Paper Leaf Design | Edmonton Graphic Design, Edmonton Web Design » Found Fridays http://www.paper-leaf.com A blog for designers with tips, tutorials, inspiration and more! Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:56:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Found Friday Vol 81 http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/02/found-friday-vol-81/ http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/02/found-friday-vol-81/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:00:38 +0000 Jeff http://www.paper-leaf.com/?p=3986 This week’s finds are all about two things: typography and web design. If you don’t like either of those things, what are you doing here?!? This week, we have: a great free font family; a cool CSS3 ribbon menu tutorial/code; a bunch of interesting (albeit perhaps not the most useful) snippets of CSS3 code; a great article from A List Apart on web design & your rates; and a cool new web typography movement called Open Typography. Read on!

Exo Font Family

A Kickstarter-funded project, this free typeface has 9 weights in regular & true italic versions. Nice.

Exo Font Family

CSS Ribbon Menu

My word! The things you can accomplish with CSS these days.

CSS Ribbon Menu

Real World CSS

These examples are fun… but I don’t know if your client would enjoy having text disappear when you hover over it. (via @korymath)

Real World CSS

Pricing Strategy for Creatives

A List Apart hits another home-run with this article; everyone always has questions about their pricing strategy. Read up!

Pricing Strategy for Creatives

OpenTypography

“OpenTypography is an open source project with the goal of bringing better typography to every type of digital screen.” Yup! Pretty cool stuff here.

Open Typography

See you next week!

]]> http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/02/found-friday-vol-81/feed/ 0 Found Friday Vol 80 http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-80/ http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-80/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:00:11 +0000 Jeff http://www.paper-leaf.com/?p=3963 The eightieth version of Found Friday is here, and this week we have: a beautiful wood iPhone case; a collection of great plugins for those of us using WordPress as a CMS; a neat little tool designed to help hang things and such (bad description, but scroll down and have a look); a new t-shirt from the folks at United PixelWorkers and A Book Apart; and a must-watch video for any creative. Read on!

Material 6 Wood iPhone Case

The iPhone is a beautiful device – nobody’s arguing that. But the glass backside sacrifices durability for beauty. Here’s a solution to that problem: a beautiful and durable wood iPhone case! Want.

Material 6 Wood iPhone Case

WordPress CMS Plugins

WordPress is a great publishing platform, but most anything can be improved. That’s what this list of plugins from the folks at DigWP does: aim to improve the use of WordPress as a CMS.
WordPress CMS Plugins

Bondi

This neat little guy is bendable and helpful. Bend his arms to hug your iPod and hang it from your rearview; bend his arms to hold your keys and hang it from your wall. Those are just two of an unimaginable amount of uses for Bondi.

Bondi

United PixelWorkers A Book Apart Tee

Showcase your nerd love for web design (and being a bookworm) with this gorgeous A Book Apart tee. It’s only available for a limited time!

A Book Apart T Shirt

Wilson Miner – When We Build

A friend sent me this video, and I highly recommend you take 38 minutes out of your life and prepare to be inspired.

When We Build - Video

See you next week!

]]> http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-80/feed/ 0 Found Friday Vol 79 http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-79/ http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-79/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:00:06 +0000 Jeff http://www.paper-leaf.com/?p=3909 It’s Friday! Let us help you celebrate with five great designy finds from the web. This week, we have: a must-use plugin for those using WordPress as a CMS; a limited-time, free bundle of design goods; the world’s simplest mailing list setup; a preview for an upcoming type film for typography nerds; and a beautiful, inventive coffee machine. Because, you know, we all run on coffee. Enjoy!

Dashboard Site Notes

WordPress is famous for its ease of use; however, it can still be daunting to total n00bs, like some of your clients. We normally use a Dashboard Tips Widget with our client WordPress builds; however, it’s a little janky and not that great to set up. Enter Dashboard Site Notes: a WordPress plugin that lets you author notes and site guidelines for your clients through the WordPress interface, so they always have reminders nearby. A must-install in my books.

WP Dashboard Tips

ZeroBundle

Everyone likes free stuff! Especially designers. This bundle has a bunch of icons, UI elements and the like for designers. It’s free for another 27 days or so. Check it out!

