10 Common Typography Mistakes

“The goal of this post is to help designers and clients understand the importance of good type skills, while avoiding some common mistakes… a list of 10 common mistakes used in type design/layout that can make a huge difference in the effectiveness and appearance of your designs, in addition to saving you time and money when printing.”

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20 Typefaces To Start A Designer’s Career

 “As a design student myself, I notice that typography is one of the hardest parts that students seem to face… most students are able to come up with extremely creative, innovative and well designed material however as soon as type is needed… well, let’s just say, it could need some more work… I was also guilty of having every font under the sun, however, after the first year of University I quickly learned otherwise – it is best to master a few faces. “

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50 Incredible Fonts for Professional Web & Print Design

“The web is rich with creative and amazing fonts, and the choice is enormous. So today we would like to present 50 incredible FONT which you can use for web or print design. This collection will sure help you improve your typography skills! Let’s take a close look at some of the most beautiful fonts we’ve found on the web.”

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7 Fonts that should die

“The problem with being a fontwhore is that you begin to recognize some of the tired, overused fonts that no designer seems to want to let go. If you see them, let out a scream and shoot them on sight."

Despite its overuse, I personally think that Trajan is a great font and should not be on this list. Bu what about Comic Sans?! :D

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30 Fonts That ALL Designers Must Know & Should Own

“Here are 30 of the Best Fonts / Typefaces that every designer must / should own sorted by alphabetical order. There are 15 serif fonts and 15 sans-serif fonts. These fonts will last you your whole career!

A brief description of what each font is best suited for is provided however are not limited to this.”

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16 Incredibly Detailed, Useful (and free) Dingbat Fonts

“Now, before I start, not everyone is going to think these are all useful, so if you don’t ever use tree silhouettes, fine. But some of us do. Personally, I love dingbats because (most of the time) I convert them to vectors in Illustrator and use them as very large elements in some cases. ”

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40+ Extremely Beautiful FONTS Hand-picked from deviantART

“The web is rich with creative and amazing fonts, and one of the most unusual source of Beautiful Fonts are those you can find on deviantART fonts gallery. Today we would like to present 40 incredible FONT which you can use for web or print design. Let’s take a close look at some of the most beautiful fonts we’ve found on deviantART.”

Beautiful collection.

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Color and Typography in Good Design

“Typography is a significant issue for designers. On many projects, finding just the right font, size, spacing, etc. can require considerable time and attention. In addition to typography, color is also a major factor in the success of the design. What is sometimes overlooked is the combination of color and typography and the effect that it has on the overall project.”

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30 inspiring type treatments

“For a while now, I’ve been tagging type-related work on deviantArt. I thought I’d share them with you”

Stunning.

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Breathtaking Typographic Posters

“You can’t design without type. However, yon can use only type (or mostly only type) to create breath-taking designs. In fact, many graphic designers and artists take exactly this route to communicate their ideas through their works. The results are sometimes crazy, sometimes artsy, sometimes beautiful, but often just different from things we’re used to. Thus designers explore new horizons and we explore new viewing perspectives which is what inspiration is all about.”

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Vintage and Retro Typography Showcase

“Typography talks the talk, to go along with the overall work’s walk, speaking volumes for the artist. This important design element surrounds people daily as they move through their routines, rarely taking notice. In this article, we go retro, finding beautiful examples of vintage typography and the modern work they’ve inspired. ”

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The Showcase Of BIG Typography – Second Edition

“In Web typography doesn’t have to support the overall design. It can dominate. It can be loud. It can be bold. And it can be everywhere on a web-site. In many situations it’s reasonable to give the typography the prominent position it deserves, leaving visual cues in the background or removing them at all. ”

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The Right Type: 5 Inspiring Typography Tales

“Nowadays, typefaces are a dime a dozen; there’s certainly no shortage of free fonts. But as in any artistic field, the standouts are rare, and understanding why they excel takes gradual experience.

In this yarn, we’ll take a closer look at inspiring stories behind the design of typefaces that you may have seen or used but didn’t know the history of. We’ll explore the nooks and crannies ‘ both literal and figurative ‘ of the evolving printed word. By the end, we hope you come away with a better appreciation of how things came to be.”

