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!

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!

Tutorial: Creating a Water Drop Look in the Procreate App

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final work with 7 visible layers

Hello, all! I’m messing around again with trying to recreate Photoshop effects in Procreate. This time, I’m doing words created out of standing water! In this tutorial, we’re going to get really familiar with the layer menu. Especially the option farthest to the right: Select Contents. Learning about this option is going to open up lots of new experiments for me. (We’re also going to get quite a bit of use out of the Clear option here.) And as always, we’re going to create new layers for pretty much every. . . Read More!