I could spend hours searching for just the right font! Mostly because I am terrible at identifying complimentary fonts. In an effort to be more efficient, I thought I would take it to the forums...
I'm not exactly sure what kind of complimentarity you might be looking for but I'll share a couple of ideas for your consideration.
1. The foraging process: I like to use FontPicker to compare fonts. It runs on an Adobe Air platform. It's small, free and allows me to eliminate some fonts as I go along. You can do a similar thing with the custom preview in dafont. Just type in your own text and browse, for example, the "handwritten" theme and you can see what the same word or phrase looks like across a bunch of different fonts . I find that helpful for comparison.
2. The narrowing process: When I use multiple fonts (and I try not to use more than 2 or three in a given presentation), I often try to thinking about how each font will be used. Maybe it would be by "level" - like headings, subheadings, body text or maybe I just use one for "accents" -like labeling diagrams or graphs. If I already know the "tone" I'm looking for (e.g., casual, whimsical, warm, professional, techy, etc) that kind of planning helps me focus on things like readability and how the fonts will scale up or down. Then, from among my choices I will identify a couple of key upper and lower case letters (e.g., a and e) to find fonts with comparable serifs, proportionality, shape, and line width to come up with a list of those that might "go together."
3. Using those rules of thumb - using Hand of Sean as a baseline, if you wanted a complimentary "script" something like "Honey Script might work. If you want a thin complements, maybe Always Forever or Journal. If you want a thicker font, maybe Handy Handy. ANyway - you get the idea.
I hope some of this helps. Maybe others will have some better, more concrete ideas.
Hand of Sean is a little more aggressive, spray paint, graffiti style. There's a lot of tension in the style. Have you mapped out the tone or voice of the course font you want? What's the personality of the course topic and who is the person writing (font style)? Is the font a professional? grade school child? serial killer? Just kidding on the last one, but hopefully it illustrates the range of voices and personalities of handwriting fonts.
Love this idea - of visualising the "voice", or "tone" of a font. Very insightful comments from Randy, and a great model from David.
I would have said that hand of Sean was a bold, confident person, writing with a board marker, but I guess one person's "confident" is another person's tension.
Dave's point is, however, well-made - if it's possible, and you do have some choices, and an audience to poll before you choose, then you can get some interesting feedback.
Certainly more interesting than "Oh - we ALWAYS use Arial..."
I use hand of sean as well but mostly to point out things of interest. Our company font is Helvetica 55 Roman or Arial. For my own company I use it combined with Myriad Pro.
Much like Bud states it is all about balance between the business font and the personal touch.
Wow- thank you all so much for your thorough (and thought provoking!) responses.
I love the idea considering "the voice" of my font. I, like Bruce, see Hand of Sean as a confident, bold, and playful font. I hadn't seen the aggressive side...
I think Myriad Pro is the perfect balance to Hand of Sean for the project I am working on (thanks Jeff!).
I really like your design maps, and have also seen your screenr on the Abduction course, and I have now also downloaded a few mapping apps to try out.
I have a question about the elements you include in your design map. Most are fairly straightforward to understand, like font or people, but I was wondering whether you had some examples of how you have used, or would use, the POP CULTURE, MOVIES, element in a course. For example, in the Abduction course you listed a number of movies related to the topic, so, how did you, or would you, use that in the course? Or, any other examples of that element in other courses?
8 Replies
Hi Siobahn -
Wonderful to have you on this forum.
I'm not exactly sure what kind of complimentarity you might be looking for but I'll share a couple of ideas for your consideration.
1. The foraging process: I like to use FontPicker to compare fonts. It runs on an Adobe Air platform. It's small, free and allows me to eliminate some fonts as I go along. You can do a similar thing with the custom preview in dafont. Just type in your own text and browse, for example, the "handwritten" theme and you can see what the same word or phrase looks like across a bunch of different fonts . I find that helpful for comparison.
2. The narrowing process: When I use multiple fonts (and I try not to use more than 2 or three in a given presentation), I often try to thinking about how each font will be used. Maybe it would be by "level" - like headings, subheadings, body text or maybe I just use one for "accents" -like labeling diagrams or graphs. If I already know the "tone" I'm looking for (e.g., casual, whimsical, warm, professional, techy, etc) that kind of planning helps me focus on things like readability and how the fonts will scale up or down. Then, from among my choices I will identify a couple of key upper and lower case letters (e.g., a and e) to find fonts with comparable serifs, proportionality, shape, and line width to come up with a list of those that might "go together."
3. Using those rules of thumb - using Hand of Sean as a baseline, if you wanted a complimentary "script" something like "Honey Script might work. If you want a thin complements, maybe Always Forever or Journal. If you want a thicker font, maybe Handy Handy. ANyway - you get the idea.
I hope some of this helps. Maybe others will have some better, more concrete ideas.
Hi Siobhan -
Hand of Sean is a little more aggressive, spray paint, graffiti style. There's a lot of tension in the style. Have you mapped out the tone or voice of the course font you want? What's the personality of the course topic and who is the person writing (font style)? Is the font a professional? grade school child? serial killer? Just kidding on the last one, but hopefully it illustrates the range of voices and personalities of handwriting fonts.
You could search for popular handwriting fonts and find many great returns: http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/freebies/30-free-handwriting-fonts-every-designer-should-own
If you could describe the tone, personality and voice of the person who's font you're trying to match, I think it will help narrow the choices.
Here's a process we use to help determine the right look and feel for custom projects:
Love this idea - of visualising the "voice", or "tone" of a font. Very insightful comments from Randy, and a great model from David.
I would have said that hand of Sean was a bold, confident person, writing with a board marker, but I guess one person's "confident" is another person's tension.
Dave's point is, however, well-made - if it's possible, and you do have some choices, and an audience to poll before you choose, then you can get some interesting feedback.
Certainly more interesting than "Oh - we ALWAYS use Arial..."
Bruce
I use Hand of Sean and GeoSansLight-- provides a nice balance between biz and spontaneity feel
I use hand of sean as well but mostly to point out things of interest. Our company font is Helvetica 55 Roman or Arial. For my own company I use it combined with Myriad Pro.
Much like Bud states it is all about balance between the business font and the personal touch.
Hey David,
What software did you use to map out all your design elements as shown in your Screenr above?
Love that idea...
Wow- thank you all so much for your thorough (and thought provoking!) responses.
I love the idea considering "the voice" of my font. I, like Bruce, see Hand of Sean as a confident, bold, and playful font. I hadn't seen the aggressive side...
I think Myriad Pro is the perfect balance to Hand of Sean for the project I am working on (thanks Jeff!).
Thanks again.
Hi Dave,
I really like your design maps, and have also seen your screenr on the Abduction course, and I have now also downloaded a few mapping apps to try out.
I have a question about the elements you include in your design map. Most are fairly straightforward to understand, like font or people, but I was wondering whether you had some examples of how you have used, or would use, the POP CULTURE, MOVIES, element in a course. For example, in the Abduction course you listed a number of movies related to the topic, so, how did you, or would you, use that in the course? Or, any other examples of that element in other courses?
Does anyone else have any examples of this?
Cheers,
Veronica
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