we do it.

It’s important to feel accomplished and a general happiness in our work. To make out like a bandit (or have an incredible amount of success), you can either get lucky or work hard for it. And if you’re going to work hard for it, you might as well make it all meaningful and worthwhile. This is what I strive for in my own work and my life, and the following points I’m sharing with you are the steps I am taking to work toward this.

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work & an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Learn. Participate. Do.

The best way to get good at something is to keep doing whatever it is you’re doing that you want to be good at. For example, a sushi-enthusiast might take a sushi-making class because she wants to learn to make sushi for herself. It totally makes sense while the teacher demonstrates all the procedures, materials, and methods needed to make good, beautiful sushi. Later, the student goes home and tries to make sushi on her own, she gets totally confused and lost. Okay, I’m not even going to hide it, I’m talking about myself (this happened to me). As much as I love sushi, I couldn’t even begin to make good sushi because I’ve never really practiced.

Take advantage of learning opportunities where possible. Whether you’re learning CSS, Actionscript, or visual design, the best way to grasp how to do things is to participate, practice, do. Apply what you learn in your work. Participation is so vital to your success. If you have problems, let people know, and ask. But definitely practice on your own. And as cliché as it may sound, believe in yourself because if you don’t think you can do it, no one else will think you can either.

Maintain momentum

With whatever it is you’re doing, if you find yourself “on a roll”, you should take advantage of that momentum and keep moving. Sure, you’ll definitely want to take breaks here or there, but remember that momentum can be very difficult to obtain again once you’ve lost it. Get it done!

Deal with people

Whether you love or hate people, the fact is, you gotta deal with them — even the difficult ones. If you’re in a management position, then you know pretty well that most people don’t like being told what to do (even if that’s their job). Find ways to get people excited about what they’re doing. Make people feel that they (and what they do) are needed — people respond better if they’re valued, not commanded. Even if you’re not in a management position, this still applies to the way you work with your coworkers, clients, vendors, etc.

Resolve any conflicts right away. Conflicts will inevitably happen. Move on to how you can improve the situation, and do it as quickly as possible. Don’t spend too much time focusing on whose screw up it is — nobody feels good in this situation. Also, try to keep people informed on whatever it is you need or what it is you’re doing. If you’re waiting on something from someone, and it’s been a while, don’t be afraid to say something (tactfully). Sometimes people are forgetful — or just slacking. Hey, it happens!

Help yourself by helping others

What are some of the small, simple things you can do when you’re working that will help the people you work with (and in most cases, will end up helping yourself)? For example: if you’re a designer, perhaps taking a couple minutes now to organize and name your Photoshop layers will end up saving time later (since it will be easier to find things). This is going to help both you and your team. Or, developers: taking some time to write some documentation (even if it’s as simple as a comment in the code, or a well-written commit message) could potentially save valuable time for both you and your team later. Maybe you have to take a little time to sit down with a coworker and explain why something works the way it does. This helps them out tremendously — and will most likely lead to them respecting you a little more. This is a benefit.

If you make little things like this a habit, people will notice. People will enjoy working with you. People will trust you and rely on you. Sure, it might seem beneficial at any given moment to be “in it for yourself” (and therefore only helping yourself), but that won’t last very long. Helping others (whether it be a small or large feat) will cause a positive impact in the long run — and that is what will be more valuable to you and your career.

Do work that is meaningful

One of the best ways to feel successful about what you do is to feel good and happy about it. And a great way to feel good and happy about what you’re doing is to actually do good. This could be purpose-driven work that focuses on sustainability and environmentalism, or work that helps support causes and charity. Perhaps the work simply inspires people. Or maybe the work is just something you are very passionate about. Whatever the work may be, try working on projects that are meaningful to you. You’ll do well simply by being more motivated and interested. And it’s a double-win if the project is meaningful to others as well.

I feel very fortunate to work at a place like Crush + Lovely, where we have found quite frequently that the projects that inspire people, focus on global and social good, and create some sort of positive impact are the very projects that bring us more paid projects. But more importantly, we are happy and excited to do it. You might not work at a company that takes on those types of projects. But perhaps you have your own personal endeavors that create this excitement for you. Elliot Jay Stocks wrote about having pet projects. Do you take on side projects? What are those projects?