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Top Ten Web Typography Sins

“While many designers have been quick to embrace web standards, it’s surprising how often the basic standards of typography are neglected. Here are ten deadly sins to avoid in your web typography. ”

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A Guide to Web Typography

“Perhaps because of the overtones of freshness and vitality, water-based effects are always in demand. In this tutorial, Nik Ainley provides step-by-step guidance on how to make a stunning, dynamic effect that recreates the look of a figure dissolving in water, with some clever use of Photoshop and some found images. Although the finished image appears hi-tech, it is just a very clever photomontage constructed from just two images, using relatively simple Photoshop techniques.”

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On Choosing Type

“There’s nothing better than to play with the tool if you want to learn it…. I think the best way to learn is trying to recreate images and effects we like. Here I list my 10 tips to improve your skills in Photoshop, but they can be applied to other tools as well.”

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Newzald: From Moleskine to Market

“In this article I will attempt to illustrate my design process’from typeface concept to a marketable font. Not many folks are willing to write about this. Perhaps they find it boring, irrelevant or just a little bit personal. I suspect it is a mix of all the above.

I’ll try to remain as concise as possible. Some of the individual steps can be a lot more complex and involved than they seem. I’ll try not to gloss over too many things. One thing is certain, typeface design is a long, involved process with many hours of seemingly endless tedium.”

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Friday Flickr Found Type

“Invariably, these kinds of post are couched in grandiloquence, ‘The World’s Best, most stunningly awesome typographically awe-inspiring found type.’ And although, the search engines might love it, I just can’t do it. So here’s some stuff I found that I rather like’and I hope it inspires you.”

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Letterpress From Scratch

“The letterpress printing process is one of the oldest ways of getting the printed word on to a page. It relies on a physical representation of each letter being inked and then pressed against the paper’and this is why it’s both interesting and expensive.This article looks briefly at this resurgence of interest in letterpress, why you might like it and some help to begin enjoying this fascinating pastime.”

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eXtreme Type Terminology

“Our modern English alphabet is a child of the Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet, which evolved from a western version of the Greek alphabet approximately 2,700 years ago. The profession of typography was essentially born in Germany with Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of a movable metal type printing press in the early 1450s. The individual pieces of metal type that Gutenberg worked with were not letters, but letterforms.”

Very informative article.

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15 Great Examples of Web Typography

“It may be that not all the sites listed here are to your taste, but it’s hoped that something—even a detail somewhere—will inspire you.”

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Small Caps

“Small caps are uppercase glyphs drawn at a lowercase scale. A common misconception—unfortunately reinforced by most word processing programs as well as by CSS on the web—is that a small cap is just a regular capital letter scaled uniformly down to a smaller size. In actuality, a proper small cap is a carefully crafted glyph that differs in significant ways from a uniformly-scaled-down capital letter.”

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Tutorial: The Worn/Weathered/Stamped Look

“There are quite a few quality stamped or distressed fonts available…Unfortunately ready-made stamp fonts present a number of drawbacks: repeating characters are identical (unless you have alternate glyphs), and the amount of detail is limited due to restrictions in the possible number of Bézier anchor points per glyph. To remedy this I developed a trick in Adobe Photoshop for distressing type. This technique allows you to apply a convincing stamped or weathered look to any typeface.”

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The Typography of Dexter, Serial Cover Star

A commentary on the promotional advertisements for for Dexter, the television series, and the different typographic techniques employed.

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Figuring It Out: OSF, LF, and TF Explained

“Numerals (or figures) can take various forms. The figure style you choose ought to be appropriate to the project you are working on. Readability is key. But which style is best for which purpose’ There are two main forms, oldstyle figures (OSF) and lining figures (LF). Each can come in tabular and proportional widths.”

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Taking Your Fonts to Market: Foundry, Reseller, or Go Solo’

‘I am a new type designer. What’s the best way to get my fonts on the market”

Here is the best answer I can muster, drawn from over 10 years of examining the retail font industry (in what some might call disturbing detail). This advice is intended to be as unbiased as possible, but my perspective is inevitably shaped by four years as a type director at FontShop.

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Creating an Environmentally Friendly Green Type Treatment

“With oil prices the way they are today, everybody is thinking Green… In the following Illustrator tutorial, I’ll teach you how to create a Green type treatment. It works great for logos and other design elements.”

