Category Archives: Type

All things related to type and fonts.

Fonts Don’t Float

Post by steph

2010_positivechange

If you look at the layout above very closely, you will see that the fonts and paints follow the texture of the paper.  Have you ever looked at a layout with a great textured paper and on top of that is a font that looks like it’s floating?  It doesn’t take on the paper texture at all.  Suzy is going to teach us the greatest trick to fix that!!  I have used blending modes on layers before, but could never really get them to look the way I wanted, until Suzy shared this trick.

Suzy is a 28-year-old SAHM to a super rambunctious 2-year-old and wife my sweetheart for 4 years. We live in the middle-of-nowhere, which I absolutely love. My background is in biology but I now find myself on the opposite end of the spectrum designing digital scrapbooking supplies and I am LOVING the journey. :)

clip_image001

I am SO excited to be contributing tutorials to The Daily Digi. Back in February, I shared a text trick as part of my designer spotlight. Steph asked if I’d write up the tutorial with screen shots this month and I am happy to oblige.

When you write on paper in real life, the pen follows the surface of the paper you’re writing on — all the bumps and fun textures add life to the text. And we all know that pens don’t always flow smoothly — except in digi-land. ;) I’ve noticed that sometimes in digital layouts, the journaling looks a bit fake, almost like it’s not quite part of the page, because the texture of the paper beneath isn’t part of the writing like it would be in real life. So I learned this little trick to add some “reality” to my journaling and I’m going to show you how to do it too. You can use this on papers, journal blocks, tags — any paper/element that has some texture. (Note: The step-by-step instructions are for PS users. Blending Options aren’t available in PSE, but I share a tip at the bottom for how PSE users can try to mimic this effect.)
Let’s get started!

1. Place your text layer above the layer you want to “write” on. (In this example, I’m using a bold basic font and a super-crinkled kraft background from my Krafty Stash #2 to illustrate the technique.)
sqs_textblendtrick_ss1

2. Click on the fx icon (bottom of the layers palette) and choose Blending Options.
sqs_textblendtrick_ss2

We’ll be manipulating arrows in the “Blend If” section of the box that pops up. The black arrow focuses on the dark shades of the layer beneath and the white arrow focuses on the lighter shades.

sqs_textblendtrick_ss3
3. Slide the black arrow under “Underlying Layer” towards the right until the text starts to disappear.
sqs_textblendtrick_ss4
4. Hold down ALT and slide the left half of the black slider back to the left so some of the text reappears.
sqs_textblendtrick_ss5
5. Slide the right arrow under “Underlying Layer” towards the left until the text starts to disappear.
sqs_textblendtrick_ss6
6. Hold down ALT and slide the right half of the black slider back to the right so some of the text reappears.
sqs_textblendtrick_ss7
7. Adjust the arrows until you reach the desired effect. Click OK.
sqs_textblendtrick_ss8 I love using this when my text is on a folded tag or heavily textured paper, so that my text becomes more life-like — as if a pen was actually rubbing across a surface. Try it with paint strokes too!

Here’s an example of the technique in action. I used it on everything in this layout — the paint splatters, the journaling, the title, the stamped alpha, the sun burst.

2010_positivechange

For PSE users: Unfortunately, Blending Options are not an option in PSE. However, you can mimic this technique with a couple of tricks. You can try changing the color of your text and play with the blending modes. You can also use a grunge brush at varying opacities to erase parts of the text.

Thanks for letting me share this fun technique with you. I’d love to see what you do with it, so feel free to link us up to a layout in the comments OR upload to our Flickr Group with the tag: FontsDontFloat. :)

Suzy

This post has 27 Comments...leave yours?
Posted in Type Posted on April 29, 2010 by steph | Tagged , , , , , , , |

Fabulous Fonts For Titles

Post by Katie

image

Many of our readers have asked for help with page titles so I (Katie) posted several ideas for coming up with Terrific Titles back in this post in February. I thought it would be fun to follow up with another one of my favorite title tips – using fonts for titles.