Over the last couple years, I’ve seen some really fantastic side projects come out that are great examples of meaningful work. These projects reflect the passions and goals of the respective designers and developers involved, and therefore become quite successful (because the people involved simply love what they are doing while they’re doing it). Some of these projects include:

• Typedia is a shared encyclopedia of typefaces which serves as a resource to classify, categorize, and connect typefaces. It was founded by Jason Santa Maria, a graphic designer with a love and passion for typography. He created it as a solution to a problem he faced as a designer: finding the right typeface.
• Huffduffer was created by Jeremy Keith, a web developer who wanted to create a podcast of inspirational talks — but after he found that this could be tedious, he decided to create a tool to automate this.
• Level & Tap was created by passionate photographer and web developer, Tom Watson. It began as a photography print store for Tom’s best personal photography. Over time, more photographers were added to the site and the site has grown to become quite a great collection of beautiful photography.
• Heat Eat Review is a review blog created by information architect and user experience designer, Abi Jones. As a foodie, she is able to use this passion for this blog, as it focuses on reviewing TV Dinners, Frozen Meals, and Microwavable Foods.
• Art in My Coffee, a favorite personal project of my own, is a photo blog of coffee art I created, after I found that my friends and I were frequently posting coffee art photos to Flickr, Twitter, and other websites. After the blog became more popular, I teamed up with Meagan Fisher on the project, who has just as much a passion for coffee art, if not more.

So, what’s important to you?

This is the very, very important question here. What really matters to you most? Beyond just working on meaningful projects you are passionate about, is the work you’re doing the right work for you, so that you can live a good lifestyle? Scott Boms wrote an excellent article, Burnout, in which he shares his own experience in battling stress and exhaustion, and what he learned from it. You should definitely read the article in its entirety, but a couple of his points that are particularly excellent are:

• Make time for numero uno, in which you make time for the things in life that make you happy
• Examine your values, goals, and measures of success, in which you work toward the things you are passionate about, your own personal development, and focusing on the things that matter.

A solid work-life balance can be a challenging struggle to obtain. Of course, you can cheat this by finding ways to combine the things you love with the things you do (so then it doesn’t even feel like you’re working — oh, you sneaky little bandit!). However, there are other factors to consider beyond your general love for the work you’re doing. Take proper care of yourself physically, mentally, and socially.

So, are you making out like a bandit?

Do you feel accomplished and generally happy with your work? If not, perhaps that is something to focus on for the next year. Consider your work (both in your job as well as any side projects you may take on) and how it benefits you — present and future. Take any steps necessary to get you to where you need to be. If you are miserable, fix it!

Finally, it’s important to be thankful for the things that matter to you and make you happy. Pass it along everyday. Thank people. It’s a simple thing, really. Saying “thank you” can and will have enormous impact on the people around you. Oh. And, I apologize if the title of this article led you to thinking it would teach you how to be an amazing kisser. That’s a different article entirely for 24 ways to impress your friends!

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Android Jones, also know as Andrew Jones, is perhaps one of the most respected artists in the concept art world today. Apart from having a particularly strong resume, a unique style and a wealth of experience under his belt Andrew is also one of the founders of the respected art community ConceptArt.org. He is well known for creating 1000 self-portraits in 1000 days, an artistic record no doubt. Andrew is also a respected art teacher, having been a instructor for the ConceptArt workshops numerous times.

• Homepage
• Andrew’s Blog

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Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on The Mesmerizing Art of Concept Art Giant Android Jones

Previously on Fubiz

• Eugenio Recuenco
• Tim Navis
• Bruno Dayan Updates

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As a joint venture between Disney, Fox and NBC Universal, Hulu is best known for its free and extensive library of TV shows and movies. According the the New York Times, the streaming site is about to enter a new area: music videos.

The company has announced a limited deal with EMI to provide users with a Hulu channel specifically for EMI artist Norah Jones. Al of Jones’ videos will be on the site, as well as footage from four concerts and several interviews. Jones’ fourth album “The Fall” hit stores earlier this week. EMI plans to add other artists to Hulu over time and also update Jones’ channel.

