Category: Blog

blog posts

Missy’s Font and Lettering Blog Post Roundup

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Missy's Tutorial and Blog Post Roundup

  I’ve written a lot of tutorials and blog posts, and they’re scattered here, there, and everywhere. So for my own reference (And for yours, too!) I’m creating this one central post where I can find all of my blog posts, tutorials, and general rants about fonts and lettering in one place.   FONT CREATION Creating a font from scratch, using all free programs – This was a very early post that covered some font-creation basics using Inkscape, GIMP, and FontForge. I don’t use those programs on the regular myself,. . . Read More!

My Jeopardy! Adventure

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  So I played (and lost) on Jeopardy! last night. I wrote up a big bunch of words about the experience a couple of days after I got home from taping, and they’ve been sitting and waiting until I could post them today. Check them out here!   Missy on Jeopardy! Part 1 Missy on Jeopardy! Part 2 Missy on Jeopardy! Part 3 Read More!

Missy on Jeopardy! Part 3

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Hanging with my homey, Alex Trebek!

  SHOW TIME: PLAYING THE GAME They try to keep the game running as close to real-time as possible, which means “commercial breaks” are maybe five minutes, tops. Every time the show cuts to commercial, the production team comes out to talk to the contestants. Maybe it’s encouragement (shake it off, keep calm, there’s way more game left, don’t worry) or a technical issue (make sure you’re looking over here, or doing X, Y, or Z), or getting your sweaty face powdered down. They bring out water for everyone at. . . Read More!

Missy on Jeopardy! Part 2

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Outside the Jeopardy! studio with giant Alex and the giant Clue Crew!

TRAVEL DAY: A TALE OF TWO PIZZAS We flew out in the early afternoon, so we could arrive at our hotel right around check-in time. We didn’t even rent a car; it would have been more than a hundred bucks a day, and the hotel was only three or four miles from the airport. Plus, I was scheduled to be picked up by a studio shuttle at 7 AM, so we’d just need a taxi or a Lyft from the airport to the hotel and back again. Our flight was. . . Read More!

Missy on Jeopardy! Part 1

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The standard Jeopardy! audition pen.

  IN THE BEGINNING: THE 25-YEAR AUDITION PROCESS My first audition for Jeopardy! was for the college tournament, about 25 years ago. Back in those days, there was no online test—you had to travel to Los Angeles on your own dime to take a written test in a huge room with tons of people; then they scored the tests and whittled the group down from there. I combined the audition with a trip to visit a friend, so I wasn’t just traveling from Seattle to L.A. for the audition alone.. . . Read More!

I keep making fonts, and doing other stuff.

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Once again, I’m back to this blog after a long stretch. I’ve been mostly busy with font-making; I’m getting close to having 50 premium fonts for sale. (47 right now, so I might make the 50-font mark before the year ends!) I’ve put a few promo images from four of my most recent up above in the picture. As always, you can check out all of my fonts over at my portfolio site. (I’ve added in a couple of new freebies since last I blogged, as well, so don’t miss. . . Read More!

Busy Fun Font Times!

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Newish fonts

Boy howdy, have I been busy! Just … y’know, not here. I’ve been blogging up a storm over at the Font Bundles blog. If you’re interested in design and fonts, here are some hot posts: Manly Fonts for Dudes Applying Distressed Text Effects to Your Fonts (in Photoshop) Basic Color Theory Let’s Take a Look at Some Logo Layouts and Font Choices (this one gets pretty snarky) Deep Dive: Tracing and the Monogram It App That’s just a selection of some of the vast numbers of words I’ve been churning. . . Read More!

Ask a Font Creator: Yes, I even obsess about fonts on vacation.

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We just recently took a short vacation to Las Vegas. It’s cheap and close to get to, and we hadn’t been there in around 15 years. But of course, I can’t just turn off the fonty part of my brain, so I was looking at typography the whole time. It doesn’t help that there is typography all over that whole town. I’ve shared some of my thoughts about the good, the bad, and the ugly fonts and typography treatments I saw over at this week’s FontBundles blog post. Read “Ask. . . Read More!

Ask a Font Creator: Copyrights & Trademarks

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There’s a lot of confusion and weirdness when it comes to copyrights and trademarks. Are fonts copyrighted? Can I make a logo with a font and then trademark it? What quotes are OK to use on merchandise I want to sell? I tackle all of those things and more over at FontBundles in my blog post about copyrights and trademarks, with the information (as usual) geared toward the designers, crafters, and others who are heavy users of fonts. Check out “Ask a Font Creator: Copyrights & Trademarks” over at the. . . Read More!

Ask a Font Creator: How Do I Pair Fonts?

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Ah, pairing fonts. Sometimes it feels almost impossible to put two fonts together and have them look just right, especially if one of them is something fancy or goofy or weird. In this post over at FontBundles, I cover the basics of what makes a good pair, some of the classic pairings, and then a number of examples of script fonts in pairings (since most pairing advice out there seems to concentrate on finding a good serif to go with a good sans-serif). Read “Ask a Font Creator: How Do. . . Read More!