I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of the same old web-safe fonts on every site I see. Times here. Arial there. Helvetica thrown in for good measure. And lets not forget favorites like Courier.

If you’re a web designer who is as sick of using the same old worn out fonts in every one of your designs, then maybe its time to try something new.

FLIR, or the FaceLift Image Replacement tool, is a script designed to allow you to stop using images (or Flash) every time you want to add a unique font to your web designs. Through the magic of JavaScript and PHP, FLIR preloads the fonts that you desire, allowing them to appear on your page as if they had been loaded onto your visitor’s hard drive for years.

While it doesn’t work for every font, it does a great job on adding enough variety to a site to make it stand out from the pack. And, since FLIR is a free download, it’s hard to pass up.

Thanks to the Web Resources Depot.

A couple of new fonts today. Although you can’t use these for any of your web designs (unless you make an image with the font and incorporate it that way), these are still some snazzy designs that you may never know when they’ll come in handy.

Sometime back, I first heard of the Fertigo font, the precursor to the new Fertigo Pro. It was attractive, I downloaded it, and I used it a few times. Great font, just got stuck on using the traditional designs like Helvetica, Times, etc. Now, however, there is more reason to download Fertigo pro than ever before. The new font includes everything found in the original along with new glyphs for other languages and a number of very attractive dingbats that could definitely be incorporated into a design here and there.

The other font, FF Nuvo, has its roots in simplicity with a bit of pizzaz thrown in for good measure. Several of the letters really make this font stand out. It’s not too overstated in that you could never use this twice in the same project–but its not too subtle either. A nice mix, to be sure.

Thanks go to Smashing Magazine for bringing these two fonts to light.

One of the aspects of this site’s web design that I still want to change is the background pattern. Although I’ve modified it from the original, it still looks way too much like the original theme did–for my tastes anyway. So I started looking around for some great patterns to use instead of my current one, when I happened across this great post from Design Reviver.

Featured are over 400 attractive patterns–all free of charge (and almost all from DeviantArt). While most of them don’t allow for commercial use, you can still use them without a hitch on personal sites or pages where you won’t be trying to sell anything to your visitors. And even if you are planning on using these designs commercially, surely a quick email to the designers will be more than enough to convince them that your cause is worthy.

But, if all 400+ of these patterns aren’t enough for you, there are more to be found at a site called DinPattern. Pattern maestro Evan Eckard does a really nice job pumping out amazing patterns (several each month) and they’re definitely worth checking out.

Blogging about Apple products? The free Tigerpress WordPress theme from Smashing Magazine may be just what you’ve been looking for.

Taking a page from the design of Mac OS 10.4, Tigerpress resembles many of the key characteristics of Apple’s previous operating system. From the use of many true Apple icons (though scaled down in size) to the background and colors used in the theme, Tigerpress is as close of a representation to the true Tiger operating system as we’ve seen to date.

While there are a few other Apple related WordPress themes out there, the flow and overall high amount of polish on the Tigerpress theme really set it apart from the crowd. Using it truly gives you the experience that you are browsing through files and folders using the Finder.

However, I find a couple of things with this release to be very strange. Firstly, does anyone else find it odd that, nearly a year after the release of Leopard, the designers chose to build a Tiger styled WordPress theme? And secondly, are there really that many Mac bloggers out there who could directly benefit from using a theme like this?

Click this link to download it. Or view a preview image of the theme.

Upstart Blogger, a site dedicated to helping new bloggers succeed, recently added a brand new theme to their roster or strikingly minimalist designs. This time around, the new Moleskine theme comes across as a bit more mainstream, lacking most of the stark and cold design elements featured in their other designs like the famous Futurosity.

The idea behind the theme was to come up with a design that looked like a Moleskine notebook. You know, those famous black notebooks made famous by such literary geniuses as Hemingway. And the theme accomplishes this feat well. As a subtle gradient takes you from top to bottom, the typography is elegant and well placed–harkening back to the days when people actually wrote instead of typed.

But all is not without its problems. While the theme works flawlessly for most cases, there are issues with the Tag Cloud. Namely, sometimes the font can get a little too large–oozing out beyond its boundaries and infringing on other widgets’ space.

Nonetheless, the simplistic design of Moleskine more than makes up for this truly minor flaw. And, like everything else at Upstart Blogger, the theme is completely free.

Check out the demo. Or go ahead and give it a download.

Are you struggling to get your links on the front page of Digg? Does the community insult your submissions with phrases and acronyms that seem to come from some foreign, possibly alien, language?

If this sounds like you, isn’t it about time you learned the rules of the road for the popular social media site?

Well now you can–with the Ultimate Guide to Decoding Digg Speak.

This guide will take you through the basic memes, like Ron Paul, Will it Blend?, and Ubuntu. To more advanced usage, like All Your Base, Epic Fail, and Jack Thompson.

It can all be yours for the low, low, price of: Free!

Check it out at 10e20.

Talk about linkbait. Normally I reserve freebies for the weekends, but this post was just too good to pass up.

A couple of weeks ago, I linked to the Function Icon Set, a well designed package of icon goodness. Today, I’m heading back to his site for the mother of all grunge style posts.

I’m not a big fan of the grunge style, though it is really popular right now. Straight, bold lines and classical motifs are more my thing, but grunge certainly has its place.

If grunge is your thing, you have to check this post out. It packs in everything you could possibly want: from brushes to fonts to textures to inspiration. More than enough resources to satisfy any self respecting grunge aficionado.