By entering the realm of music, Hulu goes head-to-head against other big players like YouTube, MySpace and MTV. YouTube in particular has garnered a large library from all major labels – and MTV has what seems like its entire catalog online.

The New York Times article indicates that Hulu is testing the waters with the EMI deal and will look at expanding to other labels depending on how the current lineup performs.

We wonder about Hulu jumping into the music space in such a limited way. While it’s true that Hulu offers a better interface experience than many of its competitors, by offering less content and few “exclusives” will fans start to use Hulu as their destination for music.

What do you think about Hulu offering music videos?

Tags: EMI, hulu, Norah Jones

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September was a very prolific month. We are all working hard after a really cool summer but you can take your time to read these fantastic article written by helpful people for the design community.

Two new items this month: “The Best of Month from Web Design Updates” and “Must-Follow, Women of the Month on Twitter” (ladies… I apologize for the delay).

I hope you’ll find useful these bookmarks.

Amazing Tutorials for Web and Graphic Designers

SixRevisions.com | Create a Realistic Space Scene from Scratch with Photoshop

Tutorial9.net | Design a Stylish Retro Game Boy Poster in Photoshop

Blog.SpoonGraphics.co.uk | How to Design a Skate Deck with a Cool Skull Pattern

WebExpedition18.com | How To Create a Retro Grunge Apple Wallpaper in 5 Easy Steps in Photoshop

Line25.com | How To Create a Pure CSS Polaroid Photo Gallery

ThreeStyles.com | Coding Apple’s Navigation Bar Using CSS Sprites

DesignM.ag | Coding Apple’s Navigation Bar Using CSS Sprites

SpyreStudios.com | WordPress Tutorial: How To Display A User Welcome Message

Articles and Interviews

FreelanceApple.com | 3 Ways to Skyrocket Your Income as a Freelancer

WebDesignerDepot.com | The Difference Between Art and Design

DailyDesignMag.com | 3 Simple Tips to Boost Productivity for Designers

Inspiredm.com | Inspired Talks – 10 Simple Ways to Instantly Boost Your Inspiration

TheWebdesignBlog.co.uk | Interview with John O’Nolan of Lyrical Media

DesignInvestigator.com | How Important is Your Logo?

Freebies and Resources

Hongkiat.com | 60 High Quality Photoshop PSD Files For Designers

1stwebdesigner.com | 76 Dirty, Extreme And Creative Free Grunge Fonts

ScarletBits.com | 15 HQ Material Textures

FudgeGraphics.com | 15 HQ Material Textures

1stwebdesigner.com | 60 Free, Yet Premium Quality WordPress Magazine News Themes

CatsWhoCode.com | 10+ extremely useful PHP classes

Woork.Blogspot.com | jQuery Visual Cheat Sheet

VisionWidget.com | 20 Fantastic Latest jQuery Plugins

Showcases and Inspiration

ScarletBits.com | 31 Websites Using Huge Type

SpyreStudios.com | 25 Creative Retro Styled Website Designs

WebDesignerDepot.com | How to Create an Organic Web Design (and Showcase)

VandelayDesign.com | 25 of the Best Websites of Bands and Musicians

GeekSucks.com | 30 Special Footer Design for your Design Inspiration

ffffffive.com | Well-Constructed And Designed Weblogs

Inspiredology.com | 21 Retro Website Designs PT2

InstantShift.com | Music Inspiration Behind a Web Design Work

InspectElement.com | Recent Web Designs that Don’t Follow Recent Trends

Illustrations and Digital Painting

Glenn Jones on Behance.net | glennz.com Tee Designs

Sheharzad Arshad on Behance.net | Strange and Creepy

Oission on DeviantArt.com | Ter 02 digital painting

andyparkart on DeviantArt.com | God of War 2

THZ on DeviantArt.com | Impossible Love

WebSite of The Month – CubeClub-Chemnitz.de

Cube Club Chemnitz

Must-Follow, Men of The Month on Twitter

Gerrel Saunders

Richard Darell

John O’Nolan

Must-Follow, Women of The Month on Twitter

Robin Wood

megAlone

Angie Bowen

Must-Read, Blogs/Magazines of The Month

SpyreStudios.com

FuelYourCreativity.com

Inspiredology.com

The Best of Month on Web Design Updates

DailyDesignMag.com | 6 Absolutely Stunning Design Portfolios

AcrisDesign.com | 62 Beautiful Icon Tutorials designed using Photoshop and Illustrator

