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You're a designer, not a text jockey. But sometimes you're forced to work with Microsoft Word anyway, and when that happens, you'll be glad to have these tips.

Based on articles originally published in the DesignGeek e-zine.

This article won't teach you how to design in Word (a shockingly common client request), but it will help you with annoyances that crop up when Word and page-layout applications collide.

Remove Ugly Hyperlinks from Imported Word Files

You know how when you import Word files into InDesign or QuarkXPress, you sometimes get unwanted hyperlinks? Ugly underlined things colored a garish RGB blue (Figure 1)? That's because Word is set by default to convert email addresses and URLs into live links, and that's its built-in Character Style for them.

Figure 1. Hideous, yes?

I'm not going to get into the details of how to fix these in the layout program (or turn off the Word default) because I've already written them up in a post to my InDesignSecrets.com blog.

What I wanted to call out in this quickie was a tip provided by one of the blog readers in their comment to the story. Since then it's been one of the most popular tips I've mentioned during training sessions.

Kazimierz Kapusniak said you can quickly and easily clear out all the hyperlink formatting in the Word document itself, before you import it. Open the Word doc in Word, select all the text (Command/Control-A), then press Command/Control-6. You have to use the "6" from the top row, not from the number pad.

All the hyperlink formatting disappears, but the linked text remains. No other formatting is removed.

Unbelievable. Why couldn't I have learned this, like, ten years ago!

Click the link to read the entire article.

With competitive pressures mounting, the phone company may cut the iPhone's price to boost demand—and cement its relationship with Apple.

The big thing about the next iPhone was supposed to be high-speed Internet access and tools for business. Instead, it's looking like iPhone 2.0 is all about price and that ever-awkward relationship between Apple and AT&T.

One of the more frustrating Leopard-vs-InDesign issues we're seeing at clients is a bug that causes frequent crashing when using InDesign CS3's Open, Place, Import, Export, or Save dialog boxes. Designers may also experience these particular symptoms while re-linking graphics as well as printing files.

Until Adobe or Apple fixes this issue, we have an odd work-around culled from various online forums that has helped improve stability at several of our clients:

hello every one
am a young designer, new to web, only one year as web designer
i would like some critics on my website design
thank you

If you haven't used a sharing service to transport large files from one computer/location to another, you're missing out. It's a whole lot cheaper, and most times, faster than burning CDs or lugging around an external hard drive. It's also a little more secure than just tossing your document onto a "who knows how reliable" USB keydrive.

Rather than post an exhaustive list of services, I decided this time to focus on 20 of the better services I've come across. I have tried every one on this list and found the experience satisfactory to excellent.

Just found this link, makes it easy(ish) to create your own fonts, also you can download other peoples too, for use under a creative commons licence. I haven't created my font yet, but some of the ones already there are pretty good, as display fonts at least.

As everyone knows, graphic designers are the reason there are so many wars in this world. They get inside our heads with their subliminal advertising, force us against our will to spend money on the worst pieces of shit, and eventually, drive us to depression and random acts of violence. And of course, most of them are communists...

Visit the link to read the rest. Kind of ala "Make My Logo Bigger", but it's still a great laugh!

There are lots of ways to create swirls in Illustrator, you can even download vectors from sites such as bittbox and dezignus, and if you are using Photoshop you can download brushes with those sorts of symbols.

I've been storing some of these comments up for weeks, and in some cases months, just waiting to explode. Below is my abbreviated list of people in the Mac community and around the Web who can just shut the hell up.