Category: Blog

blog posts

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!

Ask a Font Creator: Catching up on Vocabulary

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As part of my “Ask a Font Creator” series over at the FontBundles blog, I did two parts on the vocabulary of type (and could have gone on for MUCH longer). The first post deals with some basics, as well as categories and styles of fonts. So if someone asks for your favorite sans-serif font, you’ll know what they’re talking about. And if you’re looking for a font that looks a specific way, the list of styles can help you improve your Google-fu. The second post gets into two different. . . Read More!

New blog series: Ask a Font Creator

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I’ve been invited by the folks at FontBundles to write a weekly blog, and they’re leaving the content pretty much up to me, as long as it’s somewhat related to fonts and/or design. I’ve decided to call the series “Ask a Font Creator,” and I’ve been tackling questions or issues I see come up in the font community. The first post answers a question that several people asked, which is, “What’s your process for creating fonts?” I’d done a post a while back on how to use three free pieces. . . Read More!

Tutorial: Creating a Mist Look in the Procreate App

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final mist effect

Hello again! Back with another effect tutorial for the Procreate app in iOS. I’m calling this one “spooky,” since Halloween is just around the corner, but I guess it doesn’t have to be — you could draw a silhouette of a superstar singer, or a fabulous something/someone else, and have the lights and mist pouring around them. Anyhoo, my place is not to judge what you use this mist effect for. Let’s learn how to do it! I’m creating this one on the 4×6 size in Procreate; measurements and percentages. . . Read More!

More fonts, now available at FontBundles!

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As previously noted, I’ve been making more fonts. Here are a couple of fresh ones! I have a portfolio of all of these fonts over at Behance, but they’re also being picked up by a few sites that specialize in providing fonts, or graphic design elements, or both. One of my favorites is FontBundles.net — they have great bundles of really nice fonts to buy, and enough great individual fonts that a fontaholic could go broke, but they also do a free premium font every week! They’re carrying my most. . . Read More!

The day after Disney, I dyed my hair pink.

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I’ve been looking forward to this for months. I have only colored my hair a couple of times since starting with the mouse over eight years ago, and even then it had to be a natural-looking color. I missed the crazy shades! I mostly used to do reds and oranges, or just bleached blonde, and thought about those colors this time around. But I finally decided that I’d do a color I’ve never done before: pink. To start with, here’s a before picture: With extra bonus helper sink cat! On. . . Read More!

Tiny lenses … for my phone

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(Title sung to the tune of “Tiny Bubbles,” which is totally stuck in my head right now.) So while reading an article on BoingBoing the the other day, I experienced that thing where you go from not knowing an item exists to wanting it desperately, all in a span of 30 seconds. The item in question: a set of tiny clip-on lenses for your cell phone. Immediately, I dashed over to Amazon. The author of the BoingBoing piece had ordered his set for about three bucks, but they took a. . . Read More!