Pay per Headline

Our favourite House Industries has launched photolettering.com where you can quickly set flashy headlines or logos and buy the vector files for like 2 bucks.  There aren't that many fonts but since HI now owns the Photo-Lettering Inc. faces it will surely grow very soon. Works great on iOS devices btw

A great app for (editorial) typophiles

Extra! Extra! is an app which shows you the front pages of newspapers around the world. I've been playing with it for hours today already, doesn't get old. Of course the informational part is less interesting to me (how much info can you get from a front page anyway? How much info is recycled across all newspapers?), but it is THE app to drool over the fonts, since it offers true high resolution (PDF?) front pages, updated daily. Not to mention that you get a glance at the layouts without having to go out to the next international news stand. It is a pleasure to use on the iPhone 4, I'm sure it's even better on the iPad.

Some screenshots (yeah, I'm a sucker for anything Christian Schwartz and Cyrus Highsmith)

Fontcapture

Have to try it out someday, looks promising (and it's free): Fontcapture

Tetris vor type geeks

KERN is a game for iPhone/iPod touch, try it out!

WhatTheFont comes to iPhone

Finally! Download for free at MyFonts

New font manager: Fontcase

For me, nothing beats Font Explorer on Mac, but since the free version isn't supported anymore, it's good to have another comptetitor to FEX Pro and Suitcase. And it's only €35!

Dear Adobe

Do it. Now.
dearadobe

Quickly change units in Photoshop

If you want to change measurement units, just right-click the ruler.
It also works in other Adobe apps, and InDesign even lets you to change vertical and horizontal units separately.

The 72 DPI myth

Too often I hear that “if someone wants to publish pictures online, they should be 72 DPI”. People always say “300 DPI for print, 72 DPI for screen”. This is just plain wrong, and here's why:

The DPI value indicates the dots per inch resolution used to print things out. With 300 DPI there are enought dots in one inch to make the pictures look sharp, with 72 DPI artifacts are clearly visible.

But on the Internet, the resolution is irrelevant! Let's make some tests:
Our test picture is 500x500 px, 300 DPI. The filesize is 259,4 KB.
Now let's change the resolution to 72 DPI, leaving the physical dimensions at 500x500 px.
Still 259,4 KB!
What if we change the resolution to 2 DPI? (Don't try to print that out ;)
Yep, the filesize is still 259,4 KB.

You can download the files and see that DPI won't make any impact on filesize, it will only affect the printed materials. If you want to reduce the filesize of a picture, you will have to reduce the pixel dimensions.

The font used to “test” is the free Regular Cargo by Nik Thoenen.