Excellent tutorial, great use of highlights and shadows to create depth.

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Illustrate for magazines

“Illustration is a constantly changing field, especially in today’s digital age. It’s easy to modify your work quickly and efficiently by using the available tools…. Wired and Men’s Health illustrator Ronald Kurniawan shares the secrets of his artistic success, revealing how he creates his stunning editorial illustrations.”

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X-ray effects in Photoshop

 “Capturing the inner beauty of an object with an X-ray is not an easy task. Only a handful of photographers combine photography as an art form with radiology – which might have something to do with the fact that achieving the effect requires highly-specialized equipment. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t come cheap, so in this tutorial, we save you some pennies by inviting Mark Mayers to show you how to achieve a similar effect in Photoshop. “

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Magic lighting effect

“Create a nice light and magic effect.”

Simple tutorial, brilliant effect.

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Inking and Coloring the Comic Strip “The Brads”

“In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the steps of creating a comic strip using Illustrator’s Pen Tool, custom brushes and masking features. This is a fun tutorial that covers the process I use, while showcasing the comic strip I write called "The Brads."

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Top 10 Killer Photoshop Combo Moves

“Is time kickin’ your ass? Well, learn to defend yourself! Master these killer Photoshop keyboard combos and you’ll find yourself with more time for the important things (e.g. Facebook trivia questions). These combos assume you’re using Photoshop CS3 on Windows platform with default keyboard shortcuts.”

Killer moves alright!

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Filter-free art in Photoshop

“In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll create a photomontage in Adobe Photoshop CS3 using only the layer palette. Our goal is to achieve stunning results without using any of Photoshop’s filter options.”

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Super Cool Frilly Bits Typography

“In this tutorial I will show you how to mix some vectors with letters to create a really nice design.”

Another creative tutorial on fiddling with typography to create interesting effects.

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The new way to create 3D text

“Typography is huge at the moment in illustration, and 3D text is a big part of that. It literally gives the artist another dimension to play with, and the power of 3D programs provides a sense of realism that 2D typography just can’t match. This allows for seamless blending with photos and other renders. 3D text needs the right depth, lighting and texture. Nik Ainley tells you how to do this without re-rendering nightmares.”

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Speedy shatter effects

“This technique, which its creator Eric Sin calls the ‘layer duplication effect’, is perfect for creatives who need to spice up a photo in a hurry. Give your photos an edgy, shattered makeover in under an hour, using layer duplication.”

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Vivid Imagery In Modern Web Design

“By using vivid images designers can draw user’s attention, communicate a message effectively and leave a memorable first impression. Practically all websites use images in their design, but few use vivid images to achieve maximum results.”

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GunMetal Interface

“…A rather simple Photoshop tutorial.  However, it does give quite a good foundation to those who are interested in starting metallic interfaces with Photoshop… You can really do a lot with this tutorial using different shapes and methods. This is just the basic introduction, the same way that you start to learn animation with the beginner’s step of adapting the color to change under a sequence of frames.”

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Seamless compositing in Photoshop

“No matter how many tricks and shortcuts you know, Photoshop has plenty more, making complex and fiddly tasks far more straightforward. In this tutorial, Jericó Santander shows how you can make use of a few of these tricks to create a stunning surrealist-style image, giving a chameleon a Mad Max makeover and making him stalk through a mountain range.”

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Create amazing photomontages

“Perhaps because of the overtones of freshness and vitality, water-based effects are always in demand. In this tutorial, Nik Ainley provides step-by-step guidance on how to make a stunning, dynamic effect that recreates the look of a figure dissolving in water, with some clever use of Photoshop and some found images. Although the finished image appears hi-tech, it is just a very clever photomontage constructed from just two images, using relatively simple Photoshop techniques.”

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Complex Collages

Create a complicated collage using various Photoshop techniques.

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How to improve your Photoshop skills

“There’s nothing better than to play with the tool if you want to learn it…. I think the best way to learn is trying to recreate images and effects we like. Here I list my 10 tips to improve your skills in Photoshop, but they can be applied to other tools as well. “

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40 Cool Beauty Amplifying Photoshop Effects

“Beauty retouching is one of the most sought-after skills in Photoshop arts today. The techniques here are used not only on magazine covers, but in advertising campaigns, digital artwork and professional photography. Here are 40 excellent tutorials to help you add this skill to your arsenal.”

