Featured Site: Colormind & Fontjoy

"Colormind is a color scheme generator that uses deep learning. It can learn color styles from photographs, movies, and popular art."

Colormind and Fontjoy are a new set of sites custom taylored to goose the creative juices of graphic designers.  Both sites are powered by "neural nets" developed by one Jack Qiao.  One suggests unique pairings of fonts for your typography project.  The other suggests unique palettes.  They a huge help when you're experiencing creative writer's block or just new to graphic design.

Colormind generates five-color palettes with the click of a mouse using data drawn from Adobe Color.  Meanwhile, FontJoy analyzes letterforms to "systematically find fonts that share similarities but contrast in a key way" to match typefaces.  Yes, you might know that using a serif for a header with sans serifs for a subhead creates an eye-drawing visual contrast, but FontJoy goes deeper than that.  Fonts  chosen by this site might share a weight, slant, or other quality that makes them the perfect pair.

Both Colormind and Fontjoy are free to use.  Of course, whether or not you find them useful is another question entirely.

Featured Site: 1001 Rogues

1001 Rogues is a browser-playable game inspired by the classic 1980 dungeon-crawling video game, Rogue only it features a new story every day.  There's a twitter bot that tweets a summary of the day's new story when it's generated each day at about 2pm UTC.

Rogue was the great-granddaddy of dungeon crawlers.  It's a very simple game that has been ported to nearly every major operating system released in the past thirty years.  It's a fascinating game that anyone who calls themselves a video game fan should try at least once.  Via

Featured Site: Conquer.Earth

Conquer.Earth is a new social media service that offers users an interactive map on which they can mark all of the places they’ve visited with colorful pin icons.  Users can then share their maps to show off their globetrotting. The service has only just recently begun offering early access.

Featured Site: HowBB8Works.com

"HowBB8Works.com" by Carlos Sánchez and Emilio “EGPJET3D” Gelardo

HowBB8Works.com is a website created by two Star Wars fans from Spain, product designer Carlos Sánchez and CG artist Emilio “EGPJET3D” Gelardo, who have collected facts, made educated guesses, and created handy visuals to explain how the awesome BB-8 droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens works.

Inspired by the Droid Mechanics Lee Towersey and Oliver Steeples, we wanted to build our own astromech and learn about it in the process. Only that we come from the software side of things.

Director J.J. Abrams went old school during production of The Force Awakens. The original trilogy, which mainly used real sets and props, had a special vibe that was missing in the prequel trilogy. Abrams wanted Episode VII to feel organic and tactile, closer in spirit to the original movies. To achieve that, they used as many practical effects as possible, and BB-8 was no exception.

The first known sketch of BB-8 was revealed during Star Wars Celebration 2015…

Featured Site: Parable of the Polygons

"Parable of the Polygons" by Vi Hart and Nicky Case

There are some people who believe that games should stay games and never deal with "real issues", but Parable of the Polygons, by Vi Hart and Nicky Case, shows just how great games can be used to illustrate important concepts.

This simple game uses fussy little polygons to illustrate how a slight personal bias can lead to racially segregated neighborhoods. Go ahead, just try to make these squares and triangles happy.

 Billed as a "playable post about the shape of society," Parable of the Polygons leads you through a series of puzzles where its your job to make the tiny squares and triangles all happy by shifting them around until their living conditions are diverse... just not too diverse. Different puzzles impose different conditions for happy shapes, and as you progress down the post's games, you'll come to see how each neighborhood of shapes grows more and more segregated without intending to. 

Featured Site: Fisheye Placebo

"Fisheye Placebo" by Wenqing Yan

Fisheye Placebo is an beautiful web series I recommend to anyone who enjoys cyberpunk fiction, or sci-fi themed manga in general.   The plot is as dark and edgy as any young adult dystopian franchise, and the characters come to life with an endearing rye humor that quickly draws readers into their struggles.


Fisheye Placebo follows the story of  Vance, who just wants to make the most out of his college experience living in a nation under a totalitarian regime.  The last thing he expected was to be dragged into a crazy conspiracy to overthrow the government by his roommate.  College was meant to be exciting, but between bad dates, failed classes, and successful cyber attacks, Vance slowly begins to question his own morality.

The comic is a slow to unfold, as Wenqing draws each scene herself, but so far, each new scene has been worth the wait! 

Featured Site: Night Physics

"Night Physics" by Austin Holcomb

Night Physics is a webcomic (currently updating bi-monthly) on tumblr that is sometimes about anthropomorphic animals in a "tough-but-doomed little mountain town somewhere in the American Midwest" being asked what they dream about, and sometimes about some friends living in that town "as they try to navigate relationships, sexual ethics, suburban legends, ancient myths, haunted houses, and psychedelic wastelands--often all at the same time." The story begins when two friends consume exactly too much of a new drug and have revelatory visions about their lives - and afterward, one can't seem to stop having them.