While I own an abundance of digital alphabets, I find that I often turn to my font files when it comes time to create a title for my page. It’s not that I don’t like alphas (my pay pal account will testify that I do!), it’s just that fonts are so easy and versatile to use. I’m excited to share my title font secrets with you and show you oodles of scrapbook layouts from me and our team to inspire you. Images without credits are linked to gallery credit pages. The title font is listed and linked (several of them are free!) for each layout.

KATIE’S FIVE FAVORITE FONT TITLE TRICKS:

  • Creating a unified look with the journaling on a page

Using the same font for the journaling and the title on a page gives your layout a very clean and uncluttered look. Simply make the size of font bigger (or bolder) to make it stand out from your journaling. This trick makes creating titles very easy!

kscrapbooklady_love

Title Font: Century Gothic

  • Enhancing the theme of the page

    • I don’t always use a ton of embellishments on a scrapbook page. I like to keep the focus on the photo and story so picking the right font for a title is an important way for me to contribute to the decoration or theme of the page. I want my title to stand out visually enough that the reader will feel compelled to learn more and proceed on to the journaling. I love the hand-drawn look of the cassette tape element on this page so I chose a hand-drawn doodly (is that a word?) type of font for the title. Messy Bessy is one of my all time favorites for this look!

    Title Font: Messy Bessy

  • Varying font sizes, colors, or mixing upper and lower case letters add visual interest

    • Creating your own title out of fonts is great for design purposes as well. I felt like this layouts needed something bold on the side to visually balance it out. I love creating my own word art titles by simply using different sizes and colors of the same font. You can even increase the boldness on some words to make them stand out. I picked the same font (Giggles) for this page that is used on The Daily Digi site to act as an embellishment on this page about the site.

    Title Font: Giggles

    • Using a font to match embellishments in a kit

    One of my favorite reasons to use a font for a title is to match word art or embellishments in a digital kit. Many designers are starting to list the fonts they use in the TOU file within a kit. Shabby Princess and Designer Digitals designers all do this and I so appreciate them for it! I know many others are also adding this information. You can look up the fonts they used to create word art and often find the font to download for your own personal use. Designers are required to use Commercial Use fonts so sometimes the font may be a little pricey. Other times, there are personal use versions available at a lower cost. There are even some free fonts out there that allow commercial use so don’t rule this option out if your budget is tight. I discovered this nifty little trick when I put together this page. I loved the font on the world strips and I really wanted to duplicate it for my title. The result is a page that is very cohesive and it looks like my title was just part of the kit!

    Title Font: LD Elementary

    • Replacing an alpha that doesn’t match (or exist)

    The colors in this kit went perfectly with the photo on this layout, but the alpha was not a good match in style or color. Often times I like to use paper packs or kits that don’t even come with an alpha, so using fonts is a great way to replace that missing or “wrong” alphabet! You can also make alphas out of fonts very easily by following the steps on this past post from Janet.

    web_dunk

    Title Font: Textura Traced Empty

    SOME THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WITH TITLE FONTS:

    • Almost any font can make a nice title if you make it a little bigger and bolder to draw the attention that a title deserves
    • If you are mixing fonts in your title (you’ll see some great examples below) be conservative with how many fonts you decide to mix together. A good rule of thumb is to let one font be the dominant one in the design and use another font to compliment in a subtitle role.
    • Fonts are fun to mix with alphas and word art to create unique and customized titles. Use the same tips as for mixing fonts.
    • Think about readability and the theme of your page. Fancy fonts can be very pretty but sometimes hard to read. Also, does a swirling cursive font have a place on a fun and casual page of playground pictures?
    • Vary size and weight of the font if your title is lengthy to give it visual interest

    I think the best way to get ideas for how to successfully use fonts for titles is to simply look at layouts and get a feel for what you like. Again, all images without credits are linked and the title fonts are included and linked as well.

