Simple Font Techniques
Hi everyone! I’m thrilled to share with you about fonts and different ways you can step up the typography pizzazz within your scrap pages. Sometimes you can’t find the right font or maybe you can’t spend the money on a new one, whatever your situation, don’t fret! There is always a simple solution to making your so-so fonts work for your design.
I’ve taken Century Gothic to use as our examples today. Pretty basic and boring, but everyone has it and now we can make it a bit more interesting to look at!
After applying small caps, bold, and adjusting the tracking (set to -50), I began to play with different ideas… so here we go!
1. First of all, who doesn’t love glitter? (I can’t get enough!) Start by creating your font layer, the normal way you’d create text. Then, paste your glitter images on the layer directly above the font layer you had just created. In addition to the layers being directly stacked, make sure your glitter image covers the font so you can’t see the type temporarily. *Make sure everything is stacked on top of each other properly before the next step.*
Next, select the glitter image layer on the layer menu. If you used multiple glitter images, be sure to highlight them all. Then you will right-click and select “Create Clipping Mask.” This will apply the glitter only to the shape of your font, giving a nice shimmery effect!
2. The great thing about that technique is that by using different images for your clipping mask, you can drastically change the appearance of your font. Find one of your favorite patterned backgrounds, and then apply the same processes as you did for image one. I chose Sara Schmutz’s Back to Basic paper (which I love and you can find here) and did the same steps as before, to create a patterned font. This is a great trick because you immediately can customize your font to scrap page you’re creating, by using some of the papers for whichever kits you’re using!
3. Speaking of back to basics, for this technique we’re doing pretty much just that! One of the easiest ways to spice up your font is to duplicate your text layer. Once you have two of them, change the text on the bottom layer to a slightly different color than the initial color and then offset it from the top text. You can offset it as much or as little as you want, depending on how thick/thin you want it.
4. Lastly, for a playful bubble or cartoon effect you can open the layer styles menu. This works even better with a heavy font face, but you can still create neat effects with a thinner font like I used here. Select the drop shadow section, and bump the spread all the way to 100. You can play with the size to really see how big of an outline you can create. Use the same color for your shadow as you used for the actual text, and the shadow will be a slightly different shade – which can be neat too. Or make your text white and you have now created a big bubble-like outline!
These are just a few quick ways you can create the fonts you want with minimal resources.
Play around with different fonts you already have by adjusting their tracking and leading etc. Don’t forget to open up the layers style panel, too!. You can play with various drop shadows, strokes and a bunch more just but a few clicks of a button. It’s always great to purchase a new, amazingly designed alphabet for your kit, but sometimes just by experimenting with what you already have, you can come up with some great font styles that may surprise you!
Be bold and brave in your experimenting! More importantly – Have fun creating, friends!
