Font and Typography Magic for Posters

By: Kaye Marks
Submitted: 2009-11-05 17:19:14
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If you list down the major elements of poster design, one of the next on the list after the Images is the text or the typography. Now, standard poster printing will always have a significant portion of its design dedicated to the text and fonts.

It is crucial that everything about it is perfect before sending the design to the poster printer. That text provides the important information that the color poster is trying to convey and it must be as good looking as possible for people to notice it.

Therefore, if you are looking for nice tricks on how to make your fonts or your typography look better, here are a few font and typography magic tips and tricks that you might want to use.

1.      Getting and installing free fonts – Now, one of the best resources for typography are the free fonts over the Internet. There are hundreds of sites out there that offer free downloads from their font databases. You can easily acquire these and install at your leisure for your design application.

Just choose the one that you think is right for your poster design, download it, and install it for your design application. For example, if you want to install new fonts for Adobe applications, you should just download the “TTF” files from the internet and copy it to your C:\program files\common files\adobe\fonts\ folder. You should then be able to use the new font in your color poster designs.

2.      Adding shadows to words – In terms of effects themselves for your fonts, adding shadow effects is one of the most common. Shadow effects basically simulate a source of light and the shadow that letters would probably cast when hit by that light. It is a nice effect if you want to have some of your words and texts “come out” lifting them in the design. You have the option usually of shifting the direction of the source of light so that you can change the angles of the shadows to your liking. Most image editing software like adobe Photoshop can do this for you.

3.      Adding 3 dimensional effects – You can also use some three-dimensional effects for your fonts. Try to find a feature that offers to “emboss” letters and words so that they look like they are made of something in 3D. These add substance to your color poster designs, which is distinctly different from shadows. Your letters will look like they have been molded into the poster design.

4.      Adding texture and fillers – Fonts can also look great if you add textures and fillers. This effect basically fills the body of your characters with more than one color. These fillers can make your letters look like they were made from something such as satin, feathers or even stone and bricks. In addition, some filler add color gradients into the characters, shifting colors as words and sentences are spelled out. This is a good effect if you want to create logos and special headings in your poster design.

5.      Adding borders and strokes – Now, if you want to emphasize certain words and letters. You can also add font borders or strokes. These borders are easily used in most design applications. They add an extra color border around characters, increasing the word's visibility amidst its background.

6.      Adjusting character spacing and sizes – Spacing can also be a great thing to play within your poster designs. Most fonts have pre-set spacing and sizes. However, in some design applications you can change this so that characters can appear closer together beyond the usual character spacing. You can even cause them to touch and overlap one another if that is your desired effect in your poster designs. This is pretty useful if your posters are already getting a bit tight on space.

7.      Mixing and matching effects – Finally, you should of course not be afraid and mix and match the effects above. You can try for example, adding font borders in your text, while at the same time it has shadows. This gives a more detailed design to your text that can be great for many possible designs. So do not be afraid, experiment with your text fonts or typography.

Now you know how to magic your way to improve your fonts when designing layouts for color poster printing. Use these designs wisely for your benefit. Good Luck!

Article source: Expert Articles