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Reencoded’s Top Fonts

I’ve picked these five fonts as my most used fonts over time. Most likely you will disagree, everyone has their own tastes. I’ve looked over hundreds upon hundreds of fonts picking the perfect script for my logos or designs. These are the five fonts I have used the most. If you haven’t noticed some of them before, it’s worth giving them a look.

Trajan

I know, I know, Trajan is horribly overused but I keep using it in my designs time and time again. Trajan was designed by Carol Twombly, a well known font designer and Adobe employee since 1988 (also created Adobe Caslon). Created in 1989, Trajan is a timeless classic great for poster use as well as elegant and corporate designs. Although not a free font, it is shipped with Adobe products such as their Creative Suite.

Geo Sans Light

Geo Sans Light is created by font designer Manfred Klein. Manfred was born in 1932 and worked in a variety of advertising agencies until a serious accident caused him to turn to making fonts. Geo Sans Light is just one of the free fonts he has invented. It has a very modern look and unique design that is a great touch to logos, websites and other design projects. Download it for free here: http://www.dafont.com/geo-sans-light.font

Arial

Arial is one of the most common fonts in the world. Although use is widespread, this font is timeless. It was created in 1990 and has shipped with Windows since 1992. Arial is for large blocks of text, but isn’t much of a title or logo font. I use Arial in one way or another in the majority of my design projects. Arial is not available for free download.

Birth of a Hero

Birth of a Hero is a great grunge font from Last Soundtrack. Not for use in any project, it looks great on a dirty / grungy themed site. Behind the grunge design is a well designed font. Smooth lines, rotated letters and uniform circles make Birth of a Hero a definite keeper. Download it for free here: http://www.dafont.com/birth-of-a-hero.font

Metroscript

Metroscript happens to be one of MyFonts.com’s best sellers in the last year. Designed by Michael Doret, this script mimics hand-lettering and has a decidedly older feel to it. It reminds me of a Coca Cola or athletic uniform font, and is great in antique style designs. Metroscript is free download.

Remembering Your Reader in Web Design

Technology advancements have allowed for many improvements and enhancements in web design. Drastic changes have been made concerning programming, development, and available features. From flash animations, to blog pages, forums, and live chat, website designers have a multitude of design elements that can be added to their websites. Multimedia products such as audio, video, and podcasts are some of the other advancements in web design. One thing that has not changed, however, is the website readers. Successful website developers know and understand this concept, and apply it to every website that they design. More »

7 Firefox Addons I Use Every Day

Colorzilla – Colorzilla allows you to capture the hex code (e.g #FFF000) of any color you see on the web. This allows you to match colors and grab the exact code of colors you like on other sites. When also used in combination with Adobe Kuler, Colorzilla cures Kuler’s problem of not displaying HTML codes for the selected colors.

Foxmarks – Foxmarks replaces your traditional bookmarking capabilities with synchronized bookmarks. Foxmarks synchronizes your bookmarks with an online account and any computer you install the addon to automatically whenever you close your browser. It takes about two seconds and guarantees that you’ll never be without your bookmarks, whether at a public computer or at home.

Google Toolbar – Google Toolbar is rather simplistic but adds some much needed features to my browser. First, it can replace the standard Firefox search with Google search which is a bit cleaner to look at. Second, it adds a Gmail notifier that lets me know whenever I have new mail with a simple icon. It also adds quick links to some Google services I use often such as Google maps.

Window Resizer – Working as a web developer, it’s important to view my sites in different browsers and different screen resolutions. Window Resizer emulates different screen resolutions be resizing the browser window to different sizes (e.g. 800×600).

Firebug – Firebug is, in my opinion, the most useful addon for a Firefox-based web developer. You can edit your HTML from Firebug, find errors, change your CSS and many more options all from one console. I cannot describe Firebug as well as they can, so please take a look at the Firebug site at http://getfirebug.com/

YSlow – YSlow is not an addition to firebug but is integrated with it for information exchange. YSlow analyzes any web page and generates a grade for each rule and an overall grade. If a page can be improved, YSlow lists the specific changes to be made. YSlow is especially useful on high traffic sites where limiting the number of HTTP requests makes more of a difference but has great suggestions for smaller sites as well.

Colorful Tabs – Colorful tabs doesn’t have any big use in web development but it speeds up my overall surfing. Tabs can be colored by many different options allowing you to find important sites at a glance or just to differentiate between tabs easier.

What addons are indispensable to you?