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Fonts are a very powerful, individual way to present content. They influence our perception and how we interpret a content. Typography is very popular today, especially in a synergy with responsive web design, which has its own rules. There’s a plethora of free fonts available online. Just have a look at the huge Google Fonts directory that (currently) provides 671 fonts. Those can’t be edited, however. So, if you want to modify an existing font or create a font from scratch, this is the wrong place. There are, however, some tools that have specialized in modifying existing fonts and creating new ones. Today, we’ll show you some of them. 1. FontArk FontArk is a browser-based font editor that creates new fonts. FontArk allows you to import templates or create completely new fonts. It provides a good video tutorial, which explains each function and how to get good results. It goes without saying that you’ll need a training period for good results. You can try out the font editor without having a user account; however, to unlock all functions you’ll need to log in. Registration is required if you want to save and use your work. OAuth registration via Facebook is […]

Hiring decisions can spell the difference between the success and failure of a project. That’s why it’s important that you get the best candidate for the job. Take as much time as you need. Don’t hire right away. Wait until you hire the right one.

Keep this mind, whether you’re on the lookout for a dedicated designer or a freelancer. Don’t quite know when to pick a freelance graphic designer over a dedicated one and vice versa? Here are some tips to point you in the right direction.

Deliverables schedule

In an article on LinkedIn about freelance writers, the author says that finding out “how often you’ll need new content may be the deciding factor in hiring a freelancer.” The same logic applies if you’re considering the services of a freelance web designer. Do you need new visual content supplied to you on a regular basis? When you say regular, do you really mean once a month or on a weekly basis?

If you just need new content occasionally, then keeping a dedicated person or team on the payroll, just to handle the work, is a tad wasteful. If this is all you need, hiring a freelancer is your best option. Sites like Designhill make this easy and convenient for you.

Advantages of hiring freelancers

Going for the services of a freelance graphic designer at Designhill means you won’t have to pay for benefits, insurance and taxes to get the design you need. There are no sick leaves or vacation leaves to worry about either. This is especially true if you only need a couple of one-offs, like a logo design, perhaps, or a remake on your existing site design. After that, the deal’s done and you both go your separate ways.

In the article “Should I Hire a Freelancer or Employee?” posted on the Coworks site, one section mentions another advantage to hiring a freelancer, over a dedicated one. You can get freelance graphic web designers based on the skill set or specialty you need. With this, you won’t have to find and hire the multi-disciplinary—the jack of all trades—designer. Designers with technical know-how in as many fields or types of design work as possible sound like a godsend. But they rarely fall at your feet in batches. At best, you’ll end up with one who’s good at four out of six or two out of four. Getting a designer who specializes in logo design or front-end applications is the next best thing because it does away with all that.

Also, the really best ones command a hefty fee. This isn’t ideal if you’re working on a budget.

Perks of a dedicated designer

However, if you need visual content pretty regularly—that covers daily to weekly deliverables—you might want to take on the idea of hiring a dedicated designer for that. In this case, you’re definitely going to need a bigger budget. But you can count on a couple of handy perks to offset the expense. Since hiring dedicated designers mean you share the same office space with them every day, they also get to have a hand in the office culture and team you’re building. Built on trust and honesty, professional relationships like this can last for years and even help both of you succeed in your careers.

The third option

Thanks to the internet, hiring anywhere in the world isn’t a problem anymore. With sites like Designhill offering you a network of designers—from web designers and logo designers to illustrators and graphic artists—you’ve now got access to a huge talent pool out there. The bigger it is, the better your chances are at finding the right person for the job. When you find the best ones, then count yourself lucky. Keep these freelancers on your roster of go-to experts for when you need something new. You get the quality you need but at a much lower cost than keeping a dedicated designer on your payroll.

Hongkiat’s article, “Hiring Freelance Contractors: 8 Things You Need to Know,” gives helpful insight into how you can find the right freelancer for your project.

1. Check the portfolio. This is one of the first things you’ll have to look at. Evaluate the style and quality of the work. Does it match what you want and need?
2. Set the ground rules. Make sure the designer knows everything you need him/her to know. This includes project details, deadlines and pay rate.
3. Don’t go for cheap. While hiring freelancers are more affordable, automatically going for designers that offer the lowest rates out there can be more trouble than help.
4. Be fair. Respect the work that designers do. Pay designers at fair rates. You’re already saving up on medical insurance coverage, leaves and taxes.
5. Don’t forget about references. If you want to be extra sure, then ask after references. Call them up. If you’re satisfied with the feedback you get, then set a meet up and start the ball rolling.

