Categories
Design Flash

2011 vs 2012

Update #1: I joint a gym to learn how to KickBoxing and Muay Thai! Here is the link to the site: http://www.samuraisports.nl/ (little warning: this website is not a beauty)
Update #2: Brummble the papertoy tribute to ThreeA vinyl: Heavy Bramble is online and ready for downloading: here.

It’s been a while … haven’t posted anything regular in a… year.
That would have been the year 2011: the year I became for the first time a dad.

So here a little update (for the one person who still reads this blog).

2011 and a little bit before that

I had big plans; I wanted to show everybody that my live didn’t change when I got a kid…
Boy…was I mistaken.
Don’t get me wrong: this has been the best year of my live!!
But the things I wanted to do this year, the plans I made… nothing of that happened.
My daughter happened! and everything else followed HER plans.

I wanted to be a part of her live and not only look after her in the weekends.
My girlfriend and I both decided to have a 4 days work week so my daughter only has to goes to the daycare center for 3 days.
The employer I was working for at that time didn’t want me to work 4 days. I tried to use a dutch-law: they said they would take me to court, etc, etc.
I don’t want to make this post about my former employer (if you want to know more about this story, just ask), so I decide that it would be best for the both of us to find another job (1.5 month before my daughter was born…. I know: I’m still bitter about that).
But here is the good news (remember: the best year of my live) I found a great new job at noprotocol.nl!!!
I could work there for 4 days, they are very flexible and an awesome group of talented people.
AND I didn’t miss anything daughter-related stuff, which I can recommend every dad to do: have a day alone with you kid.

So the first 6 month of the year 2011 is mostly about being a dad (boring stuff for people who don’t have kids, nothing to explain to the people who have them).

Professionally (during the day I’m a Flash Designer/Developer) I learned about Robotlegs, AS3-navigator, LoaderMax, etc. Had some interesting talks with the people of “the bigger boat” (group of freelancers). AND I can do the job in 4 days (sometimes with some creative time-management from my employer and myself) which I knew would be possible, but conformation is alway nice.
In the next 6 months of 2011 I started to think about what I wanted. What makes me happy, what is making me happy right now and what will make me happy in the future. I miss the feeling I had when I started to work as a junior designer: wanting to learn EVERYTHING to become a senior. But now I am a senior… what’s next? Do I want to be a programmer for the rest of my live? Questions that are not answered yet.

I’m also a papertoy designer (something I do at night). This year was not a good year for papertoys: I needed my sleep!
I have done 1 exhibition in Amsterdam and I did an exhibit at Sneakerness Amsterdam (also the first time that I sold papertoys).
Both exhibition was done the rest of the dutch papertoy designers (3eyedbear, Marshall Alexander, Dolly Oblong) and one german papertoy designer (Nick Knite).
For these events I made 2 new papertoys, but they will not be downloadable. Nick Knite and myself wanted to organize a papertoy calendar with papertoy designers we both like… sadly I had to cancel that: no time to start/finish it šŸ™
All and all not very productive year.

2012

My live (and this blog) is more than just one specialty. So here a short list:

Flash / Development

This is my job, this is how I make a living… and Flash is Dead! (again). I’m not worried so I will keep learning even more about that subject. But I need more! I have made a small CMS in 4 weeks in PHP (what an ugly language is that!) but that didn’t excited me much.
So I want to learn haXe! I’m quite excited about this language so I will be writing about that soon.
I would love to lead a team… or join a group of flash/geek-superstars (whatever moves me forward)
I want to finish what I have started in 2011:

  • finalize (and improve) my project setup.
  • automate the stuff that I have to do over-and-over-again

Find out how a senior finds his “what’s next”
Start having coffee-meeting with the industry tech-directors/tech-team leaders/etc to answer BIG question
Will be joining the after-work-drink-on-friday with my colleagues more often (once a month)

Urban Papercraft / papertoy

I really have no plans for papertoys: I used to do this to relax, but last year I relaxed by sleeping.
There is still two books I wanted to write…. but I can’t promise that it will be finished this year.
You can always ask me for a workshop or lecture about papertoys: just let me know!

