This is not the surprise I was talking about but more of an idea I had this week end while working on some of my themes. I thought it could be cool if there was a website (maybe there is actually but I’m not aware of it) where I could check right away in just one or two clicks how a font I want to use looks like in different sizes and on different browsers and OS (Mac OS X, windows, etc..).

So I made this site called “test your fonts“. A simple site where you can choose among the 17 most used fonts of the web and see how they render in their main variants and sizes. As stated on the site, the goal was not in any way to compete with the very complete and powerful “Typetester“. The idea is more to have something simple and fast where you can check on the fly your different type options. The original intent was to make it a personal tool but I bet that some of my fellow designers will be interested by it. Anyway, feel free to use it because…It’s free ;)

I’ve got a bit of spare time today and while I was doing some drawing with photoshop (yes another wordpress template.), I thought that the patterns I made and use all the time could be handy for some you. I’m not talking about fancy ones here but more of those stripes/grids ones that you see all the time in modern designs. here is how they look like and you’ll see what i’m talking about:

To install them, just download the zip file, extract and double-click the .pat file. They’ll be installed right away in photoshop.
Download and have fun ;)

I haven’t posted in a while not (only) because I have nothing to say but more because of my ever busy life. The themes are progressing very slowly at the moment but I hope to find some time soon to finish some of them.

Anyway, today’s post topic is about wordpress design. While some great themes are available, the most beautiful and unique designs are usually nowhere to be found. Why? mainly because designers keep them for themselves ;). I ‘m sure there are quite a few out there (that I don’t know about) and I thought it would be a great idea to post a list of what you consider to be the best (design wise) wordpress powered sites . To get it started, here is my personal list below. If you know any other please post the links on the comments. Read the rest of this entry »

I said on a previous post that I was preparing a surprise for the end of this week. Unfortunately, I ‘ve got some other stuff (family and my daily job) to take care of and I won’t be able to deliver my surprise this week. On top of that I’ll be away for the entire week end. That means that I have to postpone untill next week. Sorry about that.

On a side note, for the one that are not yet aware of it, swfIR was just announced. SwfIR is pretty much like sIFR (a flash based font replacement) but for images. AS stated on the site:

swfIR (swf Image Replacement) is here to solve some of the design limitations of the standard HTML image and its widely-accepted associated CSS values, while still supporting standards-based design concepts. Using the dark arts of JavaScript and Flash, swfIR gives you the ability to apply an assortment of visual effects to any or all images on your website.

Go take a look at the site, it has plenty of examples of what swfIR can do and it’s worth it.