FireflyStream.com

FontStruct is a new online font creation tool from font seller FontShop that was officially launched last week. The site combines a Flash-based font maker (the Fontstructor) with a community site built around sharing, discussing, and building off of those fonts. FontStruct is free to use, as are all the fonts created using it.

Creating fonts has never been a cheap endeavor. FontLab's Fontographer software costs about $350, while their FontLab Studio product costs over $600. Even their basic TypeTool product requires a $100 investment, and the FontCreator program from competitor High-Logic costs about $80. All rather pricey for someone who just wants to fool around and create a few fonts for fun.

Slide out and drawer effect

The effect is commonly known as an ‘accordion' and it's usually used to slide up, or down blocks of content to expose new blocks. The Apple web site is a great demonstration of this effect in action, where the mouse settles on the title of the 'section' and the associated links are exposed. What makes this effect particularly cool, is that the drawers maintain a fixed height and slide between restricted area.

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Designing blogs is easy. Designing blogs in a unique way is hard. Whatever blog engine you are using, there are literally thousands of templates available which you can apply directly, without any significant code modifications. That's efficient, but it's not creative, because using a default blog-template you risk to end up with some wide-spread look which has actually nothing to do with you. To convey your personality effectively, you need a design which reflects who you are and what you are doing. That's why important is not just what you post, but also how you post it.

In fact, beyond the template-design-culture exists a field of creative, individual and impressive blog designs. And the good thing about it is that this field has been rapidly growing over the last years. To celebrate the creativity of blog designers we regularly present reviews of excellent blog designs we have stumbled upon recently. This post is no exception. Below you'll find 50 further examples of excellent, unique and impressive blog designs.

Narfstuff

Perfect integration of visual elements in a standard 2-column blog structure. Artwork.

A few months ago I posted a collection of beautifully colorful websites, and I wanted to follow up with 25 more sites that provide excellent inspiration when working with colors. The 25 sites displayed here use a wide variety of design styles, but all make effective use of color to create a fabulous look that leaves an impact on visitors.

Global Oneness Project

Web designers and graphic designers are always looking for new sources of design inspiration. Of course, many of us turn to CSS galleries, and there are even more sources of offline inspiration. Personally, I find the work in many Flickr groups to be another excellent source of inspiration. Aside from the billions of photos on Flickr, there are also some groups that have been established to showcase the work of designers. Here is a look at 99 of them according to category (about half of them are general graphic design groups). Below the link to each group you'll see the number of members and the number of items (pictures, graphics, screenshots, etc.) that have been submitted to the group, plus I have included part of the group description as listed by the moderator.

Illustration is a very popular trend in web design. These groups will provide some excellent inspiration and ideas that can be incorporated into your work.

Illustration

8,928 members - 80,525 items

For illustrators and lovers of illustration.

Last month I published a collection of 45 Photoshop Tutorials for Better Navigation, which quickly became one of the most popular posts on this blog. Due to the response, I spent some time finding more great Photoshop tutorials. Here are 50 of the best tutorials for working with text.

Create a Spectacular Flaming Meteor Effect on Text

After reading "5 Steps To CSS Heaven" over at pingmag.jp, and disagreeing with some of what was said I thought that writing this would be appropriate. I've been writing CSS professionally now for about 2.5 years so here are 5 quick tips that help me out in my day to day work. I wouldn't call them best practices because everybody has a style that works for them, but these are what work best for me.