TypeSlab A Beginner’s Guide to Kerning Like a Designer Have you ever looked at a word or phrase you’re typesetting and something just looked off about it? It might just be a kerning problem. Kerning refers to the amount of space between two letters (or other characters: numbers, punctuation, etc.) and the process of adjusting that space to avoid awkward-looking gaps between your letters and improve legibility. Sometimes a font’s default kerning isn’t ideal for certain letter combinations, so you’ll want to manually adjust it so the spacing between all the letters looks consistent. It’s important to note here that kerning is a visual exercise; it’s about the perceived amount of space between letters rather than the actual distance between them. Kerning involves adjusting your typography to look right rather than creating mathematically equal spacing. Type is a funny thing in that it can be a sort of optical illusion. Why You Should Add Kerning to Your Design Process Learn to Kern: 9 Pro Tips 01. • Slanted letters: A, K, V, W, Y 02. 03. 04. 05.
Top 7 Semantic Search Engines There’s no denying the power and popularity of the Google search engine, and in comparison to other similar search engines such as Bing, where results are based on page rankings and algorithms, they excel. But there are other ways to search the web, using what are known as semantic search engines. Using a semantic search engine will ensure more relevant results based on the ability to understand the definition of the word or term that is being searched for, rather than on numbers. This is a list of the top 7 search engines to get you started in the world of semantic searching. Kngine Kngine’s search results are divided into either web results, or image results. Kngine currently contains more than 8 million Concepts, and that is where the site’s strength lies. You can quickly share results from Kngine on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Delicious and Kngine can be set as your default search engine if you are using Firefox, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. Hakia [NO LONGER WORKS] Kosmix Evri
cufón - fonts for the people 7 Body Language Tricks To Make Anyone Instantly Like You There’s no question that body language is important. And, according to Leil Lowndes in her book “How To Talk To Anyone,” you can capture — and hold — anyone’s attention without even saying a word. We’ve selected the best body language techniques from the book and shared them below: The Flooding Smile “Don’t flash an immediate smile when you greet someone,” says Lowndes. Instead, pause and look at the other person’s face for a second, and then let a “big, warm, responsive smile flood over your face and overflow into your eyes.” Even though the delay is less than a second, it will convince people your smile is sincere and personalised for them. Sticky Eyes “Pretend your eyes are glued to your conversation partner’s with sticky warm taffy,” Lowndes advises. You can also try counting your conversation partner’s blinks. Epoxy Eyes In a group of people, you should watch the person you are interested in, no matter who else is talking. The Big-Baby Pivot Limit the Fidget Hang By Your Teeth
The Bézier Game You are missed — Better Humans “Something feels missing from my life but I can’t quite put my finger on it.” I can’t tell you how many times I hear some variation of that every week. (It’s a lot.) I hear it from tech entrepreneurs who are on the verge of burn out, writers who are experiencing a temporary block, photographers who are making a ton of money working with big brands, and designers who have a full plate of client work. I hear it from friends at Facebook, at Google, and at Apple. After listening to unique story after story, and each person attempting to describe what is happening in their life, it dawned on me that what was missing from every single story was very simple. “You are missing from your own story,” I said aloud to my friend the other day. He paused mid-sentence and thought about my observation. “I have stopped writing,” he said. “How much time do you spend with yourself?” “Close to none,” he said. “You are disconnected from yourself,” I said. 1) Morning pages. This morning I feel… My soul longs to…
Griddify, a Tiny Photoshop Panel for Guides and Grids Griddify is tiny and fast. It helps you compose custom grid systems, vertical rhythm, and do a bunch of other stuff with guides in photoshop. Watch the short tutorial to learn how it works: Download and Install (Photoshop CC) Download and install ZXPInstaller. Download and Install (Photoshop CS6) Download the CS6 version of Griddify here and extract the zip file. Gutters in divide I’ve added one more feature to Griddify since recording the video, so it’s not demoed there. Issues regarding Photoshop CS6 HTML panels in Photoshop CS6 don’t work as well as they do in Photoshop CC, because CC uses an embedded version of Chromium to render HTML content while CS6 uses Flash, which is significantly less stable. What about CS4/5? For Griddify to work on CS4/5, its HTML code should be wrapped in a Flex application. Source Code Griddify is free and open-source.