Top Ten Type Crimes...

Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio, is a typographic consultant, designer and writer specializing in all aspects of typographic communication has written an in-depth article for Monotype Imaging in regard to the Top 10 Type Crimes, excerpt from the article:

Are you a type criminal? Don’t be afraid to confess; the type police won’t come knocking at your door in the middle of the night. Even the most seasoned designers can commit an occasional type crime, by accident or inattention. If good typography is important to you, knowing and recognizing the “ten most wanted” type crimes will help make your projects stay on the right side of the law...

I highly recommend you read the in-depth article for yourself, here - perhaps you've been committing type crime(s) without evening knowing it! ;)

Cheers!

Recommended | PS3 - Metal Gear Solid 4...

One of the coolest gifts I've ever received was a PS3 (this past birthday, from my younger brother and eldest sister). I was initially in shock when I opened the package and was actually somewhat dismayed, my initial thoughts were, Great! How am I ever going to be able to save any money now? I'm going to need to buy a new HD TV, start purchasing Blu-ray discs to add to my (rather large) collection of movies, and PS3 games... ;) j/k. I can't thank them enough for the gift!

Anyhow, lately I've been trying to play through Metal Gear Solid 4 - Guns of the Patriots, and I have to say it's an amazing game... not only are the graphics, and movie-like, cut-scenes super cool, there's so much depth to the game it's ridiculous. It's not your typical action game, where running around like a maniac and shooting up everything in sight will work. This game is all about stealth and strategy.

I'm sure that opinions will vary, as some of the cut-scenes are rather lengthy, but the cut-scenes really add to the overall development of the story. I might be biased as I've been a fan of Hideo Kojima and the MGS series since first playing it on PSone. I'd highly recommend MGS4 for anyone looking for a challenge on their PS3, if you're playing through and need some hints, go and visit the MGS4 page on WikiCheats (a great online resource for video game tutorials and walkthroughs)- cheers!

Image via WikiCheats

Super Fast and Easy Facial Retouching via PSDTUTS...

I've been holding onto this tutorial for some time now... partially in fear of a massive onslaught of family requests for photo/portrait retouching. But, I did think that it was worth sharing... learn more about Super Fast and Easy Facial Retouching and more via PSDTUTS here.

Thanks to Raelene Hanna for sending me the link - cheers!

Recommended | Free Rice... for the UN World Food Program

With the many recent natural disasters and war(s) making the news headlines on a daily basis, it's refreshing to see something online which could potentially make a real difference. www.freerice.com is a website which combines vocabulary training with the giving of rice.

The concept is simple, for every word that you get right, they'll donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program... to date, 31,214,178,130 grains (over 31 billion grains) of rice have been donated. I have to say that the game itself is rather addicting, and you could easily spend an afternoon expanding your vocabulary while donating to a worthy cause. I suggest you give it a try for yourself... I'm sure that you'll manage to donate at least 20 grains of rice! Visit http://www.freerice.com/ - enjoy!

Thanks to Rick Strong for posting this link to the GDC Listserve - cheers!

Recommended | The 50 Most Popular Web Design Blog Posts, Resources & Cheat Sheets of 2007

WOW! I recently came across this blog posting on Crestock, via SpeakUp and I highly recommend that you check it out. There's a wealth of information available across a wide range of topics ranging from basic theory, colour, typography, CSS, photo editing and more... check out the blog posting here.

'Diorama Model' Photo Effect Tutorial...

Further to my previous post about the work of Ben Thomas - City Shrinker, Flickr user 'hallbuzz.com' has created a tutorial for creating a similar effect using your photo-editing software of choice. You can see the Flickr discussion here and the original tutorial with more examples at http://hallbuzz.com/dioramas/dioramas.htm - thanks to 'hallbuzz.com' for sharing the technique, cheers!