9lessons.Blogspot.com | 9 Most Useful jQuery Plugins

UnionRoom.com | 10 Super-Simple Web Designs

WebDesignLedger.com | 30 Examples of Brilliant Logo Design

Don’t Forget, Good Stuff on PV.M Garage

Real Things In Modern Web Design, 30 Stunning And New Examples

Design A Clean And Fresh Company Website In Photoshop

Web Design Updates – The Best Web Design Links

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Real fonts on the web: House Industries supports WOFF format.

…a font format for the Web that satisfies the needs and concerns of browser makers, web designers, and type foundries. …WOFF, offers compression to speed page load times, freedom from thorny legacy issues and inclusiveness (font outlines can be Postscript or TrueType).

WOFF has the support of a wide spectrum of the type community; from peers such as Emigre, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Commercial Type, etc and larger foundries such as Linotype and Monotype. Today it has also gained the support of Mozilla in the their release of Firefox 3.6 (Mozilla has a full list of designers and foundries that support WOFF on that page). We hope and expect that WOFF will quickly gain support in other major browsers as we support, endorse and expect to license our library for use on the Web in the WOFF format in the future.

Read more

• The Problem: We have the fonts, we have the CSS and the workaround for IE. What we don’t have is beautiful, reliable, consistent cross-platform rendering of real fonts like Gotham, Franklin, Garamond, etc. — 29 October 2009
• Web Fonts and Standards: How real fonts work on the web via standard CSS. Making it work in IE. The licensing hurdle. Rise of the middlemen and their effect on the adoption of font embedding standards. — 17 August
• Web Fonts Now, for Real: David Berlow of The Font Bureau publishes a proposal for a permissions table enabling real fonts to be used on the web without binding or other DRM. — 16 July 2009
• Web Fonts Now (How We’re Doing With That): Commercial foundries that allow @font-face embedding; browser support; Cufón and SIFR, oh, my; Adobe, web fonts, and EOT; Typekit debuts; — 23 May 2009

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The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition will be available to businesses in November with a wider availability in January for $49 a month or just under $600 a year. The new offering combines news from Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal along with information from Factiva, the news archive owned by Dow Jones.

"This really is a new model for the delivery of high-quality business news for a sophisticated audience," said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

"We are not imprisoned by a terminal and are thus able to produce a more contemporary Web-based news feed tailored to a sector, a company or an asset class. Readers will be able to create a virtual newswire and alert system that suits their specific business needs."

• Key offerings of The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition include:
• News and information from more than 17,000 global sources, some of which is not available to the public
• A one-year archive of Factiva and a two-year archive of wsj.com content
• More than 30 industry pages managed by Dow Jones editors
• Six key industry sections managed by Wall Street Journal editors who select news and information about pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, media & marketing, telecommunications and technology
• Personalized homepage with breaking news alerts

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Mozilla announced Tuesday that version 3.6 of Firefox, due by the end of the year, will support the new Web Open Font Format, or WOFF. Web authors will be able to include WOFF fonts in their page designs by linking to the font files in their code the same way they link to images and other downloadable files.

WOFF becomes the third downloadable font format supported by Firefox — version 3.5 included support for TrueType and OpenType font downloads.

But WOFF has two key advantages over TrueType and OpenType: WOFF fonts are compressed, so they download faster, and they include support for tags and other unencrypted metadata.

This is a significant step forward not only for the emerging open format, but also for type on the web in general, which is still stuck in a state of mild turmoil.

For years, designers have been limited to using only a set of five or six common fonts on the web. But thanks to new font rendering tools within the emerging HTML5 and CSS3 standards, web designers now have the ability to use newer, more visually interesting typefaces — and make that type appear more consistently across browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions.

