Last week in Ohio, the temperature dropped to -3. The week before, we had two nights of freezing rain, followed by snow. Dayton was pretty much shut down.

But here at Atomic, things were business as usual. Development meetings, client meetings, preparing new designs… it was all good. Why? Because we were already using technologies that enabled remote working. So when we had to work from home for a few days… it was no big deal.

Remote working is becoming increasingly prevalent, across a variety of industries. But we think that some of the tools we’re using are making it more effective than ever. Here are two of our favorites.

  • We’ve used Basecamp for years to organize all of our projects. It provides web-based project management and collaboration, so everyone on our team – from designers and developers to clients and consultants – can see the same information, in real time. Basecamp also helps us keep projects on track – everyone can see the same schedules and milestones, and whether they’re completed or outstanding. It also lets us keep all the messages and files related to a project in one place – so they’re not spread across multiple hard drives and emails.
  • join.me is a free online meeting space that we use to hold staff meetings and client meetings. Join.me lets you “share” your screen with each meeting participant, so everyone can see the same thing you’re looking at and follow exactly what you’re clicking on. We use join.me in a variety of ways – to orient new clients to Basecamp, to train them on new content management systems, or to review wireframes and designs.

As Atomic’s “air traffic controller,” I also love the fact that projects don’t fall behind just because we can’t meet in person. Effective remote meetings let us keep things moving – even when snow, travel, or busy schedules intervene.

Fonts have been a sore spot for web designers for a long time.

Back in the day, we were limited to the most basic of fonts – Arial, Times, and Helvetica – because we needed to use fonts that most people had on their machines. Then came the time of JavaScript- and Flash-based plug-ins. They let us use a wider range of fonts … but things still weren’t great. Often the fonts didn’t load quickly or smoothly. Strange things happened when you used special fonts for links or wrapping text. And of course, Apple has decided not to support Flash in the iPhone and iPad environments.

Thank goodness, we finally have something new. It’s Typekit.

Typekit is a subscription-based library of fonts that designers can use for their websites. All the fonts are hosted online by Typeface, so anything you can find on Typekit, you can plug into your site. And your users won’t require Flash, like other font substitutors have in the past.
As a designer, I appreciate the selection of fonts that Typekit makes available. They look like they were hand-picked by someone with a strong design sensibility and an understanding of what works visually on the web.

And as a developer, I love how easy it is to find the font you’re looking for and apply it to your CSS classes, IDs, or any other HTML tag in your markup. You can also pare down your bandwidth use by choosing only the weights and styles in each font family that you need.

Finally, from a business perspective, Typekit is just plain affordable. You can buy one subscription for your company and use it across all the sites that you develop.

I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but Typekit may make fonts fun again for web designers. I think it’s time to break out the champagne.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.

Read more