Seems I have 1001 questions at the moment....sorry about that. Now I have a font manager (not 100% sure which one as I’m not on my laptop at the moment), have a ton of fonts (and probably use maybe 1/4 of them) but struggle with choosing them for my layouts. Any tips or tricks on how you choose fonts for layouts? One thing that came to mind is I do my journaling last so by the time I get to font choosing I’m over making decisions so stick to a default font rather than one that would look better. So far my only thought is to forgo the font manager and just install the fonts to somehow streamline the process but that will more than likely a) slow my machine down too much and b) overwhelm me with too many choices
If you have a Pinterest account you can search for „coordinating o pairing fonts“ there are tons of ideas how to pair fonts. Some tips: never use 2 or more fonts with serifes. Like a TIMES, BODONI, GARAMOND, same for fonts like Helvetica Arial, Futura, Frutiger Choose for example a serife font with a script or brush font. But don’t use a brush and a script font together. Nevertheless there are mixed font families they work perfectly together. https://angelekamp.com/2016/06/pair-me-up-how-to-match-free-font-pairing-html/ Nicole | NBK-Design
@NBK-Design its not really about pairing fonts together for me,it’s more about choosing a font that works with my layout when I’ve got hundreds of font choices if not more.
@littlekiwi I have favourite fonts I like to use for my journaling on layouts and they are all installed so I can access them easily. I use Nexusfont and have organised some other fonts not installed into folders named as example " Outline" "Bold" "typewriter style" etc.
I would say, make sure you do the entire page and then at the end don't over mix them. Use something that goes with your title font. So I guess something that doesn't clash with your title and Nicole gave great examples on how to do that.
I am enjoying Photoshop CC's font panel having the starred icon so I can see my favorite fonts at one go. I can also view similar fonts if I'm wanting to switch up. To be honest, I always use a roller date stamp font for my dates and Traveling Typewriter for almost all of my layouts these days. It's easy to read, I like the way it looks, and it goes with every layout I create. So I guess my biggest tip is to find a handful of fonts you really enjoy, and just use those instead of having to make big decisions every time.
Thank you for this Nicole. This is really interesting and I love these samples you posted. I am going to have to look through this (re your sample pairings) further!
I have my favourite fonts, those are always installed. I use a font manager for fonts I use occasionally. I have them tagged in the font manager - grungy, art journalish, suitable for big blocks of text, titles, outline fonts, decorative, script, typed, kiddy, old fashioned etc. Then when I know the style I want I select that tag and browse the relevant fonts. I do a temporary install of the font(s) I like then try them out in my document.
I wouldn’t even know where to start narrowing down my fonts to my favourites- at one time it was the Pea font range but now I’ve got so many it’s not so clear cut.
My liking of certain fonts has changed over time. 10 to 12 years ago I also had over 1000 fonts on my system. I used maybe 50 of them. So I took the time and really looked at them and got rid of a bunch. Then as I would have to get new computers, I would get rid of more. At this time I only have about 300 on this machine. I do have others in folders on an EHD that I have not installed but they are there if I want them. But honestly I can find a font to use in the selection I do have. Like @gonewiththewind I have a favorite I use for journaling (Yanks Hand). I also have several favorites that I will make title word art out of. But my layouts are not artsy focused but storytelling focused so what I do works for me and that is to not focus on fonts. What is funny is that I will see someone's recommendation for a font for journaling, like what I see, download and install it. I'll use it a couple of times and end up going right back to Yanks Hand.
Look back at your last 20 layouts and see if there is a font that stands out. Or if you've used a different font on each of those layouts, then you have a pool of 20 to start with, and then you can cull from there, 20 fonts a time. **shrug** It might help? I know fonts can be so overwhelming!
@gonewiththewind the last god knows how many layouts have just used default fonts so it’s not much help
Wow! I did not realize I could do this (I've been using Photoshop CC for a couple of years now, but still have so much to learn!...). I use a font manager, X-Fonter, which allows me to create custom collections. I organize these collections by favourite font designers or type foundries; and/or by theme ("children," "nautical," "script," "retro," "typewriter," "vintage," etc). I do a lot of family history/heritage pages, and for those LOs, I don't struggle too much with font choices: I have a handful of favourites that I return to again and again. And I'm enough of a geek that I make a distinction between "vintage" and "retro:" for my purposes, "vintage" = pre-1950s; whereas "retro" refers to any font with a 1950s, 60s, or 70s feel. Okay, wow, that's pretty geeky!... For daily life or contemporary pages, I do struggle with font choices, because I simply have too many fonts. But that's where organizing by font designer/type foundry can help out, because often a given designer's fonts will just work well together.
Yay for learning something new! Happens to me all the time . . . there's so much to learn and with the program constantly updating, well, it's hard to keep up!
When I download a font, I also download whatever font previews there are for that font (and I'll search the web to see if there are other examples of the font in use). Then, when I am wanting a particular kind of font, I just browse through my font previews until I find something that works. I am very picky about what fonts I download now, so I only have a few to go through. I use fonts mainly for title work (although I have a few fallback "default" fonts that I go to over and over), since I mainly use Cambria for journaling because it is easy to read when the books are printed out. My eyes aren't as good as they used to be!
I was getting really overwhelmed with my fonts, so I made a tag in my font manager for "layouts." I made myself choose 5 fonts max to use on layouts. When I had used them quite a bit and figured out what I liked and didn't, I added a handful more. I'm now up to about 20 that I rotate through. I just needed to make myself stop searching through 5,000 fonts every layout and getting overwhelmed with it.
Finally got around to hopping on my laptop - I have AMP Font Manager but am happy to change if it means I actually use my fonts rather than just collect them. To make matters worse I have 800 uninstalled fonts so no wonder I don't end up using them cause theres just too many to go through at the end of making a layout.
