Favorite Sites

Journey through my favorite web sites, including links to software vendors, graphics, desktop publishing, and fonts. Help me keep this page current! If you find a link that doesn't work or a great new place to visit, drop me an e-mail at creese@santarosa.edu so I can keep this page updated.

Favorite movies

• Cyndi Reese: Confessions of a Webcast Junkie (speech for CCC Confer posted at YouTube)
• Steve Jobs Commencement Speech 2005: an inspirational clip that I watch at the beginning of every semester
• Font Conference: a humorous and sarcastic movie about fonts
• Ode to Neutra: a homage to the Neutra typeface inspired by the song Poker Face by Lady GaGa
• How Ink is Made: a glorious look at process and spot color inks set to classical music
• Digital vs Offset Printing: a look at two commercial printing environments
• How does commercial printing work? a look at offset printing
• Four Color Printing Process Explained
• Our Fonts, Our Friends: a fun look at fonts by Veer.com
• Font game Kern Type: see how well you can pair letters together
• Font game Shape Type: for those who have made friends with the Pen tool
• Font game Deep Font Challenge: see how well you do, but be fast and accurate!

Career information

• Graphic design vs desktop publishing
• Desktop publishing information
• Desktop publishing jobs

Adobe resources

• Adobe Kuler: for designer sets of colors that load into Adobe applications (.ase files)
• Adobe TV: TV-like videos with channels to surf as you learn about Adobe software
• Adobe Design Center: galleries of professional Adobe works and tutorials
• Adobe Training & Certification: training resources, books, and Adobe events
• Adobe Education: information on Adobe's commitment to education
• Adobe SRJC Customer Spotlight (PDF: 160K)
• Adobe Support: product support

Adobe user groups

• North Bay Adobe Users Group (hosted at SRJC)
• Bay Area InDesign User Group (San Francisco)

Fonts

These sites include commercial fonts, free fonts, and font information. You can spend hours following these links. If you download free fonts, make sure that you're getting a font that is compatible with your computer (Mac or Windows). Students creating files for PostScript hardcopy or PDF files should stick to high-quality commercial PostScript and OpenType fonts — don't use cheap fonts for high quality work!

• Adobe Type
• P22 Font Foundry
• Parachute (check out Champion Script)
• Veer
• ITC (International Type Corporation)
• MyFonts
• Fonts.com
• Font Search Engine
• Font Shop
• 1001 Free Fonts
• fontface.com
• Pizza Dude
• RedSun
• Chank!
• The Free Site.com
• FontHaus
• Font Diner
• dafont.com
• The Scriptorium
• Identifont

Graphics

Many public sites are links that will take you to hundreds of places on the web in search of the "ultimate" graphic. The sites provide graphics for Macintosh and Windows unless specified and are usually screen quality (72 dpi). There are several different ways in which to download a graphic:

• To save a graphic displayed on the screen, click on the graphic (right mouse in Windows) until the Save Image As (or similar) menu command shows on the screen -- don't use the File Save menu!
• Macintosh users downloading with the Safari browser may need to delete the bogus ".txt"extension that gets added to the end of the filename. For example, if you download lab1.indt using Safari, it may appear on your hard drive as lab1.indt.txt and will not open in InDesign. At the desktop, select the filename and delete the ".txt" extension.
• Occasionally the downloaded file that you desire will be compressed (squished) for faster transfer to your computer. Your computer must then have decompression software to "unZip" or "unStuff" the file.
• Vector graphics will often ask for an application that can open the graphic (i.e. Illustrator). This "helper" application can be customized in your browser.

Desktop publishing information

• CreativePro.com
• desktopPublishing.com
• InDesign Magazine

Sites with free images

• MorgueFile
• stockxchng
• Stockvault
• Dreamstime (navigate to free images tab)
• Photographic Libraries
• www.free-clip-art.com
• freestockphotos.com
  
• loc.gov/pictures/ (Library of Congress: copyright-free, hi-res art in its Digital Collections/Prints and Photographs section)
• Wikimedia Commons
• Free weekly image/font from Veer.com
  

Sites with images for purchase

• Jupiter Images
• Veer.com
• ClipArt.com
  
• PhotoXPress (this service used to have some images for free)
• MediaBakery (commercial graphics/fonts/extras)