    LAYOUTS FROM ME (Katie):

    Webadmireme500

    Title Font: Hootie

    TDDAH_katie

    Title Font: Inked God

    web_shop

    Title Font: Pea Olsen

    Title Font: Cast Iron

    Title Font: Parry Hotter – mixed with word art and Black Chancery font to create a unique title

    .

    LAYOUTS FROM STEPH:

    Title Font: Elise

    Title Fonts : Doodle Dance and Printing Primer

    Kyle-soccer-copy

    Title Font: Nicotine Stains

    JP-GhoulsJustWanna-copy

    Title Fonts: Empty Wrapper and Taylor Mackenzie

    .

    LAYOUTS FROM ANA:

    Title Font: Downcome

    Title Font: Giggles

    One of Ana’s favorite tips is to combine alphas with fonts to create titles as seen on the page below:

    Title Font: Boring Showers

    .

    LAYOUT FROM KELLIE:

    Title Font: International Palms

    Kellie also loves to combine fonts with alphas to create her titles.

    Title Font: Jailbird Jenna

    .

    LAYOUTS FROM KAREN:

    CREDITS: Fizzy Pop Designs Sidekicks Pack No. 7; Pamela Donnis and Jacque Larsen Frosty Fun; Fonts Fontologie Haphazard and Printing Primer

    Title Font: Clementine Sketch

    CREDITS: Zoe Pearn Winter Wonderland kit and That’s My Boy elements; Traci Reed Pretty Edgy; Anne DeJon Scribble It; Nancie Rowe Janitz splatter brushes; Paint the Moon Annie’s Tape; Amy Sumrall Full of Holes flower; Kristin Cronin-Barrow Frame Basics; Fonts are Simple Life and Traveling Typewriter

    Title Font: Sketch Block

    .

    23 different fonts have been listed in this post so far but I wanted to include a few more of my favorites for you to check out as well:

    Hope you have some fabulous font fun creating titles for your next layout!

    katie

    This post has 12 Comments...leave yours?
    Posted in Type Posted on March 17, 2010 by Katie | Tagged , , , , , , |

    Which font is YOU?

    Post by steph

    My (Steph’s) mom kept a baby book for me while I was younger and in it I have a birthday card from my maternal grandpa written by him in his own handwritting.  One day when my mom was in town, we were looking through that book and came across that card.  She looked at the card and was emotional as she told me that she is not aware of anything else with his handwriting on it.  I feel as if I have a piece of him with me now as I look at his handwriting.

    I was thinking the other day about this and about how seeing my own mom’s handwriting effects me.  To me, it is easily identifiable.  It is a beautiful script!  My mom often wrote me notes as I was growing up in her own handwriting.  When I see something written by my mom, I am instantly filled with a warmth and comfort, like a favorite blanket.  As I thought about this, I wondered if my own children would have that experience?  Would they even be able to recognize MY handwriting?  I’m not sure they could as most of my notes, letters, and journaling on scrapbook pages are in one of my favorite fonts (arial, traveling type writer, times, etc.)  There are not many things with my own handwriting on it.  I have no excuse for this, I make fonts, I could totally make my own handwriting into a font…but I hate my handwriting!  I do have one font in my store that is very similar to my own handwriting and I was nervous to put it “out there” because of how much I hate my own handwriting, but the font became a favorite of my customers.  So, this post is as much for ME as it is for YOU!!  I want my family to have the warm fuzzy feeling when they see my handwriting, just like I do my mom’s and she did her dad’s.  So, I am setting another scrapping goal to start using my own handwriting on my layouts AND my notes to my kids!  It will take some courage to do, but I am going to conquer my fears and DO IT!! :)

    Here are some great ways to add your own handwriting to your layouts:

    Wendyzine has an action that will turn your handwriting into brushes.  I love any of Wendy’s actions because she really knows what she is doing and they ALWAYS work without any fuss (which is important for me).  This action would be especially great for those people with several different styles of handwriting.