Featured Site: Always Human

"Always Human" by Walking North

"A sci-fi/ romance webcomic about queer ladies"

So this rolled across my Tumblr dashboard this morning.  I'm not much for romance comics, but I was drawn in by the vibrancy of Walking North's art before I realized what I was reading.  Now, I'm intrigued by the idea of "mods."  The reference seems to hint at a technology like in the movie Code 46, which I really loved.

"Please click the link above to read part 1 of the comic that’s been consuming all my drawing time for the past few weeks. *looks around nervously* I hope people like it???

And, um, if you do like it, would you please consider reblogging it?

Then other people would be able to see it and they, perhaps, might like it too and wow that would be really amazing! And I would be eternally grateful! Don’t you want my eternal gratitude?
*makes puppy-dog eyes*

Also, I’m entering this into a competition, and the competition is partially based on reader response. If you have the time, it would mean the world to me if you would help me out with this. Pretty please? If you’d like to help, could you please:

• Rate the comic (you’ll have to log in, but it’s really easy to do since you can use your facebook or twitter account)
• Add the comic to your favourites
• Leave me a comment on the webtoons website (please let me know what you think, I will love you forever <333)
• Click the heart button at the bottom of the comic to show that you liked it

Thank you so much to everyone who read this and gave me feedback, and let me blather at them about worldbuilding and stuff."

Featured Site: Mare Internum

"Mare Internum" by Der-shing Helmer

"Mare Internum" is a sci-fi web comic set on Mars launched earlier this year by Der-shing Helmer, the creator of the fantasy web comic The Meek.  The comic centers around Rebekah “Bex” Egunsola, an entomologist who arrives at her new post on an isolated Mars research station, where she meets the station's previous occupant, Michael Fisher, who has just been fired.  Bex is on a mission to determine the feasibility of raising crickets on Mars, but Fisher's mental stability is questionable.  Tension quickly builds between the two as Bex struggles to learn everything she needs to know to survive at the remote outpost while also dealing with Fisher's personal demons.

Shing describes it as "a comic about isolation, living with imperfections, being in dark places, and yeah also bugs and robots I guess. It is also a way for me to communicate some feelings about some bad times in my life without having to actually talk about them. That’s the power of webcomics- it’s a way for me to share a message with you, to teach and hopefully entertain, all without you needing to leave your room. Or me mine, haha."

What sets the comic apart is that the author, Shing, spent two years researching the science behind the story to make sure that it is as accurate as possible.  That makes this a very plausible story that few space nerds are going to be able to resist.  It reminds me of some of my favorite sci-fi movies, like Solaris, Moon, or 2001.  Yes, it's absolutely the science fiction elements that draw you in, but ultimately what keeps you at the edge of your seat is the human drama. 

Bookmark it!

Featured Site: MyScriptFont

Makerbook is a hand-picked directory of the best free resources for creatives.

Featured Site: A Dark Room

"A Dark Room"

Illustration by Shenanigans & Spider Ladies

So, two days ago I (unwisely) clicked a link and spent the rest of the day surreptitiously playing A Dark Room, a minimalist browser-based game where you build up a village in a post-apocalyptic world and go exploring. The writing is sharp and the gameplay is utterly addictive. If you like frontier games or mainly-text adventures this is probably for you.

If you haven’t ever played it, you should. Go and do it now.  I can’t really say anything about it without spoiling the fun, but there are no graphics or sound, and it's free of anything too unpleasant. It’s not, as you might infer from the title, a horror game.  It will, however, leave you with a creeping sense of unease, though.

What's so fun about the game is how such a completely minimalistic interface can lead a player down such an incredibly complex path.  You won't understand until you play it for yourself, so go give it a try!

Featured Site: MyScriptFont

MyScriptFont is a free online tool that helps you to create a vector font from your handwriting. All you have to do is download the provided template in PDF or PNG, fill out the squares with a marker before scanning it at 150 or 300dpi in grayscale. After uploading it, you’re then able to download the resulting font as a TTF or OTF file.  Check out how to install and use your exclusively created font here.

Featured Site: CLICKittyCAT

"CLICKittyCAT" by S. Dirk Schafer

The CLICKittyCAT web comic is a series of one-liner comics based on true stories from the Dexter’s Camera camera store in Ventura, California.  The shop has served customers since the 1960s, so they’ve fielded plenty of unusual questions over the years.