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Grid masking

“This grid masking seems like an interesting technique to take a closer look at. I’m sure there are many ways to excecute this technique and you could do this both in Illustrator or Photoshop… In my version of this technique I decided to use both Illustrator and Photoshop to my benefit and create the mask in Illustrator and then apply it on the photo(s) in Photoshop.”

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Create cool neon effects

“Whether it’s the speeded-up glow of car headlights in a night-time city scene, an alien spacecraft or a deep-sea jellyfish you’re recreating, this far-out neon look is a highly useful trick to master. It conveys a sense of movement and energy, and the colours can be tweaked to give a surprising range of effects.”

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Create a magical rainbow color flame in Photoshop

“One of the things I’ve seen around quite a bit lately is a transparent rainbow gradient effect on a dark background. It seems to me that flashy transparent gradients are in these days. They make me think about magic. Today I’ll show you how you can create a magical rainbow color flame. OK, maybe I’m using too many words in a row here, but it’s the best I can do to describe this.”

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Make an Inspiring Artistic Poster with Drawn Elements

“In this tutorial, we’ll create drawn elements, use design brushes, bring them into Photoshop, and merge them into a unique poster composition that feels hand-made, stylistically unified, and personalized. The techniques here are focused on creating an original artistic illustration.”

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How to Create a Grunge Web Design in Photoshop

“Photoshop is often the right tool for web design, especially if you’re creating a design using numerous images and brush effects. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create a complete grunge home page design. We’ll design the header, sidebar, body, footer, and style everything to work together in a heavily textured and worn design.”

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Badass Bling Effect in Photoshop

“This tutorial will show you step by step on how to create a “Badass Bling Effect” using layer styles in Photoshop. Once you create the layer style, you can easily “blingify” any layer. There is also a video tutorial as well.”

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Slow shutter 2

Shotgun Mag teaches you how to create this beautiful slow shutter text effect.

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Add Stock Textures to Images for extra ‘Oomph’

“In this little Photoshop tutorial we’ll be designing a quick art piece, then we’ll be adding some texture to it, this is to demonstrate the use of texture in artwork… Obviously this method will work better with some things and not so well with others, so please try to use it in moderation, if you will.

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Peeled Back Sticker Effect II

This tutorial shows you how to create a peeled back sticker effect using Photoshop.

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Scanline Text

This tutorial does a great job of “…teaching you how to achieve the all important glowing effect which people can’t seem to get enough of. Here we will create a style I’ve named ‘Scanline Text’ which is basically text which glows like bright scanlines, with a smart reflection as well.”

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Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshop

“For this tutorial you’ll want to find a photo of someone doing something that looks a bit larger than life.” :) Nice one!

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Funky Stickers

“This will show you how to create that slapped on sticker effect I’m sure you’ve seen popping up around the internet. It’s simple to make but looks really good in pieces of art and also on webpages for example as an image link to an RSS feed.”

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Space Lighting Effects in 10 Steps

“In this Photoshop tutorial I will show you how to create a space scene with some nice Lighting Effects in 10 Steps.”

Amazing effect.

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Luminescent Lines

“Here we will create some thin flowing lines that look as if they emit light. This technique is fairly simple and is a great way to create an abstract wallpaper or looks good integrated into another image. This tutorial will mainly explore the brush engine and you will also learn how to create custom brushes and use them effectively, combined with some interesting layer styles.”

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Retro Text

“Retro Text and Video Layers Retro text like this looks great but isn’t easy to create in Photoshop alone so here we use a mix of Photoshop and Illustrator, raster and vector to create some unique text. The second part of this tutorial explains video layers, something which is relatively new to most people. The final result will be an animated image that could be used for a web header.”

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50 Creative Photoshop Text Effects

“Learn how to soak your text in bubbles, splatter it with blood, turn it to glass, then to ice, melt it into water, grow it into grass, cut it from metal and riddle it with bullets. These 50 incredible Photoshop effects will create text that explodes from the page (or the screen).”

Yes yes, it’s more of a list than a tutorial but this was too good a list to let go!

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