UPDATE: 12/14/2105: Big updates and price drop – head right over to Oxbow Domains to check it out!

Elliot and I have been working on “Ox” for months! From concept, code, logo and brand identity, to typography and e-commerce! There are a lot of disciplines all wrapped up in our beta release of Ox, our expired domain scraper. The free period is only during beta, but check it out and get on the list for updates on the commercial release. Note that every beta will have a free trial period! Whatever expired domains you find you get to keep! So check out the latest entry into the realm of expired domain software with a modern, clean-design, cross-platform twist.

..Current release is 0.9.3. This is the free (as in beer!) beta release of Ox, our standalone domain scraping app, which can find hundreds or even thousands of expired domains in just hours. Ox supports proxies and automatically returns DA and PA for each available domain, and domain availability checking is provided by Namecheap (you can check their supported TLDs page to get an idea of what’s available. Basically, just about everything).

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Ox is in beta so it’s a totally free expired domains scraper during this time. But when it goes on sale…[s]ay goodbye to subscription payments–Ox will pay for itself the very first day. No caps: Since Ox is running from home, you don’t have to worry about arbitrary limits being placed on your searches. Run it as long as you want! Searches 1m+ are quite easy and you can find thousands of domains from one URL.

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Oh, and the beta expires June 7th, so don’t waste time and free domains. Give it a shot now!

Source: Ox Expired Domains Scraper

Are you planning your own wedding? Making your own invites? You need all the help you can get, right? Well, we’ve compiled 20 contemporary wedding invitation examples along with a few tips for those of you who are thinking about DIY wedding announcements. I enjoyed scanning wedding sites for these images–all the design associated with weddings in general are more artsy and beautiful than ever before. Hopefully this helps you a little, saves you some time, and gives you some ideas to think outside the box to make your special day just that much more special!… [Read More]

The principles of design are simple guidelines used to organize the various elements of design (line, texture, color, etc.) in a composition. Five basic principles that we illustrate here are: balance, unity, rhythm, proportion and emphasis. Good art has both elements AND principles of design cooperating well together creating a composition aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

Below we show examples of fun wine bottle designs where several of these principles have been applied…. [Read More]

To save you time and help shorten your list of wedding t0-do’s, we’ve collected a list of resources for DIY wedding invitations and wedding blogs. (It’s just a fun little precursor as we get ready to release our upcoming book–The Big Book of Free Wedding Font Combinations!)

As we all know, weddings are not cheap! A few ways to cut back on your expenses is by creating your own wedding invitations and wedding blogs. But where in the world do you begin? Below we’ve whittled down and compiled some of the TOP resources for these two fun DIY projects, that when outsourced to local artists, can be costly.… [Read More]

Creating your own DIY invites? Find the top 20 free Google wedding font combinations below!

After researching some of the classic to modern fonts, we’ve combined a sampling of just a few of our favorites. The font combos include both a decorative font, as well as a more readable print font–so you can include a variety of information on your invites. Go ahead and Print the PDF’s!  And be sure to keep an eye out for our upcoming book–The Big Book of Free Wedding Font Combinations, coming soon!

Just to get your creative juices flowing, here’s a few sites that showcase beautiful avant-garde and minimalist style invitations. Enjoy!

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Creative energies stagnant? Need to mix things up or gain a fresh perspective? Here’s a little poster design inspiration for your upcoming projects, articles or blogs.

We all get stuck from time to time and when this happens, nothing is more valuable than investing your time “stealing” ideas from wherever you can get them. Scanning beautiful portfolios, clever illustrations, typographic styles and good use of design elements (in addition to stepping outside or grabbing a coffee) are all effective ways to build upon and improve your work…. [Read More]

If you’re looking for a quick smattering of popular free wedding fonts, look no further. Here’s a collection of favorites from fellow bloggers. Of course you’ll see the best fonts overlap. Most posts have the links for download. Happy Browsing–

1. 50 Free Fonts | Best Free Fonts for Wedding Invitations
2. My Top 16 Favorite Free Fonts For Weddings
3. 40 Best Wedding Fonts
4. Free Fonts for Your DIY Wedding Invitations
5. Free Fonts for Your DIY Wedding Invitations-Vol. 3
6. 25 Romantic Fonts
7. Our Favorite Free Fonts
8. Wedding Invite Font Combinations
9. For Designers: Favorite Fonts
10. Southern Weddings: Our Favorite Free Fonts
11. My Top Ten Script Fonts
12. 20 Free and Awesome Fonts for Weddings

 

 

 

 

Are you losing your passion for design? Is your drive, or personal vision in your work lacking?

Here are some great books to help rekindle your creativity, or help you re-evaluate your life purpose. We all go through dry periods when we lose site of our vision and languish in our inspiration–whether in our life, career, or just the next project. Every now and then, we need a kick in the pants–or at least a little encouragement from other like-minded, and very human artists! If you’re in need of a creative reboot, consider a few of these books written by those who through sheer determination traveled upstream to follow their inner calling…. [Read More]

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Tarkovsky could sum up his life’s work as one of integrating creativity and truth. He strongly believed life was about finding your calling (in his case, an artist) and living it out fully. After a long and arduous journey of his own self-discovery, he points others to do the same. To be true to yourself, you must discover who you are and live for a higher purpose authentically.

This inspiring cinematic memoir is essential for anyone who’s interest is in the Visual Arts. Whether or not you are studying film or even familiar with the work of Tarkovsky, this book will enlighten you as an artist and help you rethink the purpose of your own work. Tarkovsky not only sets out methods for film making, he writes profoundly on the philosophy of aesthetics–pointing out the power visual poetry has in helping the audience transcend what we ordinarily call real–into a much more potent world of spirituality. He doesn’t believe in art as an outlet of  “self expression”, so much as a duty of self-sacrifice, to love and enrich the lives of others. He says when the artist creates authentically, they communicate from a higher level of existence, ultimately linking us to Absolute Truth–the Source of all creation.

In this very personal book, Tarkovsky writes honestly about his own mistakes and hard lessons learned along the way. He shares his inspirations, thoughts and techniques in his films–Ivan’s Childhood, Andrey Rublyov, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice. 

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From his book–Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky writes:

“Masterpieces are born of the artists’s struggle to express his ethical ideals. If he loves life, has an overwhelming need to know it, change it, try to make it better, -in short, if he aims to cooperate in enhancing the value of life, then there is no danger in the fact that the picture of reality will have passed through  filter of his subjective concepts, through his states of mind. For his work will always be a spiritual endeavor which aspires to make man more perfect: an image of the world that captivates us by its harmony of feeling and thought, its nobility and restraint.”

 “In artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the fit that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of our human calling.”

“The great function of art is communication, since mutual understanding is a force to unite people, and the spirit of communion is one of the most important aspects of artistic creativity.” –A. Tarkovsky

Update 1/2019: We shut down our tracking stats! Sorry to see it go, but we moved on to other projects!

We are tracking nearly 2000 of the most popular web fonts across 10,000 of the most visited websites ranked by Alexa. Head on over to Fonts of the World to see and explore the data, and click some examples to see what you are missing!

The data is very interesting. Arial has the lions share of usage. Will Arial be the most popular font…forever? And look at how widespread the usage of icon fonts has become: as of today, the fifth most popular web fonts in the world is an icon font.

Most popular web fonts usage trends: coming soon!

We are adding weekly data and trending charts so we can track web font usage over time. It will be fascinating to see what the data reveals as the weeks go by and the data piles up.

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