I really feel like I'm improving in my PS7 skills and my lo's are looking better and more complex. I'm getting a feel for my way around and I know if I don't know how to do something I have in mind, I can find a tutorial either here or elsewhere to help me. (I know I have a looooong way to go, but I can see my improvements here and there).

My greatest weakness is my fontwork. I just don't have a knack for eye catching fonts. After I finish the background and picture portion of a lo, I sit there looking at it thinking, "now what?" I do alright with the titles themselves, but I just can't see how it should go. I'll go through font sites and I'll find one that would look "ok" (before I learned this trick I was just working with the basic fonts in PS7, talk about ugh). But I see many of you using several fonts, sometimes more than one font in the same word, and I'm soooo jealous!

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can get better at this? TIA

__________________
Patti

Madly in love with my AF man
Blessed by 3 gorgeous children

man, i'd love to be good at this too! i'm so not! i'd suggest looking through the galleries of tinamom2tate and suzannecwalker! they both rock with fonts and placements and do amazing things with words. when i try to do something special with text i sit and think hm, what would suzi or tina do? the answer doesn't usually come to me though. i think they're born with it! but i have learned a lot from studying their pages and how they do it. there are others in the gallery too that would be great to look at. mom2ellarose, carver, there are many more! Ü

That's so funny, you happened to mention the very 4 members I make a point to go through their albums periodically! LOL!

__________________
Patti

Madly in love with my AF man
Blessed by 3 gorgeous children

Patti.

For me it's all trial and error. Fontwork is always the part of layout I spend most time on. I can spend litereally hours on some lo's and minutes on others finding the perfect font. I've been known to try every single font and my computer and not be happy with the result. Some of my tips for adding interest to fonts:

Use more than one font and make sure that they'e contrasting fonts ie a handwriting font and a print type font.

Add spaces between letters, or alternatively put each letter on a different layer and bunch them up.

Use colour, shadows, opacity and other layer styles or filters to add dimension.

Overlap the fonts, rotate them, flip them, add a reflection or invisible mirror

Incorporate dingbats into your fontwork. ie with the word love you could replace the o with a heart, or put the heart inside the O. I think I saw Gina do this.

Use wordplay. By this I mean take a word to pieces and substitiute. Use words for numerals and vice versa
For example
Dellacate =Delicate
Sk8ter= skater (Shelleyrae)
Blueberry Fields Forella = Beatles song

Use the letters in one word to make another a bit like a crossword puzzle

Use varying sizes of text. Make words extra big or small

Finally my best tip is to match the font colour with your layout by using your colour picker. I think this can make the biggest impact. For me anyway.

Remember it's all personal choice and it's what you like. Get creative and remember there aren't any rules to this!

Hopr this helps,

Anna

Thanks Anna,

I think I just need to take time and play with it, like you said. I spend so much time playing with the lo itself, by the time I get to the fontwork, I just want it DONE! So I think most of my problem is impatience. Also, I think once I'm familiar with the fonts, it'll be easier. I hope anyway. I'm thinking about just printing out "font pages", so that I can see each of them, that might make things quicker than clicking through all those blasted names I don't recognize! LOL!

__________________
Patti

Madly in love with my AF man
Blessed by 3 gorgeous children

Yes that's one of the things I dont like about PS. DIP the font name is written in the actual font. When I'm using PS I open word and switch between the two programs to check out font style. I find that helps.

Maybe someone else can tell us something we don't know?

Anna

Anna, I agree with everything you mentioned.

Half the battle is getting to know your fonts, playing with them and trying different things. I'm such a font-a-holic and have been for many years that I've gotten to know a lot different typefaces. You sort of get a *feel* for them after a while.

When you're designing a layout, think about what the tone of the layout is. Is it serious, playful, funny? Choose your font according to the emotional impact of your design. This does require you to know your typefaces, or at least do a lot of playing with them to get the right feel. Trial and error.

Try using script/handwriting fonts with serif typefaces. When I worked for a greeting card company, we used that combination a lot. It works well.

Go to Hallmark Cards http://www.hallmark.com (check out their paper card line) for some really inspirational typography. They do pretty awesome font work!

HTH!
Ronna

I think of the font as part of the "art" of it. If it reflects the mood of the picture. Sometimes its good to vary the size for a result you would even think of. Or use one font as a background for another. Also play with the spacing - between letters, between lines everywhere! Fonts are my favorite part of making a layout- they can make or break it (besides the picture of course!) Also, a silly thing I do is to step back from the computer a couple of feet and if I can read the title still.. its good. It's gotta be readable! Some fonts are best left for single words if they are too complicated.
-Doris