ZeroBundle

Tiny Letter

Tiny Letter is from the people at MailChimp. Essentially, Tiny Letter is a dead-simple way to set up a (text-only) email newsletter. MailChimp is awesome, but can be a bit daunting for some people. Tiny Letter fills that void; going to start recommending it to some clients, methinks. (via swiss-miss)

TinyLetter

Linotype: The Film

Typography nerd? Then you’ll be interested in the upcoming Linotype film, a feature-length documentary around the typecasting machine.

Linotype Documentary

Bodum Bistro Coffee Machine

Coffee is the nectar of the gods. FACT. This Bodum Bistro machine tosses aside the terrible method of drip-coffee and instead uses a pour-over method, which results in better coffee. I’ll stick to my French Press, but this might interest some of you.

Bodum Pour Over Coffee Machine

See you next week!

]]> http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-79/feed/ 0 Found Friday Vol 78 http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-78/ http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-78/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:00:16 +0000 Jeff http://www.paper-leaf.com/?p=3899 This week’s Found Friday is a goldmine for web designers & developers. We have a great demo/download for some beautiful CSS buttons; we have a neat online app for creating Photoshop-esque “layer styles” in CSS; a site showcasing OpenType features on the web, for you fellow typeheads; an interesting looking book on “common sense for designers”; and a minimalist site for playing a band’s top YouTube videos sans clutter. Check ‘em out!

CSS Buttons With Pseudo Elements

A great tutorial with source files, these CSS buttons combine beauty & usefulness.

CSS buttons with Pseudo Elements

Layer Styles

For those of us who dabble in both Photoshop and CSS/HTML, this neat little tool might come in handy. It’s a GUI that looks exactly like Photoshop’s layer styles palette, but spits out CSS styling for live web rendering of the same effects.

Layer Styles CSS

The New Web Typography

Microsoft, of all things, seems to be leading the charge on web typography these days. From their Lost World’s Fairs web type project to this: bringing OpenType features like ligatures, small caps, kerning and more to the web. The code is less than semantic though. Best viewed in Firefox 8+.

The New Web Typography

The Little Know-it-All

This book (found on SwissMiss) promotes “common sense for designers” and “what designers need to know to thrive in their growing field of practice”. Looks pretty sweet, although it’s currently unavailable. Bookmark it and check back.

The Little Know it All

Tubalr

There is a glut of artist and band videos on YouTube; it’s great for streaming music that you don’t own (if that’s your thing). Tubalr (via SwissMiss) provides a neat, clutter-free interface to find and play these videos on YouTube.

Tubalr

See you next week!

]]> http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-78/feed/ 1 Found Friday Vol 77 http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-77/ http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2012/01/found-friday-vol-77/#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:00:00 +0000 Jeff http://www.paper-leaf.com/?p=3889 Number 77 of Found Fridays checking in here. You know what else was #77? Ray Bourque. There, maybe you learned something today. Feel free to learn more (perhaps related to your profession, i.e. design) with the following finds: an awesome “day in the life of a designer” parody video from the holidays; a super-simple WordPress plugin for front-end uploads; an interesting year-end update from Process Type Foundry; a site with a great collection of design & dev tools; and finally some beautiful new monitors from Samsung.

Viewpoint Creative – Holiday Card

So I’m a little late on this one, but if you missed it, check out this short (and hilarious) video. If you’re a designer of any ilk, you’ll relate.

Holiday Creative Video

Front End Upload WordPress Plugin

This is a simple, open-source solution to adding front-end uploading capabilities to your WordPress site. Looks pretty handy, although I haven’t tried it myself.

Front End Upload

Process Type – Remembering 2011, Previewing 2012

This post from (the great) Process Type Foundry is a neat little roundup of their 2011, plus some fun stuff to look forwards to in 2012 (like Klavika Display!).

Process Type - 2011/2012

Nerdi

A collection of useful sites & generators for designers & developers, with a suggestion engine. Handy!

Nerdi

Samsung Series 9 Monitors

If you need a new monitor, check out these gorgeous ones from Samsung. Pricey but beautifully designed.

Series 9 Monitor

See you next week!

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