Sometimes it’s easy to quickly overlook serif fonts in graphic design. At least I do. There’s just something in your head that always says “Times New Roman” and you want to get as far away as possible.  Lately, though, I’ve been finding a place for serif fonts and learning to appreciate their unique characteristics and what makes them look so nice. I’ve actually been a little obsessed with Droid Serif lately.  It’s such a clean, well conceived font.  Here are a few free serif fonts to download and try with your next design.

Droid Serif

Goudy Bookletter 1911

Liberation

Mido

Calluna

There are numerous resources out there with design elements for the iPhone and iPad.  I’ve looked through quite a few and selected a few of my favorite and a few that I believe will be of greatest value to anyone designing an app. You should have just about all you need to get started on your own app.

Enjoy this collection.

iPhone GUI 3.0

Free iPhone Toolbar icons

Glyphish

Free Vector Icons

Hand Gesture Icons

Sometimes a nice pre-made grunge font is just what you need in you’re design.  I’ve selected seven of my favorites from the website dafont.com.  All are free, but have some usability rights so make sure to check the documentation when you download. Click on the title above each image to navigate to the download page.

Enjoy.

A subtle change has been made to the look of our blog.  Did you notice when you looked at it today?  The change is in the fonts used for the headings on our site.  They’re different.  Recently, I came across a company/website called Typekit that allows you to use fonts from their type foundry (legally) on your site.  It’s simple to use and looks pretty cool.  The best part is the ability to use nonstandard fonts to make a site look better.

First, you need to sign up for an account at www.typekit.com.  There is a free version and several different paid options.  For the Blueprint for Design site I chose the free version which places a fairly unobtrusive link in the bottom right of the browser window.  Check it out down there.  Clicking it will first take you to a page that shows the font(s) we are using. Then, obviously, it has links to their site.  I like that it doesn’t take the browser right to Typekit’s website.  It actually provides some useful information, then gives the user the option to proceed further.

Next, for our site, since we use WordPress, I simply installed the Typekit plug-in and added the embed code provided by Typekit’s website.

In our case, I wanted to change every bit of text that had the <h2> selector associated with it.  So, I chose the font I wanted, told it that the selector was <h2>, hit publish and presto, our site had the new font.  It took only 5 minutes to set up.

Here are a few screen shots of the font selection portion of the site and the editor. (Click images to view larger.)

As a graphic designer I’m always on the lookout for free and cool fonts to use.  Check out this collection that contains five of my favorite free sans-serif type faces.  Clicking on the picture will navigate you to the download location.

Quicksand by Andrew Paglinawan – a free sans serf face with 7 weights – including a dashed version.

This strong, angular typeface is ideal for headings. It features 96 of the most commonly used glyphs (characters).

League Gothic is a revival of an old classic, and one of our favorite typefaces, Alternate Gothic No.1. It was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders Company (ATF) in 1903. The company went bankrupt in 1993. And since the original typeface was created before 1923, the typeface is in the public domain.

Simple, clean typeface with 2 weights and a condensed version.

Note from the author

Here is the latest update of Sansation.

• improved spacing
• improved kerning
• added more glyphs
• two additional weights

It seems like 90% of the print design pieces I create are mailed out by the client.  In order to make my life easier, along with the clients, I created a couple of “cheat sheets” that list envelope sizes and the suggested size for the inserts.  For now, I’ve set up a sheet for ‘#’ sized envelopes and a sheet for ‘A’ sized envelopes.

Note: these dimensions should be checked.  Each paper company, envelope company or printer could potentially use different sizes.

• Download a PDF with guidelines for # Sized Envelopes
• Download a PDF with guidelines for A Sized Envelopes

Thumbnail photo courtesy of abbyladybug.