Blue Collar Interactive Launches FontFuse Website and Contest for VIP trip to SXSW Interactive from WebINK

Hood River, OR (PRWEB) January 26, 2011

Full-service digital agency, Blue Collar Interactive, today announced the launch of FontFuse (http://fontfuse.WebINK.com), a font pairing design resource that allows designers to explore over 2,000 high-quality web fonts to create a font pairing that can be shared, rated and commented on. Created for leading software developer, Extensis? to showcase their WebINK? font library, this is the first web application of its kind to help designers quickly select and pair appropriate typefaces or browse selections from other users. To kick off the launch of the FontFuse website, WebINK is hosting a font pairing contest to send one lucky winner on a VIP trip for two to the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive event in Austin, TX.

Blue Collar Interactive developed the concept for the FontFuse website to help Extensis gain awareness for WebINK, a web font service that offers more than 2,000 high-quality fonts from 14 type foundries. Realizing that this newfound depth of fonts available on the web has made finding the right fonts more interesting and challenging for designers, Blue Collar intended to solve these challenges by creating a resource that would allow for font exploration and social sharing of font selections. FontFuse allows web designers and developers to explore the Extensis WebINK library, then use tools to quickly create their own typeface pairs. Site visitors can explore, create, share and comment on the typeface pairs and easily license the fonts that they?d like to use for their own design projects.

?Selecting the best fonts for design jobs has always been a challenge for today?s designers,? says Thomas Phinney, Extensis Product Manager for Fonts and Typography. ?FontFuse allows users to select pairs of high quality web fonts for use in headlines and body copy, and then share that knowledge with the rest of the design community.?

In celebration of the launch of the FontFuse website, Extensis announced a font pairing contest sponsored by WebINK that kicks off today, and will send a lucky winner and a guest to Austin, TX for the popular SXSW Interactive event on March 11-15, 2011. To enter, visitors simply have to sign up for an account at http://fontfuse.WebINK.com and create a font pairing from the library of high-quality web fonts. The entrant with the most community votes by the close of the contest on February 25, 2011, will win SXSW Interactive registration and airfare for two, hotel accommodations, and will be WebINK?s? honored guest at its cocktail reception at Austin?s new W Hotel on Monday, March 14, 2011. For full contest details visit: (http://fontfuse.webink.com/sxswcontest).

WebINK is a cloud-based web font rental service that gives designers access to high-quality web fonts, enabling them to use real typefaces on websites without worrying about supported font formats or font licensing issues. As a result, designers are no longer limited to the short list of fonts that work on the web, and now have the creative freedom to spec a font pairing from thousands of high quality font choices. WebINK fonts are standards-compliant, SEO-friendly, and implemented in HTML using simple @font-face CSS rule. FontFuse extends the value of WebINK by helping web designers and developers to create the best pairings.

?Typography is the cornerstone of strong visual communication and there is nothing else that currently exists for web designers and developers as a resource to create and share font pairings,? said Tom Lehmann, Partner and Creative Director at Blue Collar. ?FontFuse is a great place to learn about type, share ideas and more than anything, be inspired.?

Blue Collar Interactive handled the concept for the FontFuse website, and all branding, strategy, web design and development and advertising campaign extensions including PPC, email marketing and online advertising.

?The Blue Collar team has done what no other agency has done for me in the 15-plus years I have been hiring outside agencies?they delivered what they promised,? said Brad Dunzer, Extensis Web Technology Manager.

Blue Collar is a full-service digital agency that offers a wide range of creative and client services, web development and interactive marketing services. Their management team consists of three founding senior partners and an advisory board of junior partners that leverage a well-balanced suite of expertise to offer clients ?one-stop-shopping? for their interactive needs. Blue Collar?s gritty, hand-shake approach to creative marketing solutions, is backed by a dedication to strong business relationships through hard work, brutal honesty, integrity and trust. For more information about Blue Collar Interactive and their suite of services, visit: http://www.bluecollaragency.com.

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Noted Silicon Valley Iconographer Launches New Book ?Susan Kare: ICONS?

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 29, 2011

Susan Kare, the noted Silicon Valley interface designer, today launched a new book, Susan Kare: ICONS, featuring 80 of her most popular icons created between 1983-2011. The book comprises a collection of original Apple icons including: the Bomb, Watch cursor, Smiling Macintosh, and Moof the Dogcow?and the 1983 and 2011 portrait icons of Steve Jobs, among others.

Kare is the designer of many?icons, typefaces and graphics that have been seen daily by millions since the early 1980s ?from the command symbol on the Apple keyboard to over 1000 Facebook virtual gifts? along with design work for companies such as PayPal, Glam Media, Microsoft, and Fossil.

?In 1984, one of the Macintosh team's most auspicious early hires was artist Susan Kare who created the engaging original icons for the Mac,? says Steve Silberman, a contributing editor at Wired magazine who wrote the foreword to Kare?s ICON book. ?The gestures and metaphors of icon-driven computing seem so natural and effortless to us now? that it seems strange to recall navigating in the digital world any other way. Susan?s work has had long-lasting influence, and this book is long overdue.?

ABOUT THE BOOK

Susan Kare: ICONS is a 160-page, 7x7 inch soft-cover art book featuring the ?Smiling Macintosh? on its cover. Each book is priced at $ 39.95, and signed by the artist. ICONS provides a curated look at 80 of Kare's favorite icons created between 1983 and 2011. A magnified view allows the reader to see how the icons were crafted, pixel-by-pixel, with notes by the artist accompanying selected images. The book also displays the icons at their familiar sizes, and features an introductory essay by Steve Silberman, "Signposts in New Space". Susan Kare: ICONS is sold exclusively online at http://www.kareprints.com.

Designers, Mac fans, and computer nerds may want to purchase some of her most memorable icon prints (or be delighted to receive them as gifts). From a mere handful of pixels, Kare created visual metaphors for computer commands that have become part of the visual language of computing, familiar to almost everyone who looks at a screen.

ABOUT SUSAN KARE PRINTS

All of the gicl?e prints (fine art prints created on an ink-jet printer) are made using archival pigment inks and 100% cotton rag paper. The prints range in size from 8.5 x 11 inches to 30 x 40 inches, and commissioned, custom images are available upon request. There is a limited run of each print size, and each is inspected, signed and numbered personally by Susan Kare. Icons offered cover a wide range of her work from the classic computer user interface elements and familiar digital Solitaire cards, to a variety of iconic images from Facebook virtual gifts such as a love letter, disco ball, and a coffee cup titled "Caffeine? from a series of bad habits images for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

ABOUT SUSAN KARE

Susan Kare User Interface Graphics is a digital design practice in San Francisco, California. Her high school friend, Andy Hertzfeld, recruited Susan Kare to Apple, Inc. in the early 1980s.?She originally worked in the Macintosh software group to design user interface graphics and fonts; her business cards read "Macintosh Artist." Following her time at Apple, Kare joined Steve Jobs at?NeXT Computer as the Creative Director, and hired her design hero, Paul Rand, to create the NeXT logo.

According to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Susan Kare is ?a pioneering and influential computer iconographer. Since 1983, Kare has designed thousands of icons for the world?s leading technology companies. Utilizing a minimalist grid of pixels and constructed with mosaic-like precision, her icons communicate their function immediately and memorably, with wit and style.?

Kare graduated from Mount Holyoke College and received MA and Ph.D. degrees from New York University. An avid surfer and skier, she lives in Northern California with her three sons, and two Australian Shepherds.

The book and prints are available online at http://www.kareprints.com

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