Even with these new abilities, intervening forces like DRM, licensing restrictions and varying levels of support from the browser makers have stalled progress, forcing the modern designer to resort to a variety of workarounds and hacks if they want to use these new fonts. Some possible solutions have shown up, including the OpenType standard and a “middleman” licensing model proposed by the start-up Typekit, but haven’t yet gained traction. Earlier this month, popular website Boing Boing launched a redesign using CSS3’s @font-face rule, but ran into problems when things didn’t render correctly on older machines.

WOFF doesn’t promise to totally solve the problem of browser compatibility — it still uses the same paradigm within CSS3’s @font-face rule where users are served a preferred font choice first, but are then offered backup choices if their browser doesn’t support the first one. And there are still special considerations for IE 8 users, as Microsoft’s browser supports @font-face, but only if you use the .eot font format.

What it does do is improve workflows for those using downloadable fonts in their designs.

Mozilla contributor John Dagget outlines the compression and tagging advantages on the Mozilla Hacks blog:

First, compression is part of the WOFF format so web authors can optimize the size of fonts used on their pages. The compression format is lossless, the uncompressed font data will match that of the original OpenType or TrueType font, so the way the font renders will be the same as the original. Similar compression can be achieved using general HTTP compression but because compression is part of the WOFF format, it’s simpler for authors to use, especially in situations where access to server configuration is not possible.

Second, the format includes optional metadata so that a font vendor can tag their fonts with information related to font usage. This metadata doesn’t affect how fonts are loaded but tools can use this information to identify the source of a given font, so that those interested in the design of a given page can track down the fonts used on that page.

Dagget also notes that WOFF fonts aren’t “secure,” so the format shouldn’t be used by foundries wanting to regulate the use of their work. However, over 30 major type foundries — including House Industries, Hoefler & Frere-Jones and ITC — are already endorsing the format, and Mozilla’s support should help foster its popularity.

You can read more about how WOFF is used, plus see examples on the Mozilla Hacks blog. You can also check out WOFF support yourself by downloading the latest nightly builds of Firefox and giving it a whirl.

See Also:

• Boing Boing’s Redesign Uncovers the Dark Side of Web Fonts
• Typekit Hopes to Become the YouTube of Fonts
• Use @font-face Today With Free, Legal Fonts

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How did it originate?

Why isn’t there an easy and secure way to record your thoughts online? All of the current online solutions are either clunky, bloated, or not geared for private writing. Why would you want to keep a private journal on a blogging service that’s intended for public use? The alternatives to keeping private information on a desktop computer or in a notepad while effective, aren’t entirely safe either.

Penzu offers a secure place to store your thoughts and ideas in the cloud. Not only are entries password protected in an online account, but individual entries can be locked with military-grade encryption.

With our powerful security also comes extreme ease of use. The core component of the interface is the Pad – a metaphor for a pad of paper. This universal design element has allowed Penzu to transcend language and cultural barriers as people from 170 countries continue to use our service. We have always made the user experience a top priority and it is one of our main differentiations from complicated and confusing competitors.

The name, Penzu, comes from many influences, but mainly it is a derivative of the Latin “pensare” which means to think or be full of thought.

Penzu enables you to also upload pictures easily and also if by your choice you want to share an entry, it has some sharing option, via email or social networking site.  So many features you can check HERE.

Try it out, its also for FREE.  Just register and you can start jotting down your thoughts.

Some screen shots for your appreciation.

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Did you ever wanted to be a zombie? Luckily aJa Jones provides the secret of his design to the Abduzeedo readers. This is a real nice & very detailed case study of a teenage boy turning to an undead step by step.

Where to find him on the web

Behance.net/aJonesa – portfolio on the Behance

The Artwork

Case Study “Teenage Zombie” by

Final Image

Where to find him on the web

Behance.net/aJonesa – portfolio on the Behance

The Artwork

About the author

Aloa is the moniker of the german/greek graphic designer/filmmaker & musician Alexis Papageorgiou. Im glad to share great artistic work with the readers on Abduzeedo. Contact me on aloa@abduzeeo.com or http://twitter.com/obstgemuese.

