zomigi.com » freebies http://zomigi.com The professional blog of Zoe Mickley Gillenwater Thu, 10 May 2012 16:30:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Free samples of Stunning CSS3 http://zomigi.com/blog/free-samples-of-stunning-css3/ http://zomigi.com/blog/free-samples-of-stunning-css3/#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:45:23 +0000 Zoe Gillenwater http://zomigi.com/?p=472 Stunning CSS3: A Project-based Guide to the Latest in CSS, by downloading extensive excerpts from Chapter 2 and Chapter 6.]]> Have you checked out the companion site for my new book Stunning CSS3: A Project-based Guide to the Latest in CSS? There’s a new addition there: two free sample PDFs with extensive excerpts from Chapter 2 and Chapter 6.

Chapter 2 is titled “Speech Bubbles” and it teaches you exactly that: how to make speech bubbles with pure CSS and no images. The excerpt covers word-wrap, generated content, border-radius, and HSLA/RGBA for semi-transparent backgrounds. The rest of the chapter covers linear-gradient, box-shadow, text-shadow, and transform.

Around the same time I was writing this chapter, Nicolas Gallagher posted an excellent demo on creating speech bubbles with CSS3 too, which I saw later. It’s definitely worth checking out as well. Great inspiration.

Chapter 6 is titled “Different Screen Size, Different Design” and teaches you how to restyle an entire page layout to work with different screen sizes using media queries and multi-columns. You can see the example site used in chapter 6, as well as other real web sites using responsive layouts, at my blog post “Examples of flexible layouts with CSS3 media queries.”

If these samples whet your appetite, you can also see a brief table of contents, images of some of the book’s pages, and links to related resources. And of course, if you’d like to buy the book, there are links to a number of sources in the sidebar of the Stunning CSS3 site.

Learn away!

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]]> http://zomigi.com/blog/free-samples-of-stunning-css3/feed/ 1 333 free handwriting and hand-drawn symbol fonts http://zomigi.com/blog/333-free-handwriting-and-hand-drawn-symbol-fonts/ http://zomigi.com/blog/333-free-handwriting-and-hand-drawn-symbol-fonts/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:50:57 +0000 Zoe Gillenwater http://zomigi.com/?p=230 I’m currently designing a logo where the client wants to use a font that looks handwritten and fun, but still professional and sophisticated. I’m not a big fan of most handwriting fonts, as they are often too messy or cutesy looking to do anything practical with them. It’s been a struggle to find something I think will work.

Luckily, I ran into a large source of free handwriting fonts called Fonts for Peas, part of the kevin & amanda blog. These are fonts that are meant to be used for scrapbooking, family blogs, and the like, so most of them are pretty cutesy. But, with 333 to currently choose from, you’re bound to find a few that you could use. All of the handwriting fonts are based on actual handwriting samples that readers of the blog send in, so they’re pretty diverse. I downloaded a couple dozen myself and am excited to try them in my logo comps.

Jane Austen quotations set in Pea Bandit, Pea Mystie Caps, and Pea Anderson.

Jane Austen quotations set in Pea Bandit, Pea Mystie Caps, and Pea Anderson.

Mixed in with the handwriting fonts are a few hand-drawn symbol fonts that would make nice icons. There’s also another section of the site called Free Scrapbook Fonts that currently has over 100 decorative fonts to choose from.

Now, I know these aren’t very high quality fonts, in terms of kerning and metrics and ligatures and all those things that make a professional font a professional font. But, I think many of them will work in small doses, especially if you’re going to be manually kerning and tweaking them yourself.

These fonts are free for personal use, and you can use them for free commercially if you display a button linking back to the site. If you don’t want to do this, you can buy a single-font license for $10. (That’s what I’ll be doing if I end up using a font in the logo I’m working on.) Read all the details in the terms of use.

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