Complete Guide to Fonts
I. Intro
II. Mixing Fonts Properly
III. Colors
IV. Effects
V. Masterpiece!
VI. Resources
I. Intro
So you want to make a masterpiece of a graphic, right? Well, the first thing you need to know is what a font is, and how to properly use one, or your masterpiece could turn into a disasterpiece D; By defininition, font refers to a specific typeface in a specific point size and style. Therefore, Times New Roman Bold 12 points is a single font while Times New Roman 10 points is another separate font. Today, in common usage font refers to any digital typeface that can normally be rendered in a variety of sizes.
Some default fonts on your computer are...
Arial : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Arial Black : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Arial Narrow : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Book Antiqua : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Century Gothic : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Comic Sans MS : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Courier New : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Fixedsys : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWX YZ
Franklin Gothic Medium : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Garamond : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Georgia : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Impact : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Lucida Console : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Lucida Sans Unicode : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Microsoft Sans Serif : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Palatino Linotype : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
System : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Tahoma : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Times New Roman : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Trebuchect MS : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Verdana : abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
There are also more decorative fonts that you can download, but you have to search online for some that you might want or like. But we'll get to those a little bit later ;D
II. Mixing Fonts Properly
As you can see, this is the 'Fabulous Las Vegas' sign! When you study the fonts properly, you see some sort of spray-painted font, a cursive font, and 2 slightly plain fonts. So basically, there are 4 different fonts in this graphic. When you make a graphic, the main things you want to remember when mixing fonts are :You want a colorful and eye grabbing font when you are introducing your graphic, so that people's eyes will be drawn to it (See 'Welcome')
When writing smaller, insignificant words, you want to use a smaller font that is slightly plain and much more different, so that all attention isn't drawn to this word(s) (See 'to' and 'Nevada'.)
When introducing the main part, such as a name or a place, you want to make that the biggest font, and a brightly colored one as well. You want people to look at this first, then study the rest of the graphic. (See 'Las Vegas')
When you are writing a report, there should mainly only be 3 fonts : Your header, your body, and your sub-headers font. HEADER : Should be bold, a medium color, and a plain font
BODY : Should be thin, a dark color, and a plain font
SUB-HEADER : Should be underlined or bold, a lighter color, and a slightly less plain font
III. Colors
When you are doing colors, you always want the main part to grab the people's attention most. Then the less important words to be a darker color, and the second most important part to be a medium color. You don't want to just pick random colors either. You must match other elements with the font as well. Such as background, people, animals, etc.
IV. Effects
When using Photoshop, some useful effects are...
Drop Shadow : Obviously, the font drops a shadow when you set this option.
Bevel and Emboss : You can set this to make a font stick out or sink in.
Stroke : Border your font
Inner Glow : Your font has a glow inside
Outer Glow : Your font has a glow outside (simialer to Drop Shadow)
Gradient Overlay : When you set a gradient over your current fonts color
Color Overlay : When you set a color over your current fonts color
V. Masterpiece!
At this point, you should know just about everything with fonts. SO, now you know what to do when faced with a multifont project!
VII. Resources
Here are some sites that I dug up just for you to find some fonts that fit your style ;D
THANKS FOR READING!
i appreciate you reading this, hope you learned something (:
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