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Designers and Fonts

... DTG readers send in their views on fonts

These are some of the reactions from DTG readers in the Fonts Festival survey questions.

type is favorite aspect of graphic design

CG, a design professional in Taos, New Mexico USA amazingly enough went right down our list of questions and answered each and every one of them! WOW -- that's beyond the call of duty:

[QUOTE]
I learned to set type (self taught) on a "state-of-the-art" Compugraphic typesetter back in the late 70s! At that time, WYSIWYG was not even comprehensible. I read U&lc magazine to learn how to use type as a design tool. To this day, using type is my favorite aspect of graphic design.

  1. Favorite SHAREWARE FONTS web site
    www.2200freefonts.com;
    www.dafont.com and
    www.searchfreefonts.com
  2. Typography lessons you DID NOT learn in school The things I learned that no one seems to know are basic!
    * Don't double space after a period. Use smart quotes and not inch or foot marks.
    * Don't use Zapf Chancery in all caps!
    * Know your grammar and punctuation.
    * SPELL CHECK! Use the actual "italic", " bold" and "bold italic" fonts of a typeface.
    * Do not turn it in to an Italic, Bold or Bold Italic from the menu bar.
    * Don't distort typefaces, they were designed the way they are by the artist and are not meant to be "bastardized" (Fred, you may use another word but that was all I could think of!).
  3. Difficult type projects Difficult type projects are those set in a foreign language! Like Cyrillic!
  4. Where to find the BEST FREE FONTS: See #1 above
  5. Designing with type... who, what, where, (Why?) Design with type when you have a difficult visual or idea for a logo. Play with upper and lower case, separate characters or words with color and make the audience take notice of your unconventional presentation of the logo by creatively positioning the words or characters.
  6. Type or Fonts that SUCK (Why?) Obviously Zaph Chancery and Vivaldi when used in all caps. Theme fonts such as Paperclip, (Creepy Regular) Halloween and Christmas fonts, and Woodgrain/Western fonts used as body copy.

Thanks so much! I love your on-line magazine and have subscribed for many years!
Cindy
[END QUOTE]

WOW! Cindy wins the big prize this month for sure!

I love fonts

LM is a design professional, hailing from Orlando, FL, USA. We enjoyed reading her letter because we love fonts too ... She writes:

[QUOTE]
I love fonts - no question about it! If I had pockets full of cash, I would have a very extensive font collection, but I do my best with the freebie sites, and hope that they don't bomb when I use them on paying projects, as I have read in a few design forums and books over the years.

My favorite (paying) site for fonts would be VEER (www.veer.com), because they have such very stylish script fonts (such as Mr. Bedfort; Primrose; Whisk Broom; and Marmalade, for example), but also a diverse and slightly unique bunch of everyday text and display type.

I am trying to build up my Open Type collection for my PC, due to it's diversity with different glyphs they sometimes offer). For free fonts, I like Dafont.com, which I also learned about over the years from various graphic designers in forums (such as DTG News / Cafe blog), as well as in trade publications, such as Dynamic Graphics. I would love to have as many reliable (free & paid) font resources, since you need to know that your font will not bomb when you go to press, and you want to make sure you have a safe web site to download them from. And, always make sure you have some type of reliable FONT MANAGEMENT system installed - no matter how many fonts you have in your collection. Makes things more sane when clients don't. (LOL)
[END QUOTE]

Well, that about says it all!

Hang those quotes and bullets!

Kevin, a design professional in Minneapolis, MN, provides this valuable tip:

[QUOTE]
Hang those quotes and bullets! In both Quark and InDesign, type your beginning quote mark or bullet/space, then type (on a Mac) CMD backslash, to insert an invisible character that will indent each succeeding line to that character.[END QUOTE]
Kevin uses Mac Software: Creative Suite 3 [END QUOTE]

Discovering faces

S.M. is a design professional in Staunton, VA, who writes:

[QUOTE]
I love several of the fonts at Shinn Type. One that I like is Goodchild that you use with Nicholas, for more flourish there is Fontesque, and another nice one is Oneleigh. Another font I like is Inyo by Garagefonts. I use Mac OS X and my fav software is Adobe CS3
[END QUOTE]

 

These are the best! We really want to thank our participants, and as soon as they check in with their addresses, we'll be sending them our monthly prize packages which could include Total Training DVDs, Deke McClelland One-On-One training books, or any number of other gifts -- just for participating. Sign in and share your thoughts about the current topics and win prizes!

Until next time... Keep on fonting

Fred Showker
      Fred Showker, Editor/Publisher

 

We invite your comment.

Now, back to Creative Networking, or The Design Center Lobby

 

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