lynda.com free seven-day trial...

As you know I am a fan of lynda.com. In fact I am such a big fan that I  have an ad to the right. This is how I work my way through all my new software. I just got Aperture and will start my mornings with half an hour or so of learning before I start my day. Hopefully soon I will be doing that in a cute coffee shop where I will have ridden my bike each morning to do email and blog and do a bit of lynda.com.

Anyway lynda.com had been offering a 24-hour free pass to her site. And as of late last week they are changing that to a free seven-day trial. So if you have wanted to try them out now is definitely the time. I am not sure if this is a permanent change or something for a short time only. If you are interested I would act now. Enjoy!

ohhhhhhh... uppercase magazine...

I splurged and have treated myself to a year's subscription (4 issues) to uppercase magazine. And it is a splurge as the 4 issues are $80 with shipping. But just taking one little peek tells me that I will not be disappointed. I know I will savor it, pour over it, read every word and add it to my library. It has been years since I've found a graphics magazine that takes me back to magazines like U&lc magazine.

The paper is nice in this magazine... bright white and matte. And it smells like ink. Mine came with a bookmark and a letterpress display frame card and envelope. I can see that I am going to delight in each issue. Check it out here.

milton glaser: to inform and delight...

Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight

2009NR 73 minutes

His name might not be very familiar, but the works of graphic artist Milton Glaser -- whose prolific output includes the "I Love NY" ad campaign, as well as album covers for Townes Van Zandt and Nina Simone -- are recognizable to many. Revisiting the famed paintings, drawings, logos, prints, posters and other works by Glaser, filmmaker Wendy Keys creates a rich and engaging mosaic of a key figure in American iconography. - Netflix

I am of course familiar with who Milton Glaser is. Both John and I found this documentary to be great fun and of course a flash from the past. The '60s and '70s we such a visual delight. Glaser is so talented and interesting and such a visinary. This is a must-see for all graphic artists, or those in advertising. I enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed Art & Copy.

This is correctly titled as it did inform and delight!

font friday... brushes? clip art anyone?

Photoshop Brushes? Color clip art for Illustrator? I am thinking about making my best-selling doodle fonts into Photoshop brushes or color eps or jpgs. Any thoughts from anyone on this? Any interest? You would need Photoshop to use the brushes. If you have any interest plz leave a comment. If I did this my first font would be Frames & Borders ... Thanks!!

Thanks Bill at Concept Studios for this suggestion!

taxes & the indie...

This is a hard topic for me... I use to have jobs where I ran creative departments and my employer took care of the tax thing. Then I freelanced and we just took more money out of John's check. That was back when making fonts was a hobby, and when it was a part time job. Well now that it is a full time job I have finally gotten on a schedule and pay estimated quarterly taxes. It has taken me a long time to get to this point.

I keep good records in an elaborate excel spreadsheet that John made me. After a tax fiasco I got a good accountant and finally feel like I am on track. In fact next month I go in and she will review our taxes so I know what to do to end my year...

Here is an excellent site I want to share... June Walker: Tax & Financial Advisor to the Self-Employed Now I am trying to figure out what deductions I can take for my blog. I see that she had some posts on that. Learning how to successfully do my taxes is I guess just like learning to make a good font. Something I just keep working at.

the art of looking sideways by alan fletcher

Look at this yummy, big, fat book. I love a big book full of visual goodness.

And this one certainly is. I bought this just before the grand move(s). And then it just ended up on the book shelf. I've gotten it out and placed it on a white table in my office where I intend to read and enjoy a couple pages every day.

The Art of Looking Sideways is a primer in visual intelligence, an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination. It is an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes and memories, all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters, all this material is presented in a wonderfully inventive series of pages that are themselves masterly demonstrations of the expressive use of type, space, colour and imagery.

This book does not set out to teach lessons, but it is full of wisdom and insight collected from all over the world. Describing himself as a visual jackdaw, master designer Alan Fletcher has distilled a lifetime of experience and reflection into a brilliantly witty and inimitable exploration of such subjects as perception, colour, pattern, proportion, paradox, illusion, language, alphabets, words, letters, ideas, creativity, culture, style, aesthetics and value.

The Art of Looking Sideways is the ultimate guide to visual awareness, a magical compilation that will entertain and inspire all those who enjoy the interplay between word and image, and who relish the odd and the unexpected. -Phaidon

Alan Gerard Fletcher (27 September 1931 – 21 September 2006) was a British graphic designer. In his obituary, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as "the most highly regarded graphic designer of his generation, and probably one of the most prolific".

The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher

If you are interested there is a link for this book on the right.

some mad men fun...

OK I don't watch Mad Men. I tried. I really wanted to love this show because of the visuals and the 60s time frame. I spent the one and only show I watched gasping at the sexism and yelling at the characters.

But I do like a good graphic and little wizard programs that make them easily. Click here and make your own. And you can use them for your Facebook photo too. Make an easy avatar.

font friday... what the font...

What The Font is an iPhone app from myfonts.com. And it is free and you get it through iTunes. Myfonts.com is a great company that has sold my fonts for 9+ years. What The Font is an app that is on their website and it where I always start when trying to figure out what a font is. And now there is an app so you can do it on the fly using your iPhone.

I thought the reviews were mixed but that may just be that people aren't really familiar with the app. I've used it online with good results and had equally good ones on my iPhone. And maybe people don't understand that there are tens of thousands of fonts. So the fact that there is an app like this at all amazes me. In the old pre internet days you did this kind of research by looking through books or hunting down the designer and begging them to tell you what the font was.

First you take a photo of the font in question. You crop it by tracing around it with your finger. Take a good picture with as much contrast as possible. Have no extraneous details in it. The app then decides what the letters are. If it thinks a I is a 1 you correct it in the box to the right.

Eventually it gives you suggestions. Some good, some less good. I find that has to do with how much of the type you can include in your photo. I almost always can find what I am looking for. But there is always the possibility that the font you are looking for is not in digital form. So there are reasons why this tool may not work. But when I compare it to the years of searching through books or asking other designers I think it is kind of amazing.