Typography has always fascinated me. From my first design job, which was creating a store sign that only contained three words, I immediately understood the power of fonts.
It’s easy to think designing a sign with three words would take about three minutes to create. Well, the art director and I spent hours working with the words, adjusting font sizes, kerning (the spacing between letters), leading (the spacing between lines), and everything in between. After all of that, looking back from the original layout to the printed in-store sign, I realized how all of our hard work made a beautiful design of those three words. That was many years ago and my passion for type has only increased since then. Good typography is key to good design. It is amazing how even minor font changes can have an incredible impact on the overall look and feel of a piece. The font choice sets the tone – immediately identifying the piece as playful or professional, modern or old-fashioned, or whatever other adjective you’re hoping to get across. This is why designers can spend a great amount of time selecting the perfect font (or fonts) from the thousands of available choices. Check out this really cool video we found on the history of typography:
One of my favorite things to do is to look through my bookmarked font sites and check out what’s new and exciting. This never fails to help spark some creativity and gets me thinking about where and when to use a new favorite font. We all know how expensive it can be to purchase quality fonts, which is why I am always on the lookout for free options. There are lots of “free” font sites out there, but one of my favorite places to look is Pinterest. This is such an amazing resource, as people are really great about sharing their finds. It’s been so helpful for finding new, smaller foundries with a nice selection of free offerings. Here’s a list of free and pay sites that I am frequently found perusing. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!