The graffiti inspired papertoys I do will not be downloadable: that will be my art and art can’t be given away šŸ˜€
So what can the fans download? I have created a toy based upon 3A vinyl toy: Brummble. That will be released very soon.
And more perhaps? Not really a plan for that but sometimes I get a tickle and that needs to be scratched… and the product of that scratching (now this metaphor is getting dirty) will be downloadable.
Can you ask me for exhibitions? Yes, please do. I like the idea that my work is art and not only a (paper)-toy.
That is also the reason that I have titled this paragraph “Urban”: urban-art, urban-toy, urban-paper that’s what I will be making.
Can you ask me for a papertoy book? Yes, please do. I have worked on two books with much pleasure and would be honored to asked for another.
Can you ask me for a custom? Yes you can… but time is very precious right now. So your project must be VERY interesting.
I have promised to finish a custom Zealot Guard from Abz, and that is what I will do. Why do this custom? This is a VERY exciting project by a (perhaps the only) female papertoy designer.
There are some plans to visit Germany for some workshops, but other than that I have no idea.
2012 will reveal itself to me as it goes towards 2013 šŸ˜€

Blog

Now I have some energy back in the evening I will be writing again on this blog, but not as often as I did before 2011. I used to write every week. That will change to once a month: a ‘big’ post. The ‘big’ post will be a tutorial or something else that needs more explaining. That will mean that there will be at least 12 more posts. Between these ‘big’ posts there will be some papertoy related images (minimal writing).
I will be writing about haXe, so that will be exciting (for programmers). I think I can be of some help making haXe more accessible for the ‘normal’ programmer.

That is not the only way to follow me: I have a twitter account. here I talk about everything that interests me (design/development/sneakers/games/video/whatever)

Misc

When my daughter was born I quit the gym (it was too expensive). I wanted to find something cheaper… It turned out to be very cheap: I didn’t join a gym but I also didn’t do something else. This year I will be joining a gym…. and to be very specific: I want to try Kickboxing!
Another thing that I will do, or stop doing… Is doing things for free. And that goes also for friends and family; they will pay (not necessarily with money, but for free doesn’t work for me anymore)

I’m looking forward to 2012!

Categories
Design Open source / Freeware

List of good, free Graffiti fonts

I wanted to write about this for a long time (about a year now). A list of good, free graffiti fonts.
But I’m not really into fonts, so it seems out-of-place on this blog.

Recently I needed a good free graffiti font, and saw that there was nobody who had made that list. Well that’s not entirely true, I found one: 12-fantastically-free-graffiti-fonts/ but I don’t agree with this list.

So instead of complaining about lists that other people make, I will start my own.
I used dafont to find the font used here, because every free font ends up there.

When I see designers using a graffiti font, they tend to use: Aaaiight!/Aaaight! fat, 5cent or Bring tha noize. Although they are nice, there are better graffiti fonts.

As every list is a personal reflection of the list-makers own taste and this list is made with stuff I like.
I like the condensed, tightly spaced, big marker tags and that’s what I like in the fonts. But I’m also a designer and it’s difficult to explain to your boss, that the font is “dope” but nobody can read the message. So I also looked at lower case, upper case, if it’s more a headline font or a body font, if it’s readable, the fonts has numbers, special characters, and that is use with a very scientific method to come to this list (my guts).

But I must say, I understand why nobody ever made this list… there are not a lot of good, complete fonts out there. Probably because good graffiti artists don’t go sit down and create a font for us, they are out there creating art! To everybody on this list (and not on this list), thanks for the free fonts and the time spend on making the font.

My list is cut up in two parts:

  1. tag fonts
  2. piece fonts

Tag fonts

A “tag” is the most basic writing of an artist’s name in either spray paint or marker. A graffiti writer’s tag is his or her personalized signature.

source Wikipedia

#7. Hardkaze

Hardkaze by Pizzadude
http://www.dafont.com/hardkaze.font

Hardkaze""

  • Only Upper case. Special characters. Number
  • Readable from font size 18, good for body text and headers

[mck] This is the font that graphic designer should have chosen if he didn’t know better. It’s close to a normal handwriting and I get a “comic” vibe of it. It’s not graffiti enough, but better than the previous fonts.

#6. Vandalism

Vandalism by Julien Saurin
http://www.dafont.com/vandalism.font

Vandalism

  • Only upper case. Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline fon

[mck] Really awesome font, but this one is probably not readable for “normal” viewer. But it’s freaking awesome!.


