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Free Friday Wallpaper: Carbon Fibre Gears

February 12, 2010

Welcome to the final installment of the (official) Free Friday Wallpapers. From here on, we’ll keep doing monthly calendar wallpapers, and perhaps occasional other ones here and there – but not one every Friday. Instead, we’re tossing around a couple of other ideas; perhaps a weekly roundup of design posts that caught our eye; perhaps something else. Actually, if you have anything you’d like to see us do on a weekly basis – within reason, as we’re only two (awesome) people – let us know in the comments.

Anyway, here’s a wallpaper for the tech heads & people like Chad who are way more mechanically inclined than I am. Carbon fibre is cool, right? And I think those other round dealys are called “Gears” or something. What they do, I don’t know. I draw things for a living, remember?

Enjoy!

Click to download the Carbon Fibre Gears Wallpaper in 1920X1200, 1680X1050, 1440X900, and 1280X800. Share away!

* thanks to Chris Spooner for the sweet Carbon Fibre PST!

10 Best @font-face Fonts

February 5, 2010

As soon as I learned about the @font-face CSS declaration, my life as a designer changed permanently. A whole world of possibilities are opened up by this feature – no more relying on Arial, Verdana, Georgia and all the other “web safe” fonts. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with those fonts, but after seeing them day after day on the web, I know I long for a bit of variety.

However, just because a font is @font-face compatible doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for the purpose you want to use it. The obvious examples are there – don’t use display fonts as your body text, for example – but some fonts just aren’t great for the web (or great at all… or good… or passable).

So I’ve come to save the day with my opinions. Here’s the 10 Best @font-face Fonts, broken into Display (aka Heading 1, Heading 2 etc) and Body listings.

DISPLAY

Use these guys for your H1, H2 etc tags – but if you set your body text in them, I’ll come right through the internet and beat you up.

Museo & Museo Slab

The Museo family has exploded in popularity, and with good reason – it’s a well-designed typeface all around, unique & usable with character. Museo & Museo Slab are great options for headings on your site using the @font-face declaration.

Hit the jump for the rest of the 10 Best @font-face Fonts! Read the whole article >

February 2010 Desktop Wallpaper

February 1, 2010

Welcome to February, all! Hopefully the coldest of the bitter cold in your town is gone. It might be gone here in Edmonton, but who knows? It was minus 40C before it was even officially winter this year. GO CANADA. Anyway, as promised, here is the second installment of our Monthly Calendar Wallpapers. This image was taken by me this weekend, at a photo shoot for a local band called Desert Bar. Check out a few of their songs here – good, raw rock ‘n’ roll. The image was taken for potential use in their album art, and to reflect their simple approach to style, their minimalist nature. The shot really just says February to me. It’s grey and blank, but beautiful in its own way – plus, it lends itself well to minimal Swiss-influenced design. Enjoy, share & subscribe to the RSS feed!

Click to download the Ampersand Wallpaper in in 1920X1200, 1680X1050, 1440X900, and 1280X800. Share away!

Free Friday Wallpaper: Ampersand

January 29, 2010

Ampersands are cool. Each typeface’s ampersand says a lot about its personality; it says a lot about how the typeface should be used. Some are smooth & classy; others are bold and blocky. Whenever I can’t really form an opinion on the quality of a typeface, I’ll look at a couple things – the letter S and the ampersand of the typeface. If these two items are well-designed – along with everything else you look for in a well-designed typeface – then you’re good to go. So here’s to the ampersand, a beautiful way to be lazy when you’re writing.

Click to download the Ampersand Wallpaper in in 1920X1200, 1680X1050, 1440X900, and 1280X800. Share away!

Free Friday Wallpaper: BOKEH

January 22, 2010

After the explosion in popularity of the Color Theory Reference Poster (and wallpaper), this Free Friday wallpaper has a tough act to follow. I’ve been dealing a lot with muted colors, so I think that’s why Mr. Bokeh here is super bright – needed to get that out of my system. Bokeh has been proving quite popular these days too, so I hope you enjoy, share & subscribe to the RSS feed!