Featured Site: Journey Middle Earth

Created by Warner Brothers, Google, and North Kingdom, "A Journey Through Middle Earth" is an interactive map complete with awesome 3D animations and sound that takes users on exciting adventures through twenty-one different locations featured in the Lord of The Rings and the Hobbit trilogies.  Users can  "join a battle" or retrace the footsteps of their favorite LOTR characters, including Frodo and Gandalf, on their journeys through Middle Earth.

Featured Site: Metaflop

Metaflop by Swiss designers Marco Müller and Alexis Reigel

Metaflop is an easy-to-use web app that lets users design their own fonts without the expense of typography software or the hassle of dealing with the technical aspects of design, like programming language and coding.

Metaflop makes designing your own fonts as simple as adjusting a the app’s sliders to adjust a typeface's characteristics, such as cap height and ascenders, in real time.   Once you're satisfied with your font design, you can easily download it as a .otf font for free.  It's also a great way for new graphic designers to learn the terminology surrounding type design.  If you've ever read about typeface terms like ascenders, cap heights, overshoot, descenders, and contrasts, there's no better way to figure out what these terms mean than by using a slider to change their variables and see how it changes a typeface in real time.

In an interview with It’s Nice That, designers Marco Müller and Alexis Reigel said: "We are aware that it is difficult to produce subtle and refined typographical fonts (in the classical meaning)… Nevertheless we believe there is a undeniable quality in parametric font design and we try to bring it closer to the world of the designers."

Featured Site: DIY

DIY is a new educational site that specializes in enabling kids to learn a wide variety of skills on their own through the use of online web tutorials.  It doesn't just offer the common Boy Scout skillset like building fires or tying knots.  The merit badges kids earn through this site, which have been designed by Isaiah Saxon, commemorate achievements like backyard farming, engineering darkness, creative use of tape, and even being a Yeti. This could even be better than becoming one of NightVale's Eternal Scouts.  I mean, there's so much less blood involved.

Featured Site: Deep Dark Fears

Deep Dark Fears by Fran Krause

Prints available for purchase from Society6. US$18.72

Illustrator Fran Krause asked people to tell him their weirdest and most irrational fears to turn them into witty comics. Sometimes these irrational fears can be traced from the early childhood memories or come as a result of some vivid world explanations grown-ups used to tell you. Sometimes,they're just inexplicable.

The project, which started with Krause‘s own phobias, now features comics of more than a hundred of craziest and darkest fears readers sent him. When reading through the comics, you can see that even though your fears might be silly, they aren‘t that uncommon.  In fact, Krause could very well call the site "Things you're going to be afraid of from now on," because if these aren't things that you're already worrying about, you're going to be thinking of them now. If you feel brave enough, you can submit one yourself!

Featured Site: Spaghetti Toes

Spaghetti Toes by Martin Bruckner

Things said to, and by a 2 year old

Kids say the craziest things, so this clever dad, Martin Bruckner, decided to turn the sayings of his 3-year-old daughter, Harper Grace, into illustrations. Originally, he started the project as a Mother’s Day gift to his wife, however it now turned into a popular tumblr blog “Spaghetti Toes.”

His daughters ingenious thoughts isn’t the only inspiration – conversations with toddlers often result in weird phrases from the adults as well.

“Spaghetti Toes” name itself comes from his wife saying to their daughter “Please don’t put spaghetti between your toes” at the dinner table. Martin asked his wife, “Did you actually just say those words?” and Spaghetti Toes was born.

Encouraged by its success, he now offers an opportunity to send him your child’s quotes and have a similar book made for you!

Featured Site: #DarthDays

"#DarthDays" by Evanston, Illinois-based artist George Folz

To celebrate the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December this year, illustrator Gerard Folz has resolved to draw a single scene from the original Star Wars movies each and every day in 2015.  Folz is only a few days into his project, but he's off to an impressive start.  As you can see, his drawing style is reminiscent to that of the original Marvel Star Wars comic book series

You can see examples of his work below, and follow his progress through the rest of the year through Twitter or using the #Darthdays hashtag on Facebook.

"I’m treating this as my warm-up exercise for the year— a way for me to have fun, and do something on a daily basis that is completely removed stylistically from The Roman Nose.

Additionally, for the duration of this project, I’ll be giving away my original black and white art once a week. At the end of the given week, if you’ve seen something that you like over the last seven days, shoot me a message on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter or what-have-you and the first person who messages me will get the drawing of their choosing."

Featured Site: Touchable Memories

Touchable Memories is a meaningful social experiment conducted by Spanish creative agency Lola which converts photographs into 3D replicates with the use of a home printer called Buccaneer.  In this way, the blind are able to recall via touch their old memories from photographs taken when they could still see. This hits home, as I have a close family member that has been slowly losing her eye sight over the past few years.