The Painless Education: Font Facts

I everyone... I'm back!  I decided to start to share a little knowledge -- easy to understand, painless, learning! These are things that I find useful! I just hope that you do too! I've recently been working with a lot of alphabet sets, and fonts in my layouts and that got me thinking! I don't really know much about font, the types or basic info. I do know that I like to use fonts on my layouts for titles, journaling, or even a little creative background. There are THOUSANDS of fonts out there, so many to choose from - it is such a big part of digital scrapbooking today! So, I'm going to share what I found on my little crash course in FONTS!

Typeface or Font? 

Many people are often unsure of the difference between these two, as it seems that the terms are both widely used. To clear it up, my basic understanding is that a typeface is a family of fonts (such as Helvetica Regular, Helvetica Italic, Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Black, etc.). A font is one weight or style within a typeface family (such as Helvetica Regular). When I looked it up, font was defined as: a noun, is basically defined as an assortment or set of type or characters all of one style and sometimes one size. I have found there are three basic font types or classifications: Serif Fonts, Sans Serif Fonts, and Decorative Fonts. There are numerous classifications, but those seem to be the most common.

A serif font is one that has the little line at the top or bottom of a font such as: Times or Garamond. These lines are supposed to help to keep your eye moving along the page.

Fonts without serifs are called sans serif fonts (literally, “without serif," isn't that the most ingenious name? lol). The most common sans serif font is Arial.

Decorative fonts are for, well, decoration. These are the fancy fonts that are designed to make a visual impact rather than to be easily read. Fonts that look like cursive script or handwriting fall into this category! These are the ones that I find most often on my layouts! Here is an example of one by Larabie, called Minya Nouvelle:

Some great resources for fonts, free and paid:

MyFonts.com

Ilovetypography.com

Urbanfonts.com

DaFont.com

FontSquirrel.com

LetteringDelights.com

kevinandamanda.com

As I was roaming around the internet, I found a fun, cool quiz that you can take!  I would love to know "What Font Are YOU?!"  Here is a link to the quiz, from PBS:

Fun Font Quiz from PBS

Another fun site to check out is Wordle.  Wordle is text that you've typed in, turned into a "word cloud."  Try it out -- it's fun and pretty cool! You can mix it up, color and font choices too!

Wordle

Share your favorite font sites, or even the font themselves!  I love them!  Thanks for visiting!

Created originally by me for Jennifer Fox Designs: Here!

Thanks for visiting!

Jenn

(jk703/The Typative Scrapper)