Dash of Inspiration: Diaries of a Fontaholic, Part 3

A Dash of Inspiration, A Cup of Creativity by Doreen

Diaries of a Fontaholic, Part 3

Welcome to the third installment of  ‘Diaries of a Fontaholic’. I decided that it was better to split today’s segment into two weeks, so next week will be the final installment where I’ll share some font tips that can make the difference between a professional greeting card, and a greeting card which looks amateurish … based solely on your choice of font and placement.

Today, in Part-3,  I’ll be introducing you to my  Favorite ‘Specialty-Use’ fonts.  These include elegant fonts for Weddings, fun fonts for Christmas, Halloween and Kids; as well as some Western favorites.

So here we go …

Same as previous weeks, to make things a bit easier for our dear Corrie who actually does the official posting on the blog, I’ve tried to group the fonts, therefore offering fewer links.  All you need to do is copy the font name and paste it into the search feature on the home page of the links provided in the groupings. When the font name shows up, click on that and you will be taken to the download page for that font, where it also show the license.

Elegant Wedding Fonts: You’ll find that as a general rule of thumb, most elegant ‘wedding’ fonts which are legible and therefore used in the professional designer ring, require a purchase.  Most of the free fancy script fonts you’ll find, become illegible when used on greeting cards. These are my favorites and CAC Champagne is FREE.

Old Fashion Script™

Bickham Script Complete Family Pack (the most expensive font family I’ve ever purchased, but well worth it)

These 2 fonts can purchased here

Flemish Script

Diplomat

Vivaldi

These 3 fonts can be purchased here

CAC Champagne

Can be downloaded for free from Font Squirrel

Christmas and Halloween Fonts: For those lighthearted and cheerful Holiday cards, I like a fun and festive font.  Halloween fonts are difficult because though we often think the eerie fonts are cool for the season, most are difficult to read and therefore not a good choice.  Over the years, I’ve found these fonts to be seasonal favorites of mine.

Snidely Font Family

Shlop Font Family

Riky Vampdator Normal Font

These 3 fonts can all be downloaded for free from 1001 Fonts

Mountains of Christmas

Nosifer Caps

These 2 fonts can all be downloaded for free from Font Space

ActionIs

Fontdiner Swanky

These 2 fonts can all be downloaded for free from Font Space

Western Fonts are great for anyone who works with western-style images. These are my favorites because they maintain the western theme while remaining legible, often a common problem with special-use fonts.  Edmunds is free, the other two very reasonable.

Edmunds

Giddyup Std Regular

Saloon Girl

These 2 fonts can all be purchased from MyFonts

Kids Fonts I offer my favorite fonts to use when making cards for children.  I like to keep a ‘child-like’ feeling to the text, kids relate to that better, but again there are so many fonts like these out there which just don’t maintain legibility and therefore you lost that ‘professional touch’.  These are my favorites for various uses.

Eraser Font – I only use this font on chalkboard/school imagery, so keep in mind that if used outside of it’s ‘design use’, it will most likely be considered inappropriate and/or excessive.

GoodDog

Learning Curve Pro

These 3 fonts can all be downloaded for FREE from FontSquirrel

SpacePatrol Font – I find this font to be fun for boys, especially when combined with space and alien imagery.

This an example of Eraser Font in use on a chalkboard.

Hope you enjoyed this installment of Diaries of a Fontaholic … See you next week for the final installment where I’ll offer some great Font Tips to keep your designs professional!