An excellent display font for use in logos, particularly when you only need a stylized letter or two. Gent is 100% free for commercial use!
Does a logo design NEED to work in black & white?
Great article! The days of a logo design NEEDING to work in black & white are long-gone. That being said, a great logo design WILL work in black & white—perhaps with a little modification. So if your logo doesn’t work in black and white, perhaps you should re-think it.
While the linked article goes against my advice on creating a logo you can live with and still get paid, I still stand behind what I wrote back in 2008.
The death of voicemail
About logo design
"A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon, a street sign. A logo does not sell (directly), it identifies. A logo is rarely a description of a business. A logo derives meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around. A logo is less important that the product it signifies; what it represents is more important than what it looks like."
10 Photoshop alternatives
Affinity Photo is one of the few image editors outside of Photoshop that supports the CMYK color space, so it’s the only one of these apps that I would call a true Photoshop alternative for designers. The $49 price tag ain’t too shabby, either. Of course, if you’re a web designer or photo hobbiest, you have a ton of options—including the excellent Pixelmator.
We Don’t Need More Designers Who Can Code
I’ve always appreciated someone who has multiple talents. But I much prefer someone who does one or two things extremely well over someone who does a mediocre job at everything.
This article is a must read.
Add a tiny calendar to your OS X menubar
Itsycal is a tiny calendar for your Mac’s menu bar. It adds one function that has been missing on the Mac from day one, and one that has driven me crazy for years.
Itsycal will display a monthly calendar, as well as your calendar events from the Mac Calendar app. Events are highlighted on the calendar, and you can also create and delete (but not edit) events.
Itsycal is a lightweight app and is free of charge.
Filed under: I’ll believe it when I see it
Epson has released the EcoTank series of printers, which claim to be able to run for nearly two years without having to replace ink cartridges (with an average run of 60 color and 30 b&w prints per week). The only catch being that you’re going to pay $400-$500 up front for the printer.
My problem has never been that Epson printers cost too much or don’t print ENOUGH. My problem has been that the cartridges clog or expire LONG before the ink cartridge runs out. EVERY. DAMN. TIME!
So file all this happy horseshit under “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Free and easy screencasting app
If you’re looking for an affordable (or free) screen recording app for the Mac, you should check out Recordit. As a bonus, you can share your recordings as animated GIF files as well.
There are limitations. The recording is limited to under 5-minutes, no audio is recorded, and your recording is uploaded and shared via the Recordit servers immediately. A pro version allows you to offer private videos for a one-time fee of $30.
How to export InDesign layers as a layered PSD file
InDesign Secrets shared this excellent InDesign script that converts your layered InDesign file to a layered Photoshop file. Mike Rankin takes you through the simple steps in the article, but I’ll tell you from experience that this is the sort of thing that is best left to designers who are obsessive about details like naming and organizing their layers, regardless of what program they’re working in. And as Mike points out, this is something that is best left as the “final” step—as you won’t know (or have a whole lot of control over) what remains editable after the conversion.