Fontaholic

This month, Brian helps you get art-savvy with two free photoshop downloads that will help you use text as a design element.
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Font Tip: Add New Meaning
by Brian Tippetts

By now you should know that I love playing with type and letterforms and adding meaning into my designs. In fact, my favorite thing to do while shopping at IKEA is to go to the frames section to see what new posters have been added that only use letterforms for the design. I always seem to come home with a new addition to my collection.

So where did my love for creating designs out of type come from? Well, in my junior year of college, I had an upper level English class that involved a lot of writing. I found myself behind on a number of papers and had to figure out a way to “spruce” up my papers to get the highest possible score. I knew that the teacher’s assistant would be the one grading the papers, so I needed to impress her.

I decided that for my paper written about my favorite subject at that time—surfing, that I needed to add some design flair. I input the text and made it flow in the shape of a wave.

When I got my paper back corrected, the TA had written, “How did you do this?” and “Wow, that’s amazing!” She loved what I had done to the design of the text and I ended up receiving an ‘A’ from that class.

What I learned from this experience is that the story or meaning of the story can be larger than the just the words. Through the design and the words, new meaning can be displayed.


100 THINGS I LOVE

From the moment I received the layout “100 Things I Love” by Deena Wuest for my book, Get Creative with Type, I have wanted to create a layout following her design.

I have been thinking a lot about my wedding anniversary of 19 years in May, so I decided that I would put together a “100 Things I Love About Amy” layout to present to her on our anniversary. After spending hours and hours to come up with the right words and getting it input into Adobe Illustrator (it is also doable in many other programs like Adobe Photoshop, CorelDRAW, and Microsoft Publisher) and playing around with 5 different font and various sizes, I was finally able to put together my own “100 Things I Love” layout.

This was a fun project and as you can see, my results are exactly what I wanted.

Do you want to create a “100 Things I Love” for yourself? Well, I have created a Photoshop template to help you out. You will still need to come up with the list of 100 things for your specific need, but I have shown you two samples to get you started with ideas. You can also change the color and modify anything that you want. The file is saved in layers to make it as easy as possible to use. I am also adding another Photoshop template (with a heart shape) that you can use to add as many (or as little) words, phrases or text to express your thoughts to a loved one. You can download both templates here.


Get started today by adding those sentimental thoughts or words of encouragement to fit in these basic shapes and make it meaningful.

Take care,
Brian


BONUS:
Okay, so I love to talk about the fun things going on here at scrapNfonts. We have a new, deco-art inspired font collection that is now available. SNF Cresota includes the decorative initials and small caps perfect for any title or heading. It can also be used to create a fun journaling block or quote. SNF Duluth and SNF Duluth Block can be used interchangeably for a fun deco-art journaling block or title. I could see this being used to recreate a favorite movie poster or when you want a custom, fresh feel to your card or scrapbook layout. Also included in the bundle is the Geo Deco Outline Doodlebat. The images from this doodlebat can be used easily with any of the Deco-styled fonts. Check these fonts out now and enjoy this month's free art-deco inspired download.