Paperflame » Typography

Free Outline Fonts:

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:11:53 +0000

Recently I was looking for an Outline font. I am always on the lookout for font and typography resources. One can always make an Outline Font by either taking a regular font and adding to it manually which can be a chore. You can either select the font elements to make an outlined selection then stroke it. There are also other ways of course. Feel free to give any hints in the comment section. The other way is to just look for some pre-made outline fonts… and free is always best! I stumbled on this site.. that has a great collection of Outline Fonts and others for free. Just thought I would pass it on! Click on over to fontspace.com for some great fonts.

Visit Fontspace.com for Outline Fonts and more

Typeface Sketching: Flickr Group

admin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:36:24 +0000

This is for you typophiles out there. After wandering around at Flickr for a while I decided to see what (if any) groups or images came up in a search for typography. There is a Flickr Group called “Type Sketchbook“. Pretty cool. It’s not a huge group yet, but let’s see if we can change that! There are images posted of sketched typefaces and such. So far the biggest contributor is a guy named Antonio Cavedoni, but there are also others. The image below is one of his. If you do this kind of thing a lot and maybe have an art pad somewhere full of this kind of stuff hangin’ around in your room, fire up your scanners - It is your duty now to share with the world. Get to it peeps… start posting your sketches… And I mean PRONTO!

by Antonio Cavedoni

Basic Font Anatomy

admin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:34:40 +0000

After having played around with some font creation software, I found that the differences between the many different fonts to be most intriguing. I thought I would just provide a quick chart explaining the basics of font anatomy. Now realize, this is a pretty basic explanation of the different parts of characters. I could go into much more depth, but I think these basics are a good start. It is not really necessary to know all these names, but knowing them can come in handy if you are ever talking about or explaining an element of a design you may have created. Not only that, but it makes you sound like you know what you are talking about… and now you will! I Hope this little chart I put together helps. Give it a go-over. Remember, knowledge is power!

Vintage Tins: Graphics. Logos. Branding

admin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:45:22 +0000

While looking for some vintage branding, I came across an antiques site that has some great examples of Vintage Branding on antique tins. Such great inspiration can come from this old stuff. I find the graphics simple and to the point. It is interesting that the designs still look great after all these years. The human eye knew what looked good then as it does now. The neat thing about most of these graphics is the easily forgotten fact that they are NOT computer generated! No Photoshop, no Illustrator. I can almost hear the sound of applause in the background of my mind while looking at the handy work. The tins that are on display at the website are for sale, so their inventory looks like it will change as time goes by, but from the looks of it… they will continually have a nice selection to peruse.

Vintage Tins – Branding

Free Pixel Fonts: When. Where. How.

admin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:41:50 +0000

As a designer or not, you may or may not be aware that most fonts do not look very nice to the eye when they get too small. Even if anti-aliasing is used, the fonts just lose their clarity. The typographical cure to all this? Pixel Fonts. No anti-aliasing needed. Pure Pixels. Created for the digital pixel screen used by computers, they are a refreshing answer to the fuzzy font blues.

Pixel Fonts are created by their designers at specific sizes and should only be shown at that size or in specific multiples. You cannot randomly scale the size of Pixel Fonts and do not use “points” to specify the font size – only use pixel size. They will not look correct otherwise. Also, as I said before, Pixel Fonts were created so as not to use anti-aliasing. Make sure you set anti-aliasing to “none” when using this type of font. If it is an anti-aliasing font that you want, then your reading the wrong post!

Now lets get on with this. Some of the best uses of pixel fonts I have seen are incorporated in websites designed with flash. Pixel Fonts are commonly used in some of those ultra slick and modern flash websites (you know what I’m talking about). Slowly, the Web 2.0 flavor has phased out that look somewhat, but I still come across quite a few of these sites. Do realize, that you don’t need to be some Flash guru or what-not to use Pixel Fonts. There are many uses for them, but I suggest using them sparingly and only where needed. They work great in navigation buttons, footer text (copyrights), captions and sometimes entire sites incorporate Pixel Fonts. Just use them wisely.

One of the great things (that I am always surprised by) is that there are many different Pixel Fonts available. One would think that designing fonts with only pixels would have it’s creative limitations, but it doesn’t. I am always greatfull to see all of the different (and unusual) Pixel Font styles that are available to us. The most widely used and famous Pixel Font is a font named “Mini 7″. It has been used all over the net. Magically created by Joe Gillespie, it can be had for $15 at www.minifonts.com. I know I know, this post is titled FREE Pixel Fonts. I will get to that. The thing is “Mini 7″ has celebrity status on the web, so I had to introduce you to the local star on the scene. Now, on with the Free Pixel Fonts…

Free Pixel Fonts – This should at least get you started. I will add more as I find them.
www.wantedfonts.com
www.dafont.com
www.fontsforflash.com
www.highfonts.com
www.beex.net
www.gosub.de
www.dsg4.com
www.vectorize.de
www.kottke.org
www.bestflashanimationsite.com
www.designerinaction.de

You can even create your own here at BitFontMaker and you should also check out their BitFont Museum.

Please remember to respect any copyrights and usage rights that accompany fonts. Thanks.

Check back… I will constantly be updating the free Pixel Font list.