I've realised I have a problem. It started out innocently enough. A couple minutes here and there browsing and clicking. Then minutes became hours, and files became folders. I love fonts. I love how they're named, how they instantly jazz up any layout, powerpoint or assignment when used strategically and appropriatly and I love how a slight font tweak can take a page from 0-60 instantly.
Many of you have (or really should have) several 'decorative' fonts already on your computer wheather they came with it or because you've done some poking about already, but listen, there is so much more! First thing you've gotta do, before you can even conceive the end product is get your hands on some the raw materials.
The first website I want to mention,
Font Diner I stumbled across when doing an assignment for an eleventh grade project. I had decided to use a retro theme for the title page and headings and such.
Most of their fonts are for sale, however there are some really awesome ones available in their freebies section's free silverware'.
is one of my favorites!
Awesome site number two is
Free Digital Scrapbooking.com. It offers lots of usefull (and free) supplies and a pretty varied Fonts section. I've been going there for ever and only recently realised they had fonts!
and
are the two I'm most excited to use right now. They have them organized by category (Grunge, Cursive, Patriotic etc.) and I encourage you to click through and look at them all.
Most of my fonts come from whatever google turns up for me. Ussually
1001 Free Fonts,
Font Freak and
DaFont. These are (for the most part) pretty interchangable. They have different ways to search and view (alphabetical, grouping, author etc.) and a preview. 1001 offers a custom preview if you're having trouble picturing the end result. If your into Dingbats there's plenty of those to, though I don't get it. I'll just google the picture, I don't want to go through the alphabet to find one. LOL.
To install new font's (in Windows) open the "fonts" section of your control panel.
Start>Control Panel>Appearance and Themes>Fonts (in the sidebar under
See Also) OR
My Computer>Control Panel>Fonts. You now have a choice. You can copy and paste the new files into this section (good if they're spread out) or you can install them by going to
file>install new font then browse through the folders to find the one you saved your fonts under. After opening each folder the fonts in it will show up in
List of Fonts section. You can
Select All or just the ones you want. Then it's just
OK and you're done.
Now on to the fun part!
When making Powerpoint presentations and title pages one thing that drives me ab-so-lutly nuts is to many fonts. However, with scrapbooking, if done right, multiple font's can look really cool. For example:
and
The first LO uses 19 different fonts, including the letters at the bottom. The second technically only uses 2, as the "m" and "y" are alphas, but it shows the effect you can achieve with vaired types.
So when should you use fonts as opposed to alphas? Personally, I use fonts anytime I'm writting anything longer than 4 or 5 letters. It's so much easier than searching for, opening in Photoshop, resizing and positioning each individual letter. If I want to be able to put the letters at different angles, resize them or add lots of effects I'll use an Alpha set.
Any questions? Feel free to comment!
And as always,
Happy Scrapping ♥
