Good Article - Visual Aesthetics Defined

This would've been helpful for the test, had I seen it a week earlier:

http://alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy

Fonts anyone?

Hey - My friend shared this site with me and I thought it was pretty cool and could be useful when designing our sites.

It's basically a site with fonts, just fonts. You can look for a certain type through their "themes" or search for a specific font you're looking for, and then you can download that font into your computer so you can use it. So if you look up "spraypaint," for example, you get this.

I haven't tried it for a PC yet, but apparently on a Mac you can just drag and drop the font into your selections box.

I hope you enjoy! Even if you don't use, it's still cool looking through the different kind of fonts they have, just to give you some ideas.

TweetDeck

Came across the following application to keep track of all your favorite tweets on Twitter and status updates on Facebook.

I thought the color scheme was quite interesting.

Best Portraits Ever

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iri5/sets/72157611954107572/

Blending Tools to Make Backgrounds using CS3 & ill3

I was looking for some tutorials online and came across this one. It shows how to make a background using lines. You start off in Illustrator and the last part of the video ends in Photoshop. The Illustrator section does not look that hard to do. I will try it when we ge back and have an up date to this posting.

Try it out for yourself!!!

http://www.layersmagazine.com/blend-tool-backgrounds.html

Good Web site design

Designing my website, I wanted to make sure users had an easy time navigating the pages. But I've been having trouble coming up with a creative design that is still very intuitive. Here's a Website I came across that is easy to navigate, but still has a really interesting and unique layout.
There's a screen shot above. (It's a website for motorcycle gear.) I like how the page is very textured, almost literally. For most of the items, the background is textured like a part of the jacket or pant, and then there are three pictures of the item. The one in the foreground sort of jumps out of the rectangle frame. It's simple, but adds a nice element that you wouldn't expect.
It's a great design for a motorcycle apparel site, because people want to see all the details of the item, plus the full item itself. And the page does it consistently so it's not annoying.

Here's a cool play on type.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=vl_other_2&listing_id=21097294