“Best of” lists are a cliche this time of year, but this one really caught our attention: Typographica’s “Our Favorite Fonts of 2005” (Part 1; Part 2 is coming soon.)

An under-appreciated feature of Flash has long been its handling of type — it remains the only fast and reliable way to deploy a font of your choice in a dynamic web application, a fundamental design issue that web designers typically must compromise on when using other tools. Flash 7 brought a limited form of CSS-driven type handling to dynamic text fields, and now that Flash 8 has mastered anti-aliasing, there’s really no excuse left to settle for Arial in your Flash creations.

So if your new-year’s resolution is to use better type (and whose isn’t?) Typographica’s list makes an excellent starting point.

And one of their favorite fonts might be free: Garamond Premier Pro comes bundled with Adobe Creative Suite 2, but only if you remember to register and download it. Which we, for example, had completely failed to do until now, so this was an excellent surprise.

(via Basement.org, via MXNA.)

We noted the Creative Commons fundraiser a couple months ago; this is an organization and movement that is utterly worthy of our support. This blogger had a long conversation about flexible copyrights with a group of student filmmakers over the holidays, and could see the spark in their eyes the moment they really understood the “some rights reserved” concept and how it could change their future as creative artists.

The fundraising goal has nearly been met, but risks falling short if there isn’t a final push right now. Luckily there have been some interesting matching offers from the community: Six Apart will be matching $5000-worth of donations, and Flickr has pre-matched $10,000 and challenged its users to match them.

And of course this is also the time of year when you and/or the company you work for may see tax benefits from a donation.

So take a few minutes to organize a match if you can, then go donate a little something, buy a t-shirt, etc. — let’s see if we can tip them past their goal before the year ends.

And while we’re on the subject of the Creative Commons — we have also recently confirmed that Larry Lessig will be returning to Flashforward2006 Seattle to present a session on The Costs of Copyright. We’re tremendously excited to have Professor Lessig back at the conference, and hope you will join us!

(via Lessig Blog, via MXNA.)

UPDATE: Deus ex Microsoft! But don’t let that stop you…

The semifinalists for the Flashforward2006 Seattle Film Festival are undergoing final evaluation by the second round judges this week, and the finalists will be revealed in early January. First round judge (and Flashforward speaker) Jon Meyer has blogged about his experience judging, and it includes some interesting observations on the state of the Flash Web. Have a look…

Jon will be presenting two sessions in Seattle: Ajax for ActionScripters and User Experience: meet FlashBlock.

Beau Ambur let us know that Metaliq has built a tool allowing Firefox fans to attach their praise for the browser to a world map, via Flash video. Be the first in your state to make a statement. The quality level of the current contributions is, um, variable, but the passion is genuine — it’s Friday, go for it!

Read the instructions first, and you’ll see there are prizes to be won! The tool is part of a new Spread Firefox campaign, which will soon include an ad contest as well, so keep an eye out for that.

And check out the very cool globe-based navigation scheme for browsing the testimonials. Beau has been doing a lot of work with Flash and coordinate data mapping lately, and he’ll be presenting on this subject at Flashforward2006 Seattle. If we learn more before then about how he made the globe work, we’ll let you know.

Earlier this week we received an email from Adobe that linked to an interesting Flash mini-site called the Motion Design Center.

It includes a series of articles, artwork and tutorials covering various design and collaboration topics, including the integration of Flash with the best Adobe products like Photoshop and After Effects.

We were pleased to see that many past and present Flashforward speakers are represented in this project, and that we will be showcasing many of these very topics at Flashforward2006 Seattle.

Also, the video tutorials currently available in the Motion Design Center are excerpted from the lynda.com Online Training Library™. And as we mentioned earlier this week, all registered attendees for Flashforward2006 Seattle receive complimentary access to the Online Training Library™ where you can see much more on these and other Flash and Adobe topics.

So visit the Motion Design Center if you haven’t, and if you find it informative and inspirational, as we do, join us for several days of further learning and excitement, and gain access to all the training you need to prepare for the event or fill in the blanks afterward.