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Welcome to From A to Z, where I outline all the steps taken in a specific project. In this particular instance, I’ll outline a band promo photo project I was commissioned for. Keep reading to see how this shot was conceptualized, shot, and edited – and if you enjoy the article, subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Band promo photography can be tough, especially when the budget is small. It would be great if we all had unlimited budgets and could rent out awesome venues to shoot in, hire makeup & hairstylists all the time, and so forth. Unfortunately, with a lot of bands, there isn’t much coin in the bank. I understand this – I play in a band – so the challenge here is to make a photograph for them that represents them, looks cool, and keeps it in the budget (so they’re happy, and so you the photographer doesn’t end up doing a ton of work for peanuts).

The shot above is of a band called Chasing Jones. They’re a local rock/pop band in Edmonton who approached me for band promos – they wanted something that made them look like every day kinda guys. No rock star posturing. That answers the first step in making a band promo, after the jump.

1. DEFINE THE OBJECTIVE/CONCEPT

For this shot, the objective was pretty straightforward: a shot clearly showing the band’s faces, in a down-to-earth setting where one might find them. Plus, the shot needed to immediately help the viewer figure out what kind of band Chasing Jones might be. I think we succeeded there – they look like a modern rock/pop band to me!

2. FIND A LOCATION

Finding a location sucks when the budget is smaller – nevermind permits and all that. One of the guys mentioned the idea of shooting inside a pub for a sort of down-to-earth setting, which immediately made me think of the Black Dog, my favorite pub here in Edmonton. Luckily, the owner of Black Dog rules and had no problem with us shooting in the [closed] upstairs portion of the pub, so long as we finished up before the rush started later in the night.

I thought this location would work well for a modern rock band who wanted to look like regular guys – and it did.

3. POSING

We took a bunch of shots in the pub, including shots in the booth etc, but this one ended up being my favorite. I stood across the bar, had them stand “how they would stand if they were waiting for a drink”, and shot away. The result is a shot where the band doesn’t look stiff or awkward – which would have ruined the shot, considering the objective.

4. LIGHTING

I’m a student of Strobist, David Hobby’s amazing lighting blog. If you haven’t read it and you’re a photo buff, bookmark it now. Anyway, this shot was made with one Nikon SB600 strobe, triggered by Pocket Wizards, mounted on a light stand and shooting into a 40″ silver umbrella. It was directly above my head, pointed slightly down at the subjects. Flash was at about 1/2 power I believe, shutter speed at 1/200sec (to see more metadata, click here). This created some nice contrast. See the diagram below, for you visual learners.

Thanks to my… sweet? diagram, you can see that the light source was pretty far away from the subjects, considering the size of the diffuser. Unfortunately, there was no other place to place it without it getting in the shot or resulting in uneven light & nasty shadows on the wall. These are the things you have to think about when only shooting with one light in a semi-small place. However, all things considered, I think the light on the subjects turned out well.

5. POST PROCESSING

After I had enough shots in the bag to be sure the guys would be happy (about 45 minutes of shooting), we packed up and I headed home to work on the proofs.

For this particular shot, I opened it up in Adobe Camera RAW (this is before my Lightroom days) and brought it in to Photoshop. I’ll walk through my steps below.

The shot above is the shot essentially straight from the camera; some minor RAW edits have been made (clarity, perhaps contrast), but not much.

After some minor clone stamping & patching, I duplicated the background layer twice (So I have BG, BG1, BG2). I took BG1 and knocked the saturation down by 20%, and then to BG2 and completely desaturated it and changed the layer blending mode to Multiply. This is a technique I learned from the photography’s wiz kid, Joey L. These edits result in the image below.

Multiplying the background layer and desaturating it gets you some crazy contrast and some nice, muddy colors. Good for a rock band. However, you can see that it gets a little dark.

To lighten up some areas of the image, I threw a layer mask on BG2 and painted over the darkest areas (and some of the skin) with a 20% opacity black brush. This reveals some of the layer below (BG1, which was desaturated by 20%). The reason BG1 was desaturated by 20% is so that when you are masking over BG2 – with its muddy colors – you aren’t revealing a fully-saturated image below. That would look odd.

