SmashingApps has put together a link list of 40 useful cheat sheets for graphic designers covering everything from standard HTML, CSS, and Photoshop shortcuts, to standard envelope and postcard size charts.
You can also grab the Graphic Mac Fraction to Decimal Conversion Chart here.
Folks, I can’t stress enough how important it is to take a good long second look at your layout. If you don’t you could end up in one of these design disaster posts.
Vecte replaces Mac OS X’s built-in application switcher
Vecte is a simple Mac OS X application switcher replacement. All the standard keyboard shortcuts still work, the only difference is how it looks and feels. Vecte moves the application switcher overlay you get by hitting Command + Tab from the center of the screen to the top left corner of the screen. Vecte also switches apps instantly rather than waiting around until you let go of the command key. Finally, Vecte does not re-order the apps every time you switch to a new app. If you missed the app you were aiming for, it’s still in the same spot.
I used Vecte for a few weeks and found it to work quite well. And it’s a great way to customize OS X to your liking. Ultimately though, I prefer the built-in switcher. Given that Vecte is free, you have nothing to lose by checking it out. You can download Vecte here.
Simple Icons is a collection of 100 brand icons, available in PNG format in eleven different sizes ranging from 16 to 4096 pixels. You can download Simple Icons from Smashing Magazine here.
The following tips are for Acrobat XI. Many of them also work in older versions of Acrobat, though the locations and names of specific menu items may be different.
Direct mail is still one of the more popular and successful methods of marketing for many companies. It puts your product or service in the hands of consumers where, hopefully, they read it and keep it on the kitchen table for a while—increasing the chance that the consumer acts on it.
With so much competition in the consumer’s mailbox, you have to design the piece for clear readability and quick communication of your message. Tell the reader too much and you risk them not reading the entire piece. Don’t tell them enough and they lose interest and toss it in the bin.
Rather than go into all the best practices of designing direct mail, I thought I would share my thoughts on a direct mail piece I received recently.
The Touchfire iPad Keyboard fits right over the iPad’s on-screen keyboard and is completely transparent, so you can always see the keys underneath it.
It is soft and supple if you swipe through it horizontally – you can use your iPad right through it. Yet it is stiff enough vertically to let you rest your fingers on the home row keys without accidentally triggering the touch screen. When you type, the Touchfire keyboard responds with just the right amount of resistance and spring-back to feel like a lively and responsive keyboard.
If you use your iPad for emailing and writing, this look like a really cool thing to have!
“For $13,000 — $5,200 up front, and $7,800 on delivery, and no additional royalties — Shepardson Microsystems would build Apple’s first DOS. For its money, Apple would get a file manager, an interface for integer BASIC and Applesoft BASIC, and utilities that would allow disk backup, disk recovery, and file copying.”
It’s always fun to look back on computing history.
If truth in advertising actually existed, this is what it would look like.
