..

This would be a good combination of programs and web site to learn during the break.

There are many programs that will include the features the following resouces in one package, but it would be cost-prohibitive by my estimate. So we're going to build our our "suite". Granted this may have the feel of Duct-tape and milk-crates but it will work well.

Navigate to the links below and download the fonts, DrawPlus 4.0 and Colorpic programs and bookmark the Flagship Flags color swatch site. This is NOT a suggestion! :) Save it on your home computer. I'm not quite familiar with the options of saving to your personal campus" H" drive. You may or may not be able to utilize this in class on an on-going basis, and it may be necessary to download it on occasion for in-class work. Sorry, but as McLuhan says, "if it works, it's obsolete!" Since we're "cutting edge" we can expect some rough edges from time to time, the professor joked.

9,500 Free Fonts For Download at A1Fonts.com

Lots of shareware Fonts. Review the site and download the files to your computer. Remember, these will only print as text if they are installed on same system as desired printer. If you're not sure that font is on the printer, save the desired section as a gif or jpg and insert it as a graphic element.

Use the orange bar with white lettering to view the fonts as named by designers. The link starts with the Numerics (1,2,3).

These are NOT classic fonts for the most part. Many are decorative and may be more suitable for advertisng flyers for a local garage band playing at the town saloon, but there are some buried gems in there. Some fonts are close enough to established typefaces to give novice designers a start.


Brandname Color Chart

This site features the colors from a Brandname matching system. Colors are designated by number. Designers specify colors using this system to ensure EXACT quality control of the finished product.


Serif DrawPlus - ZDNet Downloads


We'll be working with type and graphics more frequently in the last half of the semester and the FREE program DrawPlus 4.0 seems to be an excellent program for our purposes.

Software Publisher's Description
Create or modify drawings and animations. Easy to use. Award winning software. Read, write many formats (photo and animation as well as vector: JPG, BMP, EMF, WMF, PNG, and more). Includes clipart, fonts, and wizards. Easy line/curve drawing; full transparency, blend, and fill features, all anti-aliased; animation (onion skinning, backgrounds, overlays, and frame management). Registration required.

This is very good Authoring software and it's FREE! You will need to register this product, recive the product key in an email response and insert the product key to the product registration to activate it.

This program will allow for some interesting graphic and text manipulation.

Download it, play with it and use it for your submitted pieces.


Colorpic

Colorpic is a small program that allows a designer to select a given color from a web image. It can zoom into resolution of a single pixel. It will display the RGB code of that color is hex or dec system. This will allow you to recreate the color in other programs.


In hindsight, these items would have been an outstanding resource for our heraldry project, but such is life.

Now might also be a good time to start your own Blogger site. Hopefully you'll enjoy working with images enough to start an on-line portfolio.