Who doesn’t love Helvetica? I know I do! Today I received my first tattoo. I wanted to get something that would never go out of style, so I went ahead and got ‘Helvetica’ tattooed on the back of my arm just above my elbow. To be more specific, Helvetica Medium.

A lot of people who don’t know much about typography and graphic design keep asking me what Helvetica is and the importance of it. My response is something like this:

‘Helvetica modernized type as we know it today. It sends a message to people in a very noncontroversial way. You can’t judge Helvetica. Helvetica can say it all. It can say ‘I love you, I hate you, Will you marry me?’ in a way that communicates effectively and always looks good. Helvetica makes life simple.’

Helvetica Trailer

How do you show your love for Helvetica?

Recently, I posted a tweet linking to an article on freelancefolder.com. 27 Indispensible Resources for Graphic Designers. The article had a lot of really great icons, photoshop and illustrator brushes, textures, and more. Shortly after this tweet a friend of mine who is not a designer, but a fisherman commented telling me how awesome the brushes were. This got me thinking. Is using free brushes cheating when it comes to design?

In some cases, designers may enjoy making free brushes available to the public just as a way to be a giving person. Yet, the majority of designers create brushes and make them available to the public as a way of showcasing their work and to hopefully come across a piece of artwork on the internet that they spot their brush used in. I have seen a lot of creative and inspiring brushes on the web, and I think they are a great way to add to any design depending on the project. Personally, if I see a brush on the web that I think is really neat I use it as inspiration for my own. By the time I am done making my new brush it looks nothing like the free one I found on the web. There is a sense of accomplishment when you create your own assets and elements. It feels good to know that you can use them as many times as you want and however you want to use them.

The problem I have with free brushes and any designer-created content available (even vector art you purchase on stock photo sites), is when people use them as points of actual design in their work opposed to just unnoticed elements of design that make the piece more balanced. So, when my friend the fisherman told me how awesome the free brushes were and how he was going to load them into his ‘free’ copy of photoshop it almost upset me in a way. I knew instantaneously that he would be using the brushes to create an actual design instead of elements in his own design. It bothers me to know that there is published work out there with design assets in them that are not 100% original. The thought that anyone can download free or paid for artwork from the web and throw some text over it and call it their own doesn’t sit well with me.

So, I ask you: Is this cheating? Is this evolution of downloadable and useable content from the web changing our world of original and creative design? Are we as designers adding to the problem by offering thousands of new free design assets on the web daily? As a designer, how do you hope your brushes are being used by others? And if you are a design who uses brushes from the web, how do you use them?

Web developer extension

This add-on is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux and offers many features that make web design and development fast and easy. The web developer extension has an assortment of useful features such as image and color manipulation, over 6 types of page validators, and customizable browser resizing settings that are all usable right in your browser. Learn more about this add-on and install it.

Html Validator

The Html Validator add-on installs a convenient little icon in the bottom right of your browser’s status bar. It has a self explanatory icon legend that tells you if your html is valid by displaying a green check mark or if it’s invalid by displaying a red x. By simply double clicking the icon all of your errors are located and highlighted. Suggestions are given on how to correct any of your coding mistakes. So small, yet so useful! Learn more about this add-on and install it here.

MeasureIt

Easily measure any window, division, or element accurately to help fit your design. This add-on installs a ruler icon in the bottom left of your browser’s status bar that you can activate and deactivate by a single click. MeasureIt makes it very simple to measure anything you may need to measure on the web. Learn more about this add-on and install it.

Dummy Lipsum

Quickly generate Lorem Ipsum text. This add-on makes it simple to test input fields for forms, as well as testing blog layouts that text may not be available for yet. Learn more about this add-on and install it.

Delicious Bookmarks

Make it easy to visit and manage any of your delicious bookmarks right through the built-in Delicious toolbar. As designers, we are constantly browsing the web for quick fixes to get our sites looking great in internet explorer and reference sites to keep our code clean. Conveniently locate all of your designer reference pages right through your Delicious Bookmarks add-on. Learn more about this add-on and install it.

In short, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. By subscribing via RSS to your favorite blogs and news site, you save yourself a great amount of time while keeping yourself organized.

To learn more about RSS you can read about it here(whatisrss.com) or simply watch this quick video below.

Now that you have been enlightened, go ahead and subscribe to this blog using RSS or subscribe by e-mail. When you subscribe to this blog by e-mail you will automatically be notified via e-mail when a new entry has been posted.

Welcome to the Velvet Ant blog! This blog is a resource for you, others, and myself to showcase our creativity and share our knowledge as designers. This blog will mostly focus on Graphic Design, Logo Design, Typography, Web, 3D Design, and many other tools to apply to your everyday way of living in hopes to better yourself as a professional.

Quick Background about myself:
My name is Antonea Nabors and I am a Graphic Designer who lives and works out of Melbourne, Florida. I am employed by a company where I do mostly print and web work, but I also love to freelance in my spare time. I majored in Digital Arts and Design at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida about 2 years ago and I have not regretted my career path for a second! I have been intrigued by computers and what you are able to accomplish on them since the first day I connected to the internet with my 56k modem! I love everything that is design and I don’t know what my life would be today without it!

Never go see a movie with me because I will tell you how many titles in the opening previews are using the Trajan typeface. I have been surfing since I was about 11 years old, and I almost love it as much as design. I am easily inspired by nature and I love being faced with situations that really make me think on my toes. I like solving problems. I love music and finding new music to listen to. You will find me posting entries here and there that will tell you what I am currently listening to, so if you feel that you might have new music that I’d be into or that I should give a listen to, please leave me a comment! I have never blogged a day in my life. I wouldn’t consider myself much of a writer. I am just a Designer looking for a way to effectively communicate with other Designers and Creatives.

Now, what is this whole ‘VelvetAnt’ thing about? When I was graduating from college and was setting myself up with a marketing plan, I didn’t want it to be boring. I didn’t want to market myself just as ‘Antonea Nabors.’ So, why VelvetAnt? My nickname is Ant, and a velvet ant is actually a type of wasp that closely resembles an ant. A velvet ant is known for its painful, venom-filled sting, whose fur resembles the appearance of velvet. In a nut shell, VelvetAnt is my way of marketing myself as a small, yet powerful freelance designer.