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Bring different colors to your website by using scripts and methods that was posted for free! Dynamically change the way people saw your site!

Another Anime wallpaper community. But this international community is either unique and has the quality check. Join this anime wallpaper maker community or just download their wallpapers.

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Search Engine Optimisation troubles? Need tools for your research? Need to be number 1? Then It’s done!

Need a search engine to free photos around all stock photo sites? Need a collection that only graphic designers are willing to pick? Yotophoto, please…

Em Calculator is a small JavaScript tool which helps making scalable and accessible CSS design. It converts size in pixels to relative em units, which are based on a text size. IT IS A VERY USEFUL TOOL FOR WEB DESIGNER (Updated November 20, 2007)

Validate your HTML with CSS or CSS only. Simple type your URl and validate it (Updated November 20, 2007)

 Email This Post Posted by firewalker | 1 Comment »

One thing that you should aware of when you are learning Graphic Design by yourself/independently is typography.

Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing) and letter spacing.

Typography technique is a must for graphic designers. Not only graphic designers, but art directors, typesetters, and compositors as well needs to learn more from this. It is a technique that is already being developed since 1600BC in Greek and followed by China. You should already know that without typography, you won’t have History class anymore.

Since there is a technique to typography, then it can be trained. Training an abstract skill like this requires further research and browsing thousands of font. Now, I know why Graphic Design students hate this.

Since I just learn this thing, I can’t say much without going on with references. So, let’s start browsing on some recommended sites. Hmm… what first? What about some font banks?

Font Banks (Library)

• ACME Fonts
• Adobe Type Library
• Dutch Type Library
• Emigre
• FontFarm
• FontFont
• Fountain
• Hoefler&Frere-Jones
• House Industries
• Identifont
• ITC Fonts
• Jeremy Tankard Typography
• Letterror
• Lineto
• Linotype
• Lucas Fonts
• Monotype
• MyFonts
• Ourtype
• Process Type Foundry
• Storm Type Foundry
• T.26
• The Enschedé Font Foundry
• The Font Bureau
• The Foundry
• Type Trust
• Typotheque
• Underware
• Veer Type
• Village
• Volcano Type
• Dafont (Recommended by Rokryan)
• Creamundo (Updated Oct 25, 2007)

Recommended Font Blogs

• I Love Typography (yeah… a site which is an opposite of me)
• Type for You (just for you, don’t bring anyone else)
• Type Now: Free themed fonts, you’ll find a lot of movie, music, or brand fonts. Mostly available for WINDOWS OS, sorry for MAC users. (Updated Nov 14, 2007)

As for any beginner like me, this is my tips in learning typography:

• Learn terminologies in typography
• Learn how font was made (including search for font builder software)
• Learn the types of font and where to use it
• Browse the pages or biography of famous typographers, learn their tips
• Keep intact with any typography updates by reading magazines, books and blogs
• Try to make your own font after all this tips are applied (well, you can start sketching whenever you want)

Now you can apply it to your work. See if there any differences.

Hmm… I wonder whether I will improve from this.

 Email This Post Posted by firewalker | 3 Comments »

What do you think of an area more than 56 acres that rise the country’s top students and future leaders to be no more than just mouth-to-mouth talk?

For all of you who just barely know me, what I’m currently mentioned as 56 acres land is the Taruna Nusantara senior high school. It’s a high school that applied military-like discipline to the students in order to form the mentality of future leaders. Their way of living, rules, and code of conduct are adopting from the neighbouring National Military Academy and composed for senior high school students capacity.

Education is not the main concern of the recent government, it is reflected on how much they allocated this year’s budget. You might not know that your neighbour won the silver medal for national physics olympiad.

As for this high school, it already holds many records and great achievements. I’m still remembering that one of the older brother hold the national record for the fastest 100m run for high school students (apparently there are no online reference to this, what a pity) and some of the younger brothers and sisters are quarantined for science olympics. All the components of the school are very supportive, even the previous headmaster told the students, “Don’t go back if you’re not the 1st place!”. That’s one of his unique ways in supporting their achievements. The record are so many and the achievement will never stops. But the awareness to that, is one in a million.

How about the alumni? Out of 3,500 alumni I can assume that more than 50 percent to be successful. However, no more than 10 percent are actively involved in the alumni organization. The number of contribution from the alumni to the school itself are still below expectation. One of the program that already realized is the blog for raising money for new students scholarships.