#5. Searfont

Searfont by bartolD & Sear
http://www.dafont.com/searfont.font

Searfont

  • Only upper case.
  • Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Really awesome font, but this one is probably not readable for “normal” viewer. But it’s freaking awesome!.

#4. Whoa!

Whoa! by Johan Waldenström
http://www.dafont.com/whoa.font

Whoa!

  • Only upper case.
  • Limited special characters (!*?).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 18, the bigger the better readable, headline font

[mck] Wow!

#3. Tagster

Tagster by SDFonts
http://www.dafont.com/tagster.font

Tagster

  • Only upper case.
  • Limited special characters (!*?;:”‘)
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Could easily have been number 2, but it’s not complete.

#2. IllegalEdding

Illegal Edding by Maurice van de Stouwe
http://www.dafont.com/illegal-edding.font

IllegalEdding

  • Only upper case. Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 18, good for body text and header

[mck] And from now a graphic designer should use this font. Love this one! And it has a complete font set

#1. PhillySans

Philly Sans by Kosal Sen
http://www.dafont.com/philly-sans.font

  • Write in lower case, but the effect is uppercase (no upper case, lower is upper case)
  • No Numbers
  • no special character
  • Readable from font size 18, good for body text and header

[mck] Very clean, readable, and still it has a graffiti vibe. It shouldn’t have been number 1 because it has a very limited character set, but I love this font.

Piece fonts

A “piece” is a more elaborate representation of the artist’s name, incorporating more stylized “block” or “bubble” letters, using three or more colors. This of course is done at the expense of timeliness and increases the likelihood of the artist getting caught.
…..
These pieces are often harder to read by non-graffiti artists as the letters merge into one another in an often undecipherable manner.

source wikipedia

If you need to make a piece in a design, you can also use the tag fonts, but never the other way around!

#6. Throw-up Font

Throw-up Font by Graffilia Fetén
http://www.dafont.com/throw-up-font.font

Throw-up Font

  • Only upper case
  • No special characters (except !)
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] This list wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t have a throw-up font. I’m having trouble reading it.:(

#5. Cancontrol

Cancontrol by Johan Waldenström
http://www.dafont.com/dht.font

Cancontrol

  • Only upper case.
  • No special characters (except !).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Nice one

#4. Aerosol

Aerosol by Bright Ideas
http://www.dafont.com/aerosol.font

Aerosol

  • Only upper case
  • Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] This font is made to color in. Not my style, but very nice!

#3. Homeboy

Homeboy by Johan Waldenström
http://www.dafont.com/homeboy.font

Homeboy

  • Only upper case
  • No special characters (except !).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Nice one

#2. Zit Graffiti

Zit Graffiti by Olivier “Zitoune” D.
http://www.dafont.com/zit-graffiti.font

Searfont

  • Only upper case (there is a difference between upper and lower case: upper case is an outline character).
  • Limited special characters (!)
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline fon

[mck] A oldskool graffiti font. Nice

#1. Bboy

B-Boy by Johan Waldenström
http://www.dafont.com/bboy.font

Bboy

  • Only upper case.
  • Limited special characters (!).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] A very oldskool graffiti font, I like this one very much.

Update #1: I just read this post about
44 Free Stylish Graffiti Fonts for Designers
on NaldzGraphics. It’s a big list of free graffiti fonts: the same comments that I mentioned earlier goes for this list: it a list with all available free graffiti fonts out there…
Update #2: With a little help from google this popped up:
20 Free Graffiti Fonts You Should Already Have. I think a list with “Urban Hook-Ups”, “Detroit Ghetto” or “Raslani Underground” is not a list that is created with love…

At Over 30 free high quality graffiti fonts I found one that is worth looking into: “KZ Gravity

I found my font at dafont.com, but there are some nice font to be found at deviantart.com which I need to do (some time :P)
This one tricked me into it:
Grafitti_Font_Beta_test_by_astayoga
Sadly the font is copy of the image you see here, and the sizes are to radical. would be awesome I think

Update #3: found another free graffiti font list: 50 Free Graffiti Fonts for Urban Artworks. The same applies to this is list what I mentioned before: it’s a list with a lot of fonts that range from good to very bad.
But in this list 3 fonts from deviantart.com (yes, I need to search there for some addition to my dafont list).
The first is Sprayerz Font by beraka
Sprayerz Font
and
KevoeWestFont by KevoeWest
KevoeWestFont
and
Crawn Fat by beraka
Crawn Fat