Gift List for Designers, Creatives and Web Geeks

Attention elves…. HINT, HINT!

Here are a few gift ideas for any designer… or at least THIS designer… I’ve taken a few minutes to collect some Christmas gift ideas for those of you who just don’t know what to get your geeky, creative, web designer loved one. I am here to help!

Fisheye, Wide Angle and Macro Lenses for the iphone from photojojo.com. As if I don’t spend enough time on my phone already!

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The ABCs of New Orleans poster from Java Jane Designs on esty.com  Could anything be more lovely?? Each letter comes from architectural photography.

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Camera Lens Mugs from photojojo.com. My cup runeth over! Canon and Nikon zoom lens mugs… And the nikon zoom mug actually zooms. They come with lens caps, too.

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May the Force of Typography be with You posters from h-57.com… This is something my entire family would love!

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Serif Typography Wall Art by PepperSproutDesigns.com. And if you’re a sans-serif type (he, he!) person, they’ve got some wall art for you as well!

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Keyboard Shortcut Skins for Macs custom-fitted color-coded keyboard skins from Photojojo.com matched for your application and your computer. I will be getting the photoshop skin for my macbook pro.

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the Muji Envelope Template just sounds like fun for all, doesn’t it.

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The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog Memory Game from HandyEyeSupply.com Mmmm… my first typographic memory game!!!

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The Smashing Book I should have this already. I know.

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Paper e-mail from thinkgeek.com. That’s just funny!

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App Pillows by Design-milk.com. When I rent out the top floor of an old building downtown, with brick walls and old oak floors. And there is a couch by the door for all my clients to sit and wait till I have a sec. That couch will be covered with these pillows.

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Free vintage Thanksgiving postcard downloads

Here are two lovely vintage Thanksgiving postcard freebies for you to enjoy this Thanksgiving. Print them, edit them, give them to family or friends or just take a look and smile! Be thankful!

6 free online sources for photo editing

One way to keep your website or blog looking sharp is to make sure that your photos are top notch. It may take a few extra minutes of work, but the effort is completely worth it. And, the good news is that there are many free options out there for you to choose from. Whether you need to crop a photo to fit in your Featured Content Gallery (one of my biggest pet peeves is stretched or squished photos forced to fit in a pre-defined space) or you need to brighten up a dark image, you don’t need expensive Photoshop software to get good results. Remember, a well-edited photo can make all the difference on those important first impressions. Take a look at the following options.

GIMP

Great free resource. This is a free downloadable software for photo retouching and editing.  Works on Mac or PC. While Photoshop will always be my number 1 love , if you can’t afford Photoshop, GIMP is a good option. You can also open and edit psd files in GIMP ~ cool!

Picnik

My favorite free online photo editor. If I don’t have time to take a photo into Photoshop, or am editing a batch of pictures from a vacation or party, I use Picnik.  Picnik has many great features and options. They have an optional premium membership which runs about $24/year and allows the user access to some pretty awesome effects. It can be a bit slower to load than some of the other applications, but the wait is probably worth it.  Picnik is also directly connected to many photo sharing sites. I have Picnik connected to my flickr account.

Pixlr

This is a good tool, but not my favorite. The drop menus make it a little more awkward and cumbersome to make changes. One nice thing is that you do not have to register to get started, so if you need to make a quick adjustment to a photo in a matter of minutes, this might just be the solution for you.

photoshop.com

Being a Photoshop fan, I kinda like this one. The interface is very clean and sleek.  The site offers many different editing options and a nice series of previews for each effect at the bottom (see below) before the effect is applied. You can also create galleries and share images.

fotoflexer

The interface on this one needs a little work. Looks a bit outdated. They have some decent options – some a bit tacky, but that all depends on what you’re going for. I think my kids would have fun with this site!

picture2life

I really like picture2life.com. I was happily surprised to discover the site and their great options. Their interface is very sleek and easy to navigate. You can sign up for an account, or just start as a guest for a quick run through. A nice, easy way to test it out.

Ever had a font identification crisis?

Recently, I did.

I was working on a web design for a client who wanted to match his style and font to a print ad he had an ad firm create a year or so ago. All I had to work with was a pdf of the design. There were about 12 words, all lower case. And a font I couldn’t recognize.

Now, I’ll tell ya, I pride myself on the fact that someone can point out a billboard or newspaper ad and I can usually name the font. I’m good. It’s a talent. Not a talent that many value or would even want… but that’s okay. I take what I can get…

Anyway…

This font, I couldn’t name. So, what to do? I ran on over to fonts.com’s Identify Fonts By Sight page. The interface asks a series of questions, assuming you have the font, or part of it, in front of you. They ask about the letter shapes, descenders, ascenders, tails, bowls and serifs. Never fear – if you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s okay. ‘Cause there are pictures.

I love pictures…

So, to find my particular font, I had to skip several questions. I didn’t have any upper case letters and not all of the lower case. No numbers or punctuation. By the end, I was doubting that this clever little tool would be able to help me at all.

Until the end.

META. That was the answer. And it was correct! Brilliant!

So, if you ever find yourself in a font identification crisis, you now know where to turn. Fonts.com ‘Identify Fonts by Sight’ tool is a perfect solution!

How to set up your Featured Content Gallery Plugin

The Featured Content Gallery by iePlexus is one of the most popular plugins on WordPress. I use it in almost every one of my WordPress themes. I am going to walk you through setting up your gallery to link each gallery image to a specific page.

1. First, in your sidebar, go to “Settings” and select “Featured Content Gallery” Decide which pages you want to have images link to from your Gallery on your homepage. Most sites have too many pages to have an image link to each one. So, choose your most important pages: Contact Us, Products, About Us, Blog, etc… Determine the page ID number for each page. You can do this by either installing the “Reveal IDs” plugin, or simply go to your pages screen and rollover the page title with your mouse and take note of the page number that shows up in the bottom bar of your browser. Jot down these IDs and then type them in the “Post or Page IDs” field on the Featured Content Gallery screen.

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2.Upload your image.
Go to the page that you want the gallery image to link to.  Here, we are going to change the “about” page. Click on the little icon for “add image”.

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3. On the screen that comes up (NOT the one below) you will select “upload from your computer” (be sure the photo is saved on your computer: ) Also, make sure that your photo is properly sized before uploading. There is nothing that disturbs me more than seeing a beautifully designed website with gallery photos that are squished and stretched beyond recognition. Take the time to crop and resize your images to the dimensions set in your Featured Content Gallery screen.  Below, you see the “Add an Image” screen. I uploaded my happy friend Friar Fritz. Go down and copy the link from the “Link url” field.

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4 Close the Add Image screen to get back to your page and scroll down to the “Custom Fields” Section. Select or type in “articleimg” in the name box and then paste you image link into the “value” box. Update your page. Now, you will have assigned a photo in your gallery to this page.

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5. If you want to customize the text overlay that appears in your gallery, simply add a new “custom field”. Label it “featured text” and then in the value box type in the text that you want to overlay the image in the gallery.

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