kian ryan - code, photography, bob » Uncategorized

Because Good (Free) Fonts Are So Hard To Find

kianryan — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:46:05 +0000

Those who have to dip their toes into the life of a designer once every so often understand the importance of typography. One of the hard parts of typography is finding the right typeface that isn’t going to break your piggy bank (or your client’s piggy bank).

This morning Tamara pointed me to Font Squirrel . To quote from Font Squirrel’s website:

” We know how hard it is to find quality freeware that is licensed for commercial work. We’ve done the hard work, hand-selecting these typefaces and presenting them in an easy-to-use format.

It’s a simple directory of excellent, high quality, free fonts. Well done guys and keep up the good work.

Bob In Sheffield

kianryan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:33:13 +0000

At BarCamp Sheffield we were asked to create a tag cloud to represent our interests. Rather than quickly doodle one out at the venue, I took a blank back with me on the Friday evening to my hotel and drew one in Bob instead. A few people have asked me to post the tag cloud so here you go.

And indeed photographic proof that it was “worn”:

(From ianibbo’s Flickr stream)

Beefing up Mail.app

kianryan — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 12:06:52 +0000

Mac OS X’s default mail browser, Mail.app, is a pretty straightforward e-mail client with a few bells and whistles. But for those coming across from e-mail clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook, especially from daily workflows that revolve around e-mail, they may find the out-the-box functionality a little lacking. Cleverly Mail.app is easily extendible using a plugin-in interface, so you can just simply add the functionality you require. The list below are my minimum requirements to make Mail.app workable. All are free in one respect or another. Your mileage may vary.

WideMail

http://www.daneharnett.com/widemail/

Why waste screen real-estate on a widescreen laptop monitor with Mail.app’s preview pane situated below your mail list? This plug-in switches the layout to three vertical panes: mailboxes, mails, preview which makes much better use of the available space.

Mail Badger

http://www.tonyallevato.com/node/1

This is infinitely useful you have mail coming in from multiple sources, or want to keep track of specific incoming mail, etc. It replaces the in-built badge functionality and lets you create little badges on your dock icon to count mail based on user-defined rules. Absolute brilliance. As an example I use one rule to count the number of mail coming from known client addresses, and another to count mail coming from my social networks. One I have to keep an eye on, the other is just there for my own interest.

Caius – points out that there’s an alternative to Mail Badger in Dockstar. Unlike Mail Badger, Dockstar is a paid for application and offers greater display options than Mail Badger. Mail Badger also occasionally throws a wobbly and causes Mail.app to crash. I’ve not heard anyone report this same behavior from Dockstar.

SignatureProfiler

http://www.littleknownsoftware.com/sigpro/

Pretty straightforward, multiple identities, multiple signatures. Mail to clients does not warrant the same signature as mail to friends. This functionality should really be built into Mail.app itself but there you go. SignatureProfiler remedies the situation elegantly.