DTG News and Else
DT&G:   Vol. 18, Number 10,   October, 2008   ~   The eZine for Design, Typography, & Graphics   (since 1990)  

October:

Fonts Typography and Type Festival

The 14th Annual Fall Fonts Festival continues this month, but we've also opened the holidays with some rather special pop-up greeting cards and some great gift ideas in the &Else department. The big news for Adobe users is the new CS4, so we've also included a pricing guide for those who want to bleed a little on the edge!

OCTOBER TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. October 2008:
  2. Letterforms that shaped a generation
  3. A Brief History of Typography
  4. Book Fonts: What and Why
  5. If you only had ONE FONT
  6. Fred's Famous Fonts Surf for 2008
  7. Designers stories: Fonts & Type?
  8. Adobe Photoshop CS4: New Features
  9. Adobe Creative Suite 4: what will it cost?
  10. Photoshop Madness... political jokes, CS4, vids and more...
  11. Gerald Gallo Fonts for 2008
  12. Text on a Path with PagePlus
  13. Reviews: High Dynamic Range Imaging
  14. Reviews: Art Directors Toolkit
  15. Business: New Product Blueprinting
  16. Photography: ImageFramer custom image framing
  17. Reader Site of the Month:
  18. Got iPhone? Turn your photos to paintings
  19. Opening of the Holidays Prizes
  20. Gift idea: Font & Type Fantasy
  21. Gift idea: Pop-up Cards Magnifici
  22. &ELSE... freebies and cool stuff

Showker to judge in Wiley Design Challenge

-- DTG's Fred Showker will be serving on the Judges Panel for the launch of John Wiley & Sons' Wiley Design Challenge, a book cover design contest that will run through October 31, 2008. Artists are invited to submit designs for the third edition of Al Ward's book Photoshop for Right-Brainers. Lots of prizes and fun for all in the Wiley Design Challenge

Letterforms that shaped a generation

If you ever rocked out at a concert by the Doors, New Riders or Commander Cody in the San Fran bay area back in the day, then you already know Thomas Morris -- he created the concert posters! Today, he's still producing breath-taking graphics and superb typographic creations and we're going to take a little field trip to his studio ... Thomas Morris Design

A Brief History of Typography

After teaching typography for years, We were pleased to find this essay by Thomas W. Phinney because of its accuracy. With permission, have taken the liberty of enhancing the texts, adding links and updating links that had gone dead. Part 1 of this essay will help all graphic designers learn and understand the History of Typography

Book Fonts: What and Why

Typography expert David Bergsland talks about book fonts and why their readability, legibility, smooth type color and other characteristics are important to designers. We also show you some samples of David's just-released "Amitale" book font. Follow along as we answer the question What are Book Fonts, why do we need them

If you only had ONE FONT

DTG went into Fred's LinkedIN network and asked this question: "If you could have only one font, which would it be and why?" These are just some of the responses we got. Some are thoughtful, some are crazy, all are enjoyable to read ... If you only had ONE FONT

Fred's Famous Fonts Surf for 2008

In this year's surf we'll design some cool stuff with typography, introduce you to Linotype's Font Explorer; see how to prune excess fonts in OS X; check out a series of very cool tutorials, visit a Free Grungy Font Resource and look in on the foundries of some very special font creators. Oh, and all along the way, we'll see some fun and unique fonts! If you did not see it last month, go here... or join in the action at 2008 Fall Fonts Surf, Part 2

Designers stories: Fonts & Type?

For our Fall Fonts Festival we asked DTG readers to share some of their own personal insights into finding and using fonts. This is a particularly good group of submissions -- all of which win prizes -- on the overall genre of Fonts: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Adobe Photoshop CS4: New Features

Time to learn new stuff... like the ll new: Masks panel; Content-Aware Scaling; Adjustments panel; Auto-blending of images; Smoother panning and zooming and fluid canvas rotation; Auto-alignment of layers; Extended depth of field; Lightroom workflow; Better raw image processing; and a lot more!

* If you upgrade from our links on this page, show us your receipt and we'll send out our favorite new Photoshop CS4 book, as a gift for supporting the Design Center! (U.S. Only)Just a few of the new Adobe Photoshop CS4 features

Adobe Creative Suite 4: what will it cost?

Okay, here you go! It's that time again, and it's going to cost $$$. Since most of our readers already one or another version of Adobe Creative Suite here's what it will cost you to upgrade to CS4. We're also showing Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac, and Adobe Elements 7 for Windows because they may be viable alternatives. You may as well go ahead and buy now. You know you won't have any money after the holidays! Read them and weep

Photoshop Madness... political jokes, CS4, vids and more...

