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Buttermilk, by Jessica Hische

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I rarely get the opportunity to use script fonts. My dabbling in the geometric hand has, for the last ten years, been limited to IDs (see Frances Schultz) and Holiday Cards. For the most part, when hand-written fonts are used, I opt instead for the handwriting of calligraphers and illustrators within our network. Actually, the only deviation that I can think of was when we designed the Target Holiday Boat, in NYC’s Chelsea Piers, and that was a gross overuse of House Industries’ League Night (from the House-a-rama collection). And while I still absolutely love that face, which resembles more of  a hoe-down than a bowling jersey, Ms. Hische’s work has always inspired me to get in touch with the feminine fontographer inside of me. Buttermilk, as well, churns this feeling. As a result of my vulnerability in this catharsis, I believe you should buy Buttermilk and as a gift for all your clients prior to the upcoming holiday season, so that they may, in turn, return to you to design their holiday cards and identities.

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Smoking Screen

I received a few comments when I uploaded the scotch tape people, from [d]online readers that were fascinated by anthropomorphism; specifically that which was derived by pliable, changing media. In that tradition, I was captivated by the (age-old) idea of revealing messages in smoke. And while this isn’t exactly novel, it re-illuminated my imagination for the idea.

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Click the image to see other examples of this treatment. Where else have you enjoyed this style? Which applications show it the best? Which ones do you find quite lacking?

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Facebook announces Fanboxes

fanboxFacebook and site developers/promoters as well as those keen on social networking for their business/band were excited to learn of the launch of “fanboxes” to drive traffic directly to their Facebook professional service page. Now, people wishing to take advantage of their social network and drive traffic to become their fans have a much simpler/easier process for doing this. In the past, you had to say “Log-in to Facebook, search for [company name], and from the results look for the one that has our logo and says ‘professional service’ below it.” Next Monday, Facebook will remove the restrictions on adding usernames to Pages. But Wednesday, they’ve announced the Fanbox:

Over 8 million users become fans of Facebook Pages every day to connect with their favorite public figures and organizations and get updates directly in their streams. Now, users can connect with brands, musicians, celebrities, businesses, and more, whether they’re on or off Facebook.

Today, we’re excited to launch the Fan Box, a Facebook Connect-enabled social widget that Page owners can add to their websites to allow users to fan and view the accompanying Facebook Page stream. With the Fan Box, brands can bring content from their Facebook Page into their website and help convert website visitors into Facebook fans. Users can view the most recent posts from the Page, see a list of other fans (including their friends), and, most importantly, become a fan without leaving the site. Additionally, if a user visits the site and isn’t logged in to Facebook, the user can log in and become a fan directly inline as well.

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of putting together a tutorial to teach [d]online readers how to implement a Fanbox into their site. If this is something you might be interested in reading, please drop a few comments and I’d be happy to oblige. If there isn’t much interest, I’ll go to Coney Island instead. Ta!

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PatchMatch

Now I did fairly decent at math in high school and college. Senior year of PNHS, I dropped out of calculus to start a TV show for my activity period, rather than carry the ones and distribute irrational numbers. Since then, I keep wondering what sort of amazing magic I could’ve learned had I actually sat through Pete Jarrod’s lectures. In my mind, calculus could teach me to build coral castles and geodesic domes.

Thanks for the link, Zé.
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Illustrated Horror Film Posters

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Well Medicated has a great list of 100 Illustrated Horror Film posters, many of which were quite frightening memories form my childhood. It’s fascinating to see the influence of fine art on film promotion and some lasting images and metaphors (see Road Games) that still hold strong today.

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Synesthesia

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Terri Timely, director and creator of Synesthesia, brings us this Terry-Gilliamesque conflation of man and machinery in a chaotic world where music melds melodically with food, literature and even ourselves. Watch this short film for the beauty and color of each shot, and pull your own hypothesises from it. Or follow him on is photolog (plog?) here.

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Flash Indexing with External Resource Loading

flashFrom Google’s Webmaster Central:
We just added external resource loading to our Flash indexing capabilities. This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file—whether it’s text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.—we can index this external content too, and associate it with the parent SWF file and any documents that embed it.

This new capability improves search quality by allowing relevant content contained in external resources to appear in response to users’ queries. For example, this result currently comes up in response to the query [2002 VW Transporter 888]:

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Read the entire story, here»