    wendyzine

    Darcy does a great job of turning your handwriting into a font for you and it is very affordable!  She offers an exclusive (you are the only person to use it, own it) or non-exclusive (she has the right to sell the font in her store) options.
    darcy coupon

    Darcy also sells handwriting font packages, so you can look for a font that is similar to yours if that works better for you.  She has given us a coupon code for that too :)

    TDD-fontsrock
    Expires August 31, 2009
    30% off any font pack purchase (excludes scoops)

    Lastly, lots of scrappers turn to the Fonts for Peas by Amanda when they want a handwritten font.  If you want to scan and send Amanda your handwriting (following these directions), she just might choose it to be fonted and give it away on her site!

    So, let’s go!  Let’s add more of ourselves to our layouts so our loved ones know what our handwriting looks like (and don’t mistake it for one of our favorite fonts ;) ).

    steph_sig

    This post has 9 Comments...leave yours?
    Posted in Type Posted on August 13, 2009 by steph |

    Font Organization

    Post by steph

    wheretostart31

    We love our fonts as much as we love our scrapbooking goodies, but did you know  that each time you install a font, it takes resources away from other parts of your machine?  Each system comes with a set of basic fonts installed on it, but too many fonts above those, will cause some slow-down.  Sometimes, it is very noticeable, but sometimes it’s just the time it takes to start up your machine after a shutdown, or maybe Photoshop taking a long time to load because it has to read through all of those fonts and load them (as does every program that uses fonts).  A great solution for this problem is a font management program.  A font management program allows you to leave your fonts uninstalled, but be able see a preview of them as well as easily install and uninstall them when you want to use them, with just one mouse click.  By having less fonts installed at any given time, your machine will run more smoothly.

    Here is a screenshot of my font manager to give you an idea of what it looks like:

    fontmanager

    There are many font management programs out there to choose from and weighing all of the different features can be daunting.  I have been researching and considering which management tool to use for a few months now.  I wanted a program that could:

    1) look in mulitple folders at one time

    2) not crash my system or be slow

    3) view True Type Fonts (TTF) and Open Type Fonts (OTF)

    4) be able to  temporarily load the font (so I don’t have to install and then uninstall).

    5) be able to customize the text in the preview window

    During my search, I found this indepth article and this more simple article.  I have tried a few different font managers during my search, some mangers were pay and some free.  For one reason or another, I stopped using them.  They were too slow, too much of a pain, etc.  I have found two that I like and would recommend that are free and work very well for most scrappers’ needs.  I am on a Windows machine, but did do a search at DST and it seems that most Mac users there seem to really like PigFontViewer,  Suitecase, and FontExplorer. FontExplorer is not free anymore, but you can download a 30-day trial.  The two organizers that I really like are:

    AMP Font Viewer and Font Xplorer

    I really like the interface on AMP Font Viewer and I like that it gives you some technical information about the font there as well. I like that you can change the preview to bold, italics, as well as changing the color.  In Font Xplorer, uninstalling fonts and moving them to a new folder was very easy, I just highlighted the font, right clicked and selected uninstall and then the program gave me a window with choices to uninstall and move it to a folder of my choosing (along with a few other options).

    Once you install your font management software, you will need to go through your fonts folder and weed out the non-system fonts.  You can find a list of standard Windows system fonts HERE and a list of standard Mac system fonts HERE. If your chosen font manager doesn’t allow you to move the fonts from within it, then you can go to c:>windows>fonts, select the non-system fonts and copy them to a new folder.  When the fonts are safe in a new folder of your choosing, then you can delete those fonts from your system font folder.  It only takes a few minutes, but your computer will thank you for it! :)

    _____________________

    What kind of an article about fonts would this be without the chance to win some free fonts???  Post a comment here before midnight EST January 28th and I will have random.org pick 3 lucky people to win a $5 gift to Fontologie.

    steph_sig

    This post has 141 Comments...leave yours?
    Posted in Type Posted on January 26, 2009 by steph |