Latest Articles

Who has the best Gradient Tool – Photoshop, Illustrator or Flash?

. Art & Design

Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash is the creative software I used most of the time, and they helped me to illustrate out many ideas. Gradient tool is the tool that I frequently used on them. Although they are from the same company (Flash originated from Macromedia anyway), each of their gradient tool is differently presented. So, in this post I want to compare them, which has better system and which one needs improvement. The “best” I mentioned here combines user friendliness, customization options and adjusting flexibility.

Actually this post is inspired by Bittbox’s “Illustrator Quick Tip: Faster Gradient-Color Adjustments” post. I have the same feeling as him, to be honest I also want to complain about the Illustrator’s gradient tool. But before that, please take a look on Photoshop’s Gradient Tool first. Continue reading

Having fun with Zoom Burst

. Art & Design, Inspiration

No this is not Radial Blur effect from Photoshop filter. This is one of the creative photography technique called “zoom burst”. To achieve this effect, you need to adjust the zoom ring of your camera, while holding down the shutter button with shutter speed below than 1/60 sec. So to get a nice zoom burst photo, you need a steady hand, while I’m not :P.

According to Wikipedia, photographs taken with this technique are characterized by blurred streaks emenating from the center of the photograph. This effect is nearly identical to a motion blur image in which the camera is traveling towards the subject. For this reason the zoom burst is typically used to create an impression of motion towards the subject. Besides this effect is great for photo shoots that involves movement for example, sports games like cycling or car racing. Continue reading

Autumn J-drama preview!

. Japan

Time passing so fast, the ever exciting summer season J-drama line up are going to end this month! I personally found that this summer season is packed with a lot of nice dramas, as I watch 7 of those. All of them are just nice but “Papa to musume no nanokakan” will be my first choice if you ask me which I enjoyed the most.

The next season drama will start on October. Tokyograph has posted a nice preview on the upcoming autumn season dramas, click here to take a look on the line ups and which stars is acting in. I can say the line up is huge and I spotted some nice dramas that I would like to watch.

The dramas are: Continue reading

Cute Japanese font for download

. Japan, Resources, Typography

To be honest, Asian language fonts that is free are really hard to find, especially Japanese fonts. There are many Japanese fonts that can be type with English input but not the real actual Japanese input fonts. Plus, the system installed Japanese typefaces are so damn boring and too formal. But today I found a cute Japanese font free for download πŸ˜€ !

The font name is call “KFHimaji”. This font is multi-talented, because you can type alphabets, punctuation, Hiragana, Katakana and even Kanji and many more. The font example is shown below. The font was roundish, cute and happy. This is really one rare free font. So what are you waiting for? Just go to this page and download the cute font! [Direct Font Link] πŸ˜€

Continue reading

I love typography

. Art & Design, Inspiration, Typography, Web Design

I have great interests in typography subject since studying in graphic design course. It is amazing that by using a certain typefaces with the placement of the types can create incredible visual language even without the using of images. Typography is actually a very professional skills, because it is not just about selecting the right typefaces, but the layout, the size, the grid and many more.

According to Wikipedia, 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 can be apply to anything, from displaying text as information to treating text as images. With the aid of digital fonts and design softwares, designers can play with the text freely. Continue reading

RSP – Lifetime Respect ~Onna hen~ lyric

. J-Pop, Japan, Lyrics

Today, I want to introduce you a song called “Lifetime Respect ~ε₯³η·¨ (onna hen)~” sang by a group RSP who originated from Kansai area. This song is released in August 8th, 2007 with the first week selling of 26,477 units. What makes this song unique is it actually is an answer song to the original version of “Lifetime Respect” which sang by Douzan Miki (δΈ‰ζœ¨ι“δΈ‰) that released 6 years ago.

The original version which sang by Douzan Miki was served as a proposal song for a man to the girl he likes to become his wife and get together forever. During the release, the touching lyrics of the song was favored by many people and became a big hit.

But it will be hanging half-way if there is no answer from the female. RSP completed that by this woman version (ε₯³η·¨) and from the rhythm, it suggests that the woman is agree on the proposal. Before going to the lyric of the song, let me introduce you further more about this rising star group. Continue reading

Sawajiri Erika & Yui Aragaki – the most wanted face

. Japan

A face is the most important aspect of a person’s physical characteristics, especially female artists who are in Japanese Entertainment Industry, because a good looking face, can leave a good impression by everyone. Besides the good look, healthy skin and great smile is both equally important too. According to a recent research, shows that now the Japanese females are paying more interests and attention to the look of the face.

Due to this trend, audition magazine “Monthly Debut” (Oricon Entertainment) recently conducted a survey “It’s all about the face”, and asking 1000 woman on “Which female celebrity face that you would like to become (γͺγ‚ŠγŸγ„ι‘”γƒ©γƒ³γ‚­γƒ³γ‚°)”. The result shows that Sawajiri Erika and Yui Aragaki has the most favorite face. Continue reading

Free online translation service for Japanese noob

. Japan, Resources

Although I had self-studied Japanese for several years and how much I indulged myself into Japanese stuff, I’m still at beginner level of Japanese language. Blame my own laziness :P. In the past, when I listen to Japanese songs, I listen to the rhythm is enough, but now, I want to know what is the lyric mean, plus i surf a lot and a lot Japanese sites, for example Oricon chart and Japanese Wikipedia pages. But with my own tiny knowledge of Japanese language, how am I going to interpret the exact meaning?

Then, I found some free online translation services on the Internet that allow us to translate either partial of text entered or the whole web page content from Japanese into English. It is very convenient and useful for me who know a little of Japanese only. Here I listed out 10 available translation services that you can use freely. Some of them even supports other languages as well. Continue reading

Get free stock photos at Crestock.com

. Art & Design, Resources

As a designer, I always hunt for free stuff, especially stock photos. These free stock images are important because they are free of charge and become handy when I can’t capture the photos myself. Crestock.com provides this by supplying free stock photos daily.

All you need to do is subscribe to their daily free stock photo RSS, and sign up to download the photo. Besides stock photo, free vectors was provided too, but only comes in once a month. Overall the free stock photo is good quality and huge in size, normally at least 2000px and above.

The picture shown above is one of the free stock photo i downloaded. Until now, I had download over 30-40 photos. So get yourself to Crestock.com and download the free stock photos! If you hunger for more, you can always go to this site and this site too.

4 sites for your testing needs

. Resources, Web Design

Human are always curious to test things out. We test things so that we can improve and be smarter. I found out 4 sites that provides free testing and comparing services that will save your time and to know your websites performance. The testing service varies from browser compatibility check to website readability test, let’s check this out.

Typetester – Compare screen fonts

Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen. You can compare 3 fonts at a time, with a variety of options to customize your comparison for example text size, leading, tracking etc. You can test the web-save fonts like Arial and Verdana, it even reads all the fonts installed in your system and you can use them to for testing too.

Continue reading