Finding a truly decent and powerful image editor is a rare event. Especially if you want it to be free on top of that. Enter Fotor – the image editor is one of those noteworthy exceptions. It’s not only free, but also available for all platforms: There are excellent smartphone apps for Android and iOS, respectively, and the desktop versions work with Windows or Mac. The mobile app is especially interesting for all the smartphone photographers out there because its image enhancing features work really well. No doubt there’s enough reason to have a closer look at the Fotor app group here. Fotor’s Photo Editor – the Smartphone App The smartphone app is really appealing because it’s packed with features, while the simple handling provides a user-friendly experience at the same time. Fotor doesn’t stop at post-shoot editing, but contains a bunch of additional features. There is, for instance, the camera feature with six different modes: Grid, Big Button, Burst, Timer, Stabilizer and Square. Afterwards, just go ahead with using one of the many image editing tools and photo effects. The technical quality of your pictures will get a significant boost by just one click. This is especially true for […]

No Easter is complete without an egg hunt. If you’ve got an eye for detail, are feeling lucky and love nothing more than seeking out Easter eggs online, this is the event for you. Are you ready for the challenge? The PSD2HTML® team has brought another fun contest for you, quite unlike any other. It’s time to peel your eyes, hone your spotting skills and get ready to click, click, click… You have to look closely through their website and see if you can find the prizes they’ve hidden. There’s no telling where those special Easter eggs are stashed, and we’re not giving you any clues either. This one is down to you! Chocolate is pretty sweet, but it’s nothing compared to the PSD2HTML®’s gifts! Find the Easter egg and get up to $200 off ANY coding service they offer. Wow! Have you spotted one already? Man, you’re good! Simply click on it to receive your reward. Want to keep on hunting? Why not, just go for it! Gather up as many eggs as you can find, and see what discount codes you can uncover. But you’ll need to be quick, gifts are limited and the hunt ends on April […]

Today, I’d like to share with you the basics of collisions, physics & bounding boxes by playing with the WebGL babylon.js engine and a physics engine companion named oimo.js. Here’s the demo we’re going to build together: babylon.js Espilit Physics demo with Oimo.js You can launch it in a WebGL compatible browser—like IE11, Firefox, Chrome, Opera Safari 8, or Project Spartan in Windows 10 Technical Preview —then, move inside the scene like in an FPS game. Press the “s” key to launch some spheres/balls and the “b” key to launch some boxes. Using your mouse, you can click on one of the spheres or boxes to apply some impulse force on it also. Understanding collisions Looking at the Wikipedia Collision detection definition, we can read that: “Collision detection typically refers to the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. While the topic is most often associated with its use in video games and other physical simulations, it also has applications in robotics. In addition to determining whether two objects have collided, collision detection systems may also calculate time of impact (TOI), and report a contact manifold (the set of intersecting points).[1]Collision response deals with simulating what […]

In our intermittent series of articles on the creation of online stores with WordPress as a foundation, we would like to present you today a WordPress theme that has specialized in this job. It’s called WooPress and makes a stunning and functional online store out of your favorite CMS aka WordPress. Of course, WooPress can be customized to your needs and is responsive, which means that it works perfectly on any device and provides good legibility and over-all aesthetics. WooPress is not for free. For good e-commerce themes this is quite common; however, you can get it at an affordable price. And honestly, if you intend to earn money with it, you should be willing to spend at least some dough on one of the keystones of your success. WooPress Responsive WordPress Shop Theme The WooPress theme is a premium WordPress theme developed for creating and designing online stores. It’s based on the free and very popular WooCommerce plugin by WooThemes that turns WordPress into an online store with ease. The WooPress theme is perfectly suited to the WooCommerce plugin, extends the basic functions, and provides a nifty store layout. WooPress Theme Costs As I already mentioned WooPress is not […]

It’s not that free resources would be underrepresented in the web. During the past years more and more designers have decided to offer at least some of their work for free. Research is often cumbersome, and especially when you need a fast solution, services consolidating as many good design elements as possible come in handy. One of those is 1001FreeDownloads.com. All resources are offered for free, hence the name 1001FreeDownloads. The portfolio includes vectors, images, fonts, icons, clipart, and so on. Here you’ll get comprehensive resources from only one website. Thanks to the wide range of resources, you’re most likely to find what you are searching for. In addition, it offers a lot of exclusive content, particularly among the more than 11,000 vectors. 1001FreeDownloads – One Website for Everything It’s obvious, visiting only one website to get all design resources you need for your project saves you a lot of time. Especially, as soon as chances are high that you’ll be successful. Surely, you won’t always find a solution for all of your projects on 1001FreeDownloads. But you already benefit notably when you can accomplish most of your resource research successfully on 1001FreeDownloads. Next time you search for resources, try […]