The Art of Font Selection Part 2

    Last time I gave you just a brief view of how I do my font selection. I always start with my art work first before every playing with my fonts. Now I will take time to show you how I play around with picking a font to fit my artwork.

First let’s start with the completed work of art with no text whatsoever.As you can see we have a wide open canvas to work with here. This was a flyer that we being design for a church. The wonderful thing about a blank canvas like this is the ability to place text on that reads clearly and does not get lost in the background. What we will do is work our way from the top of the flyer to the bottom showing how we lay out the text.

Understand that font selection is different for different items. You will see when we take a close look at the top of the flyer that that it will already have the church logo on it. The church logo was one that we also designed, but picking font for a logo that is largely text includes an entirely different approach to font selection that we will look at a later time.

Here you can see the Logo at the top of the page. In the text tool box you will see that the font that we chose to use is Baskerville Old Face. This was actually the font that I actually chose for the logo with the exception of the E. I wanted to make the fonts for this particular part something uniform but that also stood out. When I pick my font, most times I know what direction I want to go as far as font styles I want to use. (Styles would be things like: Serif, San Serif, Script, Block Lettering, ECT.) I will show you an example of this on the bottom half of the flyer.

The main theme of this flyer is obviously an invitation to come and be part of a church that is growing. You will notice that by using different sizes of the same font we have developed a smooth flowing design that grabs your attention. We have where question asked first in the Eastern Hills logo. We have the who in the understood YOU found in the statement, “Come grow with us”. There is a third question also answered and that is what. We want YOU to come GROW with us. Lastly there is a subtle forth question answer and that is how we want you to grow. We want you to grow in faith, as a family, and in fellowship. So now you get a basic feel of the importance of answering basic question and using a proper font style to implement it.

Now we come to the bottom of the flyer. The schedule of services is just your standard Times New Romans. Just as a side not I do not recommend using any more than three font types on a single design (obviously there are some exceptions to this rule, but usually you are safest to us only 2 or 3 font types). The reason I used Times New Romans as apposed to Baskerville Old Face is because I wanted a font that could be a little bolder while still holding to the serif style of font. This was important because the Baskerville font does not have the ability to be as bold as the Times font, however, I needed a bolder font so that the service names and times as well as the church address and phone number could be seen and read clearly.

Here is where we will get to the way that I make a font selection for a text I have direction for but really have no ideal which one of that particular font style I want to use. In this case for the words Sunday, Wednesday, Seth Shipman, Pastor, and the web address, we ended up using a font called spinwerad. I knew in this case I still wanted to stick with a serif style of font. I also knew I wanted the font to have a bit more size to the bulk of it. As you can see in our above picture I have a large selection presented on the pull down menu for the font selection screen. While I knew what I was looking for in my font, I was not sure which one would fit best. I have at least a dozen if not more of the type of characteristics I was looking for in my font. When I don’t know which one I want I will start at the very top of the pull down menu with the A fonts and work my way all the way through the Z fonts. I will look at each one that meets what I am picturing in my mind and see how well they fit into my particular artwork. Sometimes I will get stuck with three font types that differ from each other by just a little bit and I will have to look at each one closely from as little as a single look to as many as three or four times before I settle on one. Even then before I make my final decision between the few fonts I narrow my selection down to I will get someone else to look at the options and get an opinion from their view point. Once I have weighed the options and the opinion of the options I can get to a place where I am settled on my final font choice. Below you see our final product.

Font selection is not always the easiest thing, but as we said in the first part of this subject, a good font can make good artwork stand out and look awesome, while a poor selection can make good artwork look dull or even make the good artwork worthless. We will visit more of font selection at a later date as font selection is not only important for print design but also logo design. We will also give you a list of websites where you can get free fonts to be used with your design work!

To see more of our artwork please visit our webpage www.radiancedesign.us. Radiance Graphic Design is a company that is built on Christian values and integrity. It is our desire as a company to make Christ the center of all or our graphics and promise to put our all into all the work we do. Our business is catered to Christian Ministries and Businesses. We have been doing graphic work for churches, pastors, and missionaries for over 8 years, and would love to services your graphic needs.