How do you think about this condition?
Don’t you think it is a waste to left behind this national asset?

 Email This Post Posted by firewalker | 3 Comments »

Recently my friend, Fandi, invited me into his team called Kaktus Aja! It’s a team consist of 4 people from different specialization in working on various task. Our services are:

• Linux server installation,
• Linux internet gateway,
• Linux desktop training,
• Internet cafe and LAN installation,
• Website total solution,
• Company logo design,
• Promotional material design,
• Microcontroller kit sales,
• JAVA or .NET applications, and
• Control system development.

And me, as a designer in the group is given task to design promotional ads, at first is in Cikarang Pos newspaper. A local newspaper which creates its new edition once every 2 weeks. This day is the printing schedule of the newspaper. Here are my designs:

The first one from the left is the CMYK version of the Ads. It’s the revised version of the one to the right. The right one (RGB) is actually my own ambition, to produce ‘dark art!’ But my friends quickly disagree because it won’t be visible in printing. Yes, I guess they do have a point. Well, that’s my artwork update for the week.

 Email This Post Posted by firewalker | 1 Comment »

Last Sunday, me and my friend Fauzi went to a Bus Terminal in Jakarta called “Blok M”. Our main destination is a Carnaval at Wijaya street, not far from there (that’s what I thought when looking at the road maps). We arrived at 10 AM, 1 hour sooner that it should be, because the traffic is quite loose in the weekend. Since we agreed to meet our friend, Zurich, at 11 AM in Blok M, we decided to ‘walk a little bit’.

Our first walk is to “Pasaraya Grande”, one huge mall that consist of all the expensive stuff that Indonesian richmen could buy. Fauzi heard a roumor about huge promotion of Quicksilver clothes from our friend, Cupeng. Quicksilver is known as an expensive brand in my country and seldom gives huge discount. Having convinced by the rumour, both of us are heading to the 8th floor to reach the site.

That was 10 AM, the 6th floor was closed… Therefore we dissapointedly stepped back to Blok M.

In Blok M terminal, there are various things sold. From clothes to food, with the cheapest price. But all in all, the quality and the model also the worst of all. We come up to a line of food stand who sold the same items. All of it! Even the drinks. How can they survive from this competition? I bet they are making some sort of agreements to help each other fairly. From there, I ordered “Gado-Gado” (Salad with bean sauce) plus rice and melon juice. The price quite cheap! But the quantity is lesser than I expected, plus, it doesn’t taste quite good. I can only admire it’s melon juice.

Finished eating, we decided to go straight to Wijaya street because Zurich had just woke up and will be late arriving here. Then our walk begins. “Just follow this road until it ends”, says me.

2.5 km later… “*pant* *pant* Aah… I can see the end of the road!”, I said. “From here let’s go to the right until we reach Wijaya street”.

1 km later… “We are at Wijaya. But where’s the carnaval?”, Fauzi asked me. “Hmm… let’s keep going, I know it must be somewhere near”, in doubt I replied.

500 m later… we can see some stands are blocking the street. After we go nearer, the street really was blocked! Wow, they blocked the whole street just to have a cosplay party? I wonder how it will looked like? Is it like Japan Evo? Or is it like FF Twilight Concert?

At the beginning of the street, Fauzi asked me a question, “Where’s the Japanese stands? It’s casual clothes and local stuff right there”. “Maybe it was further inside”, then we go a little bit deeper. And somehow I agreed with what he asked. They only sold the ‘usual’ stuff in any local carnavals. Where’s the Takoyaki? Where’s the Igo lesson? Where’s the cosplayer???

Okay, here is my logical explanation: They were all gathered in one place. We just find them in this 1.2 km street, right? Hope so.

After passing Padangnese along the street, we finally met some musical band who sang Haruka Kanata, a Naruto OST. Aww… finally! But Fauzi quickly told me to look at the stage banner. The writings is translated as “Character Design Competition”, period.

No cosplay,

No takoyaki,

Nothing Japanese…

Oh, God. Please!

We made a conclusion based from our findings:

The carnaval was dedicated for locals, therefore Japanese stand might not stand any chance

The target customers are locals who unaware of Japanese culture (adults, elderly, and kids with their parents). People who usually knows are teenage and kids who doesn’t go with their parents.

The cosplay was cancelled because of the above situation or lack of registrants.

Continued to part 2…

 Email This Post Posted by firewalker | No Comments »