After doing that, I threw on a Levels layer and gave it a slight bump in the mids/highs to bring it back up to proper exposure. These edits resulted in this image:

Alright, good to see the guys properly exposed. But it looks a little washed out. So I brought up a Curves layer and made a slight S curve, deepening the darks while barely upping the highlights. This gives the image a little more contrast, as you can see below:

I suppose I could have gotten near the same contrast with the previous Levels layer, but I feel a little more comfy with Curves. Anyways, you can see the image it getting close to its final stage.

The next thing I wanted to fix was to balance out the darkness up top and the clutter on the bottom of the image, and draw a bit more attention to the band. To do this, I added a light vignette. It’s not noticeable at the top of the image, but it is near the bottom. To add a vignette, I create a new layer filled with black, knock the opacity down to 50% or so, and draw an oval around the image with the marquee tool. The areas outside of the oval are the areas where the darkened vignette will show up – the corners. I went into the Select>Modify>Feather menu and feathered my selection by 250px. This softens the edges of the marquee. Hit delete, and BAM! you have your vignette:

Notice the bottom of the image? The darkened corners balance the image out, considering how black it is up top.

Next up, I grouped all my layers into a Group called ‘Edits’. I duplicated this group and merged it into one image. The reason I do this is so I can sharpen and de-noise properly (coming later), but if I screw up I can go back to the grouped layers and start over. Not that I ever screw up…. right guys? Guys??

Anyway, next up I duplicated my now-merged photo, and sharpened it using the High-Pass sharpening method. Then I merged again and ran NeatImage, a de-noising plugin I highly recommend.

We’re almost finished – but something needed to be done about the clutter in the cupboards underneath the band. I thought it would look cool when I shot it originally, but at this point it was bothering me. I decided I would give the band two versions: this one, above, and one with a fake tilt/shift effect applied to it. The idea behind the tilt/shift effect is to apply some unique blurring so as to draw more attention to the subjects and draw less attention to the clutter.

To do this, I pressed ‘Q’ (hotkey for entering into Quick Mask mode), then ‘G’ for my Gradient tool. The fourth gradient item, up top in the Photoshop toolbar, looks like 3 horizontal lines (black, white, black). I made a horizontal selection while in Quick Mask mode with the Gradient tool – being sure that the Quick Mask red color is overtop of the band members’ faces. Pressing Q again brought me back to my selection screen (the “marching ants”), and I could see that the band’s faces were not selected, and everything above and below them was. This is what I wanted – it shows me that the selected areas will be blurry when I complete my next step.

Going into the Filter>Blur>Lens Blur menu, I played with the sliders a bit until I got where I wanted it to be. And the image is done:

When the final image is all completed, I delivered both the non-tilt shift version and the tilt-shift version to the client. Adding the effect isn’t much extra work, and they were stoked to have two different versions.

So there you go – now you know exactly how this shot was made! Til next time. Oh, and if you enjoyed the article, please share it!

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In a recent issue of Inc., they shortlisted ’30 under 30′ (30 entrepreneurs under age 30). One of them is John Goscha, age 25 who is the founder of IdeaPaint. I was intrigued and looked them up online. I was glad to discover that they had some really attractive branding and packaging for their product, IdeaPaint – dry erase surface paint.

“IdeaPaint is a single-coat, roller-applied paint that can turn any “paintable” surface into a dry-erase surface. Essentially, IdeaPaint can create a whiteboard environment wherever your ideas might take form (walls, columns, doors, refrigerators, bathrooms, etc.)—but it’s less than half the cost of a traditional whiteboard and better performing. IdeaPaint is also the most environmentally friendly dry-erase product on the market, with limited packaging, transport and materials required.”

The branding and packaging was designed by Jones. Big graphic elements were used to emphasize the product’s simplicity. 50 square feet. Mix THIS into THAT. I really like the honest simplicity. By creating a look that is totally different from the usual paint product category, Jones achieved a standalone look that differentiates IdeaPaint from all other regular paint.