Creative Photoshop on the election trail ... and more: * Sneak Photoshop CS4 * Color Photo Transitions * Perfect digital skin * Bert Monroy doing Shadows * visit a makeover site * Quantitative Research * Altering Color * color correction problems and * free Photo Frames you can download! Yes, it's the wonderful world of Photoshop Madness

Gerald Gallo Fonts for 2008

Jerry has added more than 138 new fonts to the Gallo collection since we first met him way back in the Fonts Festival of 1998. This year he brings us three new ding-bats fonts, and a collection of Gothic titling and initial caps... Gallo presents Gothic Initials and Floral Pictograms

Text on a Path with PagePlus

A lot of people think you have to purchase Adobe InDesign or Quark XPress to get all the features available to desktop publishers, but as we discover more and more powers in PagePlus X3 we're beginning to think there's a third choice! In this brief tutorial, we'll show you how simple it is to use PagePlus for Text on a Path

Reviews: High Dynamic Range Imaging

How to Capture the Beauty of Infrared Imagery - In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. Practical HDRI

Reviews: Art Directors Toolkit

If you're a professional publisher, or deal with color printing of any kind, then you know you need to stay up to date with Pantone Color System. The PANTONE GOE System has been gaining popularity and artists have been asking for ways to integrate it into their workflow. Now you can hook right in

Business: New Product Blueprinting

Dan Adams says the only way to win in tough times is through organic growth. Companies must consistently come up with differentiated new products customers want to buy--and that means finding clarity in the "fuzzy front end" of the process.Important reading for Design and Marketing managers

Photography: ImageFramer custom image framing

This little gem can save hours and hours. Yes, we've known how to do this in Adobe Photoshop for years. But what ImageFramer does, are dozens of Photoshop steps instantly. Apply photo-realistic frames to digital images, drawings or any original artwork plus watermarks, batch processing Add a little class to your photos!

Reader Site of the Month:

This month's cool web site offers a heaping helping of real eye-candy and inspiration. It's the home of designer Mark Munchrath, who creates some rather nice art! We liked the car renderings including the rear end of a 58 Cadillac done in Photoshop CS2. Looks like a photograph -- chrome, highlights etc. Take a look! (See: http://mmunchrath.com/caddy2.html) ... What you can dream, he can do

Got iPhone? Turn your photos to paintings

Here's a very nifty utility for you iPhone users -- Gesture lets you create digital paintings from your photos simply by dragging your finger over the photo. How cool is that? I've got to get me one of those iPhones! It's called: Gesture

Opening of the Holidays Prizes

The holidays are coming, and once again we'll be awarding prizes for your favorite holiday promotion ideas, cards, graphics, and gifts. If you're designing a holiday promo for your client, we'd like to look over your shoulder. You can win some pretty swell prizes, just for participating... Post it here

Gift idea: Font & Type Fantasy

THE SERIF FAIRY has lost her wing, keeping her from performing magic. This is an amazing book for type aficionados and their children created by Rene Siegfried using typography and letter forms exclusively to create the playful illustrations. Then we look at "Hand Job: A Catalog of Type" that focuses on hand lettered typography for those sick and tired of seeing computer type! Two books you'll really like Font & Type Fantasy

Gift idea: Pop-up Cards Magnifici

Giovanni Russo Grafico is a design firm in Italy who first created in 1992. Although not a new idea, having been practiced in China for centuries, the pop-up postcards method and technique (called Biglietti a Rilievo translated: relief postcards) is so special they were awarded a patent in 1993. Come along and meet Giovanni Russo and discover why we call it Pop-up Cards Magnifici

&ELSE... freebies and cool stuff

This month's &Else includes: * Online TV Doubles * Statistics? Who understands them? * Practical HDRI * Master the Canon EOS 40D * Digital Comics on your iPhone iPod Touch * Tables Spread Sheets for Mac * WriteRoom for iPhone * MyWeather Mobile * iPod Access Photo * Create Cookbooks with TasteBook and MacGourmet ... and a dozen others! News, Reviews &Else!

Photoshop 911 Celebrities

You just never know who is going to show up in the Photoshop 911 forums. Interestingly enough, the REAL gurus do frequent the forum -- but they seldom post. They're snooping for content ideas! Well, one shining star showed up the other day, and we're thrilled to see Tim Shelbourne actually posting! (You've read Tim's masterful Photoshop articles in DTG in the past, and he's authored a whole pile of books on image editing and Photoshop!)

So, If you're not a member yet, you may be missing some valuable help from all the pros in the Photoshop 911 Forum

Holidays are coming...

Fonts Festival We're looking for your favorite holiday designs... promotions... graphics and art ideas. During November and December we'd like to share your favorites with DTG readers Pour your thoughts into the creative mill and we'll all have a great time! Remember: contributions we use will bring gifts to your mail box! So don't be bashful: Just join in the fun

Here we are... then the Holidays

Amazingly, a number of readers have started following my escapades on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Ning, Del.icio.us and others. They frequently ask why I use the "Here we are" theme in my photo albums. So, I'll share it with all of you:
The immortal words of the song "Here We Are"
... symbolizes the emotion that life is good, we keep on discovering new things, and after 20 years online, and the 14th Annual Fonts Festival,
who would have thought this game, this flame would still be burning? But here we are!

The Publishers' Warehouse is open and they've added several hundred new clip art images, fonts, and other stuff for your downloading pleasure. Stop in. If you don't know the directions, you can just ask

For now, have a great time in the October DTG ... Don't forget to stay in touch, and we hope to see your type

thanks for reading...

Fred Showker

Fred Showker, Editor / Publisher, DT&G Magazine

A Thought for October is about political candidates...

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer,
    but the right answer.
      Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past.
        Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
                -- John F. Kennedy

PS: if you've made it this far, excellent! The Publishers Warehouse have been very busy getting ready for Halloween this month, carving lots of pumpkins! So, pumpkins is where you'll find them! ?

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