GUYS, free fonts! Four weights (heavy, heavy-italic, thin, thin-italic). I quite like this font, good for headers and paragraphs! Grab it while it's free!
Article: http://beckswebsites.com/cheap-web-designer/
To go along with #1: make sure your domain is not something that is easily misspelled or hard to pronounce. If you are ever giving out your website in person and the other person has to write it down, it can be slightly awkward for them to fumble over how to spell it (this has happened to me with email addresses more times than I'd like to admit). And you don't want to accidentally send someone to the wrong web address!
#5 is always very important, a pleasing layout makes your site easy to navigate, and a great color palette can make it beautiful and memorable.
#6 deserves a good amount of attention. It’s important that your site flows well and that you don’t have dead-end links (links that lead to one specific page with no way to go back). One thing I advise is to decide which links you want to open in a new page and which you don’t. Having all links open in the same page can distract viewers away from your website and lead them elsewhere. However, having every link open in a new page can be irritating and messy. Just have a balance of the two!
#19 is really important nowadays. Since there are several popular web browsers, making sure that your site is compatible across all browsers means that it is more accessible to a large number of users!
#22 should get a fair amount of your attention (I'm all about proper font choices). Choosing something this is legible is paramount to creating good content, but your font choice is also a way to get creative! Don't stick with the same header and paragraph fonts, choose something that meshes well but also allows some versatility. Headers are all about catching the eye, so don't be afraid to be bold (literally and metaphorically).
And last but definitely not least, #26! A footer is a great way to brag about all the awesome designing you've done, and a way to display your name and copyright information to your users. Even if you don't have any official copyrights, make sure to claim all of your designs and original content. Something along the lines of "Website property of: Your Name, June 2014" should suffice.
Happy Creating!
So, I'm obsessed with fonts. More specifically, free fonts. I've spent many an hour endlessly searching for the perfect header font, or a good logo font for my website. And in this process I've come across some great sites that offer TONS of free and easy-to-use fonts. Here are a few of my favorite free sites:
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ (personal favorite) - Font Squirrel is great for a few reasons: great selection, easy to navigate, safe downloads. You can search by type of font (serif, san serif, slab, etc) or tags like retro, contemporary, decorative, and more. But like I said, the free downloads are legit, and I've never had problems using the fonts in projects.
http://www.google.com/fonts (other personal favorite)- if you don't already know about Google fonts, then let me change your life real quick. Though it doesn't have as large of a selection of fonts, it's great for easily incorporating fonts into your website and web-design projects. Just copy the link into your code, and go! It is really simple and works great. Definitely check it out for your next project!
http://www.dafont.com/ - Dafont, though not as pretty design-wise, has just as great a selection of fonts as Font Squirrel. The two sites are similar in the way you browse fonts (by category, tag, etc) and the downloads are safe and easy-to-use.
http://www.abstractfonts.com/ - this is a site I recently discovered and therefore haven't used as much, but it seems to have a great selection, and I've already found some really unique fonts that I want to incorporate into future projects.
Other (less free) sites:
http://typecast.com/ - I've mentioned Typecast in a previous post but it's definitely worth adding to this list! Typecast pulls together some of the biggest names in web fonts (google, adobe, etc) in an easy-to-use web application that lets you preview fonts with custom text and add CSS to preview different styles. It's free for 14 days, but it gets a bit pricey after that at $19/month for the basic plan. It's a tad too pricey for my budget, but a great resource if you can afford it!
https://typekit.com/foundries/adobe - I use Adobe's font service Typekit quite frequently, in both Photoshop and web-design projects. It's included in my Creative Cloud student subscription (only $19/month for EVERY Adobe software, highly recommended!), but otherwise it's about $25/year for the personal version. I love typekit because it allows me to easily sync fonts to all of my Adobe software, and most fonts have both desktop and web versions, so I can make a header logo with one font and also use it in headers and paragraphs on my websites. Integrating a font into your website is as easy as designating the domain, and then naming the tags that you want to change (<p>, <h1>, #header, etc). I would say definitely worth the money!
A word of advice: be cautious about the files that you download from any site. I recommend having your anti-virus software enabled for internet downloads, just in case any of the font files you download are also carrying viruses or malware. I've never had a problem with any of the sites I've listed here, but you never know what you are opening on the internet! Use common sense when looking for free downloads anywhere on the internet, if the site seems seedy, it probably is. And never give out personal information! Just a little PSA from someone who's been there before.
Because I usually can't put down my tablet, I'm starting a series of posts about helpful tablet apps for coding and designing. I have an iPad, but a lot of the apps I've found can be downloaded for Droid, Google, and other platforms as well. Hopefully you guys find these apps as helpful (and well, cool) as I do!
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I've always been a fan of functional and affordable tablet apps, and I've recently stumbled upon some fantastic apps that really expand the functionality of my tablet. If you like to code on-the-go or if you can't live without easy access to Photoshop (both of which describe the majority of my life), these apps will seriously change your life:
Textastic is a great app for coding on the go. It supports more than 80 programming and markup languages, including HTML and XML, and is very easy to use. You can connect to FTP, SFTP and WebDAV servers or to your Dropbox account to upload and edit files stored anywhere. I find this app is extremely useful if I don't have access to my laptop but really need to make adjustments to my website or HTML files. It's a tad pricey (at least for me and my college-kid bank account) at $8.99, but if you really need something for quick coding, I would definitely check out Textastic!
This week, researchers in the UK announced that we should all be eating 7–10 portions of fruit and veg per day instead of the previously recommended five. While you work out how to get all that roughage into your diet, here’s a bushel of tasty typefaces to give your designs a boost and help them thrive.
This fun article highlights a few of Typecast's more eccentric and artsy fonts, each great for logos or headers. I love a nice quirky font here and there, and there are a few in here that I absolutely love. I'm digging the retro feel of Artichoke and the playful style of Courgette is really great.
Typecast is a great resource for fonts and web design, it pulls together some of the biggest names in web fonts (Google fonts, Adobe typekit, Myfonts, etc) and you can sign up for a free 14 day trial with your email. Consider checking it out if you are looking for a great web-font site! Be on the lookout for another big post soon about all sorts of font resources on the web, including some of my favorite free sites!
This is an AMAZING article with a ton of great free fonts. I love the descriptions, super helpful when trying to pick out a new font for specific purposes. I, too, love Proxima Nova (I use it on my personal website, great for headlines and large blocks of text) and Franchise.
If you haven't checked out Font Squirrel, you really should. It's a fantastic resource for free fonts and super easy to use. I'm thinking about making a long post soon about all the font website and resources available, because A) I'm obsessed with fonts and B) there are so many out there. Look out for that soon!