Continue reading for more images… (thank you, Brenna!)

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Glenn Jones built a JavaScript library that can help you do just that. Ident Engine discovers and retrieves distributed identities and profiles from across the web. Simply enter your profile URLs, you would be shocked by the level of detail it found out about you. You can also find out how Ident Engine works on A List Apart: Discovering Magic as well.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://identengine.com/
License: MIT License

Sponsors

Dreamhost: Get $50 Off with Coupon Code: WEBAPPERS

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The library supports more than 70 sites, including all the popular ones like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook or Youtube.

From Glenn Jones, the creator of the library:

Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, the site said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?”

Ident Engine makes this totally possible.

It analyzes the relations between various networks using the rel="me" tags & Social Graph API’s "lookup" method.

And, to parse the profiles Yahoo’s YQL or a .Net parser, UfXtract is used.

More technical details can be found at "Discovering Magic", an article by Glenn Jones, and you can always check the demos to see the power of Ident Engine.

Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
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jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
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Photography

High Life by Andrey & Lili is a brilliant set of shots that are both classic and modern. This juxtaposition translates flawlessly through each of the images.

Illustration

Poster by Derek Ring is an awesome graphic illustration with a punk rock feel and lots of attitude. This poster rips from the imagination and inspires all in it’s wake.

Print Design

T-Shirt Sketchbook by Burak Kaynak is such a fun and interesting design that we simply could not leave it out of the post.

Fashion

Cherry Blossom Girl stylings by Thornandes James & Rajasa P. is a fantastic collection of fashion that makes more than statement, it makes us recognize the artistry behind this craft.

Typography

Karbon by Chris Sowersby is such a clean and multi-layered font family that we only recently discovered, and once more, we wouldn’t have felt right doing this post without a nod to such a professional looking typeface.

Package Design

Dorito’s Packaging Concept by Petar Pavlov caught our eye with its inspiring originality and creative execution. Very cool packaging, indeed.

Sound Design

Experibass by Diego Stocco is an amazing creation that you really have to see to believe. A Frankenstein of different musical instruments constructed together to create a custom sound that is simply incredible.

Diego Stocco – Experibass from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Photomanipulation

Brohny by aJa Jones is a piece from an absolutely amazing series of photomanipulations that delve into a fantastically dark world of the Gargantum Troll Family. So rich with such depth, truly inspired work.

Product Design

iPhone Dock Concept by Mac Funamizu is quite a set of highly ambitious and charming docking station designs that we cannot wait to see on the market.

Logo Design

Lund & Slaatto by Mission Design is a really great logo and branding. Simple, clean, and effective. Three fabulous points for your logo to hit, and they do it here with style.

Industrial Design

NAO by Erik Arlen & Thomas Knoll was another design that we had to include once we found these adorably crafted robots. And though their future robotic relatives may in fact rise up and destroy mankind, we just cannot stop loving these little bots.

Architectural Design

zero House by Specht Harpman is by far one of the most interesting architectural designs we have seen in a while. With solar power and so much more, these totally grid free units are an ingenious addition to the design community.

Make-up Design

Wonderland make-up by Yurema Villa is by far one of the most brilliant, bold and beautiful creations in the post, with an inspired re-imagining of the Alice in Wonderland world.

Interior Design

The Infiniti Journey of Inspiration by Stefan Boublil is another fantastic creation that we are featuring in the showcase. This is the second time that we have featured his work in the spectrum series, and with the quality of his work, we are sure this will not be the last time that he is under our spotlight.

Motion Graphics

With Rain by Takafumi Tsuchiya is a stunning video that you have to see for yourself. Words simply do not do it justice.

With Rain from takcom™ on Vimeo.

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Inspiration from Across the Design Spectrum 10/05/09

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He nicely aggregates a lot of the info that has been seen on Chrome Frame into one place, and his series covers:

• Basics of Chrome Frame: what is it?
• Supporting Chrome Frame: <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”chrome=1″> and the like
• Detecting Chrome Frame: Using CFInstall and the like
• Forcing Chrome Frame: How to hack the registry and using cf:

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