Commenting on blogs similar to yours is one quick way to promote your own blog/website. I discovered this a while back but wanted to beef up a bit my own blog before jumping on the “comment on other blogs” wagon.

Although a lot of them are very well designed I found it hard to write about some mistakes I kept on seeing on other blogs. In fact I have learned a lot.

The most important thing to remember is this:

Scan not read

People do not have the time to read a whole lot now-a-days (unless they are really interested in a particular subject) so “Good bye Reading” and “Hello Scanning”. In order to capture attention you have to create breaks in your text such that the human eye can easily scan, stop and read small bits.

This can be accomplished by using colors, bold fonts or a combination of the two.

Here’s an example of bad text on a blog:

Bad Blog Structure

Now here’s something I would scan rapidly and read portions of it (if not the entire post). Notice the titles, bullets and other breaks in the text.

Good Blog Structure

If I made it a goal to comment on several blogs each day, this approach will save me time and rapidly move onto the next one. In the same time I retain some good information because the major points in the blog captured my attention.

Sometimes even a picture comes in very handy by tickling the viewer’s curiosity so use them in your blog. Don’t just copy some image from Bing or Google images. Besides being copyrighted, you won’t get brownie points on originality either.

So, bloggers out there – make your readers’ life easier and incorporate these tricks into the flow of your post:

• Write posts that are 500 words or less (this is just under 360 words)
• Break the post in several chunks of text (each chunk consisting of 3-4 sentences)
• Emphasize titles, important ideas or key elements in your text for easy reading
• Do use bulleted lists (just like here)
• Ask questions and spark interest such that comments are welcomed
• Draw conclusions at the end of the post

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Ever since Al Gore invented the internet or George W. Bush has been using the internets, the following are the most used fonts on websites or design:

1. Arial
   
2. Verdana
   
3. Times New Roman
   
   
4. Georgia
   
5. Helvetica
   
6. Courier
   
7. Tahoma
   
8. Comic Sans
   
9. Franklin Gothic
   
10. Lucida
    

If you feel some others should make the list please drop me a line and we’ll include them on the list.

For great use of Typography on printed materials visit my portfolio of works.

Whether you are looking to design a brochure or a new website the importance of typography can’t be overestimated. Elegant fonts can help to convey the message in a more convenient way. There are many excellent profession fonts that you can find for free over the web.

Quality fonts usually have a price attached in order to download them. You can find them on a variety of sites starting at $50 out there but this article will give you a list of resources that are free to download.

Free Fonts Resources

Here are the sources I visit all the time for my projects:

1001 Fonts – http://www.1001freefonts.com/
Excellent Source of over 6500 fonts. If you chose to download another 10,000 fonts in one click that will cost you $19.99.

DaFont – http://www.dafont.com/
Over 9000 fonts free to download

Urban Fonts – http://www.urbanfonts.com/

Search Free Fonts – http://www.searchfreefonts.com/
New SearchFreeFonts.com collection contains over 13,000 free fonts and over 91,000 commercial fonts

Font Stock – http://www.fontstock.net/
They offer lots of free fonts as well as links to buy other commercial fonts.

Abstract Fonts – http://www.abstractfonts.com/
Over 12,000 fonts and a forum where you can ask questions about a particular font you want to use.

Fontex – http://www.fontex.org/
Hand-picked fonts and other resources for your designs.

High Fonts – http://www.highfonts.com/

Free Fonts – http://www.free-fonts.com/

I hope you enjoy this short but abundant list of free fonts for all your design needs.