Font
News
Drip,
Drip, Dripping Fonts (About.com)
Are you having a Halloween Monster Mash at your place this year? Then
start scaring up your Halloween-theme decorations. And don't forget
the invitations. Dripping Blood fonts are especially popular around
Halloween (gee, I wonder why). But when you're designing your Halloween
invites and posters, try to use the dripping fonts at larger sizes
and for small amounts of text. They aren't easy to read in small sizes
and they loose their effect if every word is dripping blood. >>>
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Finding
a Favorite Font (About.com)
What makes a font a favorite? Is it one you use all the time because
it's versatile or dependable? How about because it's used in a tattoo
that has personal meaning? Recently Jacob Cass tweeted about designers
favorite fonts. He's blogged some replies. Check out this list of
Designer's Favourite Fonts & Why that includes a lot of classics
and what I hope is a tongue-in-cheek entry... because "it makes
everything patronising." And do answer that question I first
asked. What makes a font a favorite, for you? On my list of favorites
are mostly fonts I turn to over and over. But there are also a few
that I don't use much -- hardly ever -- but I'm drawn to them nonetheless.
>>>
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How
to Get Your Own Personalized Font (WSJ.com)
Remember handwriting? There's a movement to bring it back. Naturally,
we're not talking about your hand actually writing anything -- we're
talking about your computer doing it for you. A range of services
offer to convert your handwriting into a personalized font that you
can install on your computer, right alongside the standard Times New
Roman and Courier. Why would you want to do this? To more easily add
an individual touch to letters or other documents, the services suggest.
For instance, at home, you can type out a family newsletter in your
own familiar scrawl. Or in the office, a production team can quickly
crank out "handwritten" marketing materials. Some people
also use the services to immortalize their kids' writing before they
abandon it for the keyboard. We decided to find out how easy it is
to get our computer to do the writing for us. We tried four services
-- two cursive and two print -- to see if the fonts measure up to
the real thing. >>>
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7
Free Tools to Identify A Font (Webdesigner Depot)
So you’re browsing through your favorite website and found a
site that uses a font you love. You want that font too, (and must
be as quickly as possible!)… so how do we go about finding out
what that font is called? Sounds familiar? Yes… we’ve
all been there before! One easy option is to simply email the webmaster
and ask for the name of the font and where to get it. This can take
some time and not all webmasters will reply. So, I’ve decided
to compile a list of free online tools to speed up the identification
process. >>
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Four
easy ways to design your own fonts (Christian Science Monitor)
Do you dot your i’s with hearts? Particularly proud of your
p’s and q’s? Or perhaps you were the kind of kid who drew
heavy metal flames around your name. Such doodles work well in the
corners of composition notebooks, but until recently, it cost hundreds
of dollars in software fees to bring personal touches to computer
fonts. Thanks to new websites, creating custom typefaces that work
with almost any computer program is now easy and in some cases, free.
Here are some of the best services for starting your own amateur font
foundry. >>
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FontCreator 6.0
Released
This professional font editor allows you to create and edit TrueType
and OpenType fonts. It has the powerful drawing tools that typographers
and graphic designers require, and an interface that allows beginners
to become productive immediately. When you create or open a font,
FontCreator displays an overview of all available characters. You
can add missing characters, or select an existing character, and modify
its appearance. You can import (scanned) images of your signature
or company logo, or make a font from your own handwriting. With FontCreator
you can also fix character mappings, font names, kerning pairs, and
preview your fonts before installing. >>
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Type
portraits show women drawn from fonts (Telegraph)
These four striking portraits of women are composed entirely of type
from particular fonts. Each of the subjects is depicted using letters
and punctuation from one of four fonts - Baskerville, Helvetica Neue,
Bernhard Modern and Avenir. Some of the type was blown up and rotated
in order to create the images, but otherwise the text is unaltered,
meaning the feel of each of the portraits is very different. While
the Avenir "typewoman" is curvy, Bernhard Modern is delicate
and frilly, and Helvetica Neue is straight-backed and unfussy. >>
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Make
Your Own Fonts, In a Web Browser (Slashdot)
"Although it's been up for a few weeks, today is the official
launch of FontStruct, a web-based font creation tool. That's right:
in your web browser, you can build your own typeface, and download
it as a TrueType font. The site's user agreement requires you to release
your creations online under one of the Creative Commons licenses.
The typefaces tend to be a little blocky, but it's still impressive
(and a great way to pass time)." >>
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Our Favorite Typefaces
of 2007 (Typographica)
Typographica’s fourth annual review showcases the best in new
typeface design. Twenty-five of the world’s brightest graphic
and type designers selected their favorite font releases of the year.
We welcome to our regular cast of contributors: David Berlow, Ellen
Lupton, and Erik Spiekermann, among others. This edition brings two
changes. First, the description has evolved from “fonts”
to “typefaces”. Yes, there is a difference. Mark Simonson
explains it bes t: “The physical embodiment of a collection
of letters (whether it’s a case of metal pieces or a computer
file) is a font. When referring to the design of the collection (the
way it looks) you call it a typeface.” >>
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The
font of all personality (BBC News)
The choice of font used in e-mails and type-written letters could
say more about an individual's personality than their creative writing
skills. Graphology - the art of studying handwriting - has been used
for centuries to try to analyse people's characters, but since the
demise of personal handwriting, the experts have moved on to typefaces
to look for clues to our identities. If the experts are correct, choice
of font could prove important when writing a letter to your bank manager
or a spurned lover. The Psychology of Fonts, commissioned by Lexmark
Printers and written by psychologist Dr Aric Sigman explains how a
typeface will significantly influence what the reader thinks about
you. Courier is seen as the choice of "sensible shoes" type
of people or "anoraks" and curvy icons like Georgia or Shelly
suggest a bit of a "rock chick" personality. The study suggests
fonts can be matched to top personalities, and cites the following
examples: >>
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30
Fonts That ALL Designers Must Own (Just Creative Design)
Here are 30 of the Best Fonts / Typefaces that every designer must
own sorted by alphabetical order. There are 15 serif fonts and 15
sans-serif fonts. These fonts will last you your whole career! A brief
description of what each font is best suited for is provided however
are not limited to this. There are some top free fonts that are downloadable
in this collection and some that come with your operating system…
the others are not so free but they sure will help you improve your
typography! They include original PC, Mac and Truetype fonts. >>
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