Archive for Web Tools
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Char
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Social media is hot and its here to stay! One of the biggest trends in web design right now is adding icons or buttons for all the various social media sites you use to your web site to make it one step easier for friends, customers and potential customers to connect with YOU. So where do the designers find all these cool icons? They are all over the web and many are free, but you have to go looking for them.
Fellow designer Randa Clay and I got tired of looking high and low for the best social media icons and decided to create a single hub where you can find the best, free social media icons, buttons and graphics to use at your site. We would like to introduce you to our new website, mysocialbuttons.com, a one-stop resource for all the coolest social networking buttons you can use to let the world know where and how to connect with you or your company online.
All of the buttons on the site at the moment are free. Yep, free. You can help yourself. We just ask that you save the buttons you want to your computer first before you add them to your site or your clients’ sites.
And, if you really want to show of your social prowess, check out some of the t-shirts, mugs, mousepads and other goodies we have created to go with the social movement. They make great gifts, awesome conference schwag, and they are perfect for use as doorprizes or ice breakers at corporate training sessions.
Anyhow, the site is still in beta, but we just can’t keep it to ourselves any longer! Please check it out, let us know what you think, bookmark it, share a link with your friends on Facebook, give it a Tweet, or love it anyway you see fit!!
Posted by:
Char
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I stumbled across a really neat site – FontGarden.com – which features free and for purchase fonts. The site also has plenty of free, fun handwriting fonts but the best feature is that each font is presented using a funny, thoughtful , or just random quotation.

While the site itself is a little ad-heavy, its easy enough to overlook them while checking out the fonts and quotes.
Posted by:
Char
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I love finding cool new tools!! I literally Stumbled across this really neat tool for creating custom tiled backgrounds that you can use for just about anything! The site is Bgpatterns.com.

Using the web-based designer, you select a combination of colors, canvas texture, images, rotate them, scale them and test them. Then you can download the background tile to use how ever you see fit. There is also the social aspect of the site which allows you to share your creations using the major social bookmarking/sharing sites, save your backgrounds and vote on others’ creations.
Bgpatterns is definitely one of the coolest tools I have discovered recently and it is another staple in my designer toolbox – along with the 13 sites for great patterns and backgrounds and 13 sites for unique textures I shared in previous posts.