Any product or graphic you produce will probably need some form of type on it. You might think all you need to do is choose a font and type away. Wrong! Well 99% of the time anyway. Whether its a simple tag line or a paragraph of information you have to consider two things. Fonts and Typography. There are a few rules you need to follow to make things look great and not just good.
Grammar
You need to punctuate sentences properly. That means using the correct number of punctuation marks!!!… Only using one space after a full stop or comma, capitalising the right letters and using dashes and hyphens correctly. Spelling+ is also a crucial part of using fonts. The only exceptions to any of these rules are when you are trying to design something that is meant to have the gramatical errors. In general thought it is better to stick to the rules unless you absolutly feel you have to break them.
Font
Once you have your words all sorted out you need to get the right font for your work. Here are a few tips to help you get it right.
1. Don’t use to many fonts unless you absolutly have to. 3 – 4 is the general max. Use less fonts on short documents but on long documents try not to use more than 3 – 4.
2. Keep similar fonts for similar parts (titles, headings, body etc)
3. If you are producing something that needs to be read try to use legible and clear fonts. You can break this if you are just making things with no content that look “cool”.
4. Keep headlines clear of text bodys so a clear divide can be made for each section.
5. Keep font sizes readable. size 6 font may look good on your huge high resolution monitor but think about your audience. If they can’t read it the there is no point.
6. Make sure the headings and body fonts work well together.
Get started
The more fonts you have the more chance you have of having the best font for the job so here are a few places to begin looking.
fonts to pay for
http://www.fonts.com/
http://www.linotype.com/
http://www.fontshop.com/
http://www.altemus.com/
free range fonts*
http://www.dafont.com/
http://www.free-fonts.com/
http://www.fontfreak.com/
http://simplythebest.net/fonts/
http://www.1001fonts.com/
+ Any spelling mistakes, punctuation errors etc in this article are of course deliberate to emphasise my point!!!
* These may have commercial usage restrictions