Get Your Font Out!

I’m studying design, right? And that means I’m also interested in presentation techniques in general, from a graphic design point of view. So why on earth have I only recently become aware of the fact that there are zillions of fonts available online, that can be downloaded FOR FREE!!!!

I’m so annoyed with myself, right now!

My days of sticking to only Arial and Times New Roman are over.

O-V-E-R.

An awesome, original and well chosen font will not only make your words jump off a page (or screen) but they will also help reinforce a certain theme, atmospheric quality and draw attention without being too ‘in your face’. Unless, of course you want the font to jump out from the page and slap the reader across the chops.

The beauty of a strongly stylised font is its power of suggestion. It will invite you, the reader, to draw certain assumptions or mental associations with its stylistic properties. And sometimes that’s much more powerful than using an illustration.

How clever.

Let’s delve further into the magical and mystical world of fonts. What is your immediate reaction to this type of font?  Hmm?

And to reinforce the Army theme, it looks kinda awesome with this wording, right?

      And now, you might be having involuntary associations like this:

Sorry, wrong picture.  Clearly, I meant THIS:

Let’s look at another example.

This is very reminiscent of the old skool comics and can be pimped to look something like this:

And then, we have my favourite:

Seriously, what an awesome font!! This can have two very different vibes. It can evoke all sorts of whimsical notions of retro typewriters (remember those?), or a more sinister edge, for example, if you received a dog-eared letter in the post and it displayed a beautiful sentiment like this, you should probably call the Police.

Personally, I much prefer this visual. What a cutie.

Fonts, they’re the future, people!