In a previous article we discussed the benefits of using WhatTheFont.com, a free online service for identiying fonts.  I recently discovered the folks at MyFonts developed an App that delivers the same great font-matching features to the iPhone. 

When working in Flash, have you ever been greeted by the following Font Mapping screen?

Just received this Adobe Illustrator/Acrobat tip from the feedblitz newsletter.  Currently in Adobe Illustrator you can import PDF files, but you can only import one page at a time.  If you want to create multiple pages on separate artboards you can drag and drop your PDF file on this script created by Shane Stanley.  The script will create a separate Illustrator artboard for each page in your PDF.  This script will only work on Macs and requires Illustrator CS4 or CS5.

Litmus has launched a free tool to help email marketers craft the perfect subject line.  The tool previews your draft subject line across several common email clients.  

One way I've found to cure a sluggish Mac is to limit the amount of fonts loaded in OS X.  By default OS X loads a number of fonts that aren't required by the operating system.  On top of that, Microsoft Office and Adobe's Suite of applications add several fonts that aren't required.

By updating your Safari browser to version 5.0.1 you now have access to Apple's Safari Extensions Gallery.

On a recent client project I had a Photoshop file that I had to transition to Flash for a banner ad.  The Photoshop file had over 30 tiny layers that needed to be exported.  Rather than do all this work manually I used a pre-built Script in Photoshop to create separate files from layers automatically.  Go to File > Scripts > Export Layers to Files ...

How often do you come across a web page that is too cluttered, contains small type thats hard to read, or contains large blocks of type that are reversed out on a dark background?  If this is as annoying to you as it is to me, you may want to check out the new Reader feature thats available in the Safari 5 web browser (for Mac and PC).  

At first I was very hesitant to see the movie. I thought it would be another boring, teacher wasting their students time kind of documentary. I was wrong. I enjoyed every second of it and yes, I am a design nerd. Though there are varying opinions of the font, the documentary does a great job getting insight from both sides of the debate (I wonder what side this guy is on?). Not only does it reintroduce us to some familiar faces in the design world, but it gives us a history of the font and the reasoning behind it’s creation. If you haven’t seen it I would highly recommend watching it. This may be my inner nerd talking again,but I think it’s kind of cool to learn a little something about a font that we use/see everyday. I guarantee after you watch this movie you will start spotting Helvetica everywhere. Even if you would like Helvetica to fall off the face of the earth, it’s worth the rental. ( http://www.helveticafilm.com/ )

Having proper backups of our data is an important part of our workflow.  In additon to the redundant file backup in our studio, we carry external hard drives home with us each night to a) protect our data against fire, theft, etc. and b) allows access to our files at home (vpn doesn’t really work all that great for us because of file size). Each night I run Super Duper! to make a cloned backup of my work files.