When we are speaking about good logo design by that we mean good font as it’s not only the necessary element, but also the essential part which can make the logo design more effective and captivating. Designers underline that professional and impressive font depicts specification of your company and introduces your business field from the most advantageous side, so it’s really important to choose the right one for your particular logo design. As for the creation of the font itself, it should be original and unusual, but at the same time readable and memorable. Of course, the style of the font as well as color scheme and texture will depend from your business purposes, so try your best to build your perfect logo design. Here we collected some interesting free fonts so you can easily choose the most suitable one and create your own logo design.
Morning Glory
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Rounded Font
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Curly fonts are perfect for funky and sophisticated designs. Original shapes and thin lines create unique atmosphere of sophisticated style and give great charisma to any website that is decorated with curly fonts. Of course it is hard to call these fonts very user friendly, but their main mission is to enliven design and attract visitors with mannered shapes. These fonts are excellent for creating various birthday cards, cover pages and websites for kids or girl-teenagers. You are welcome to download these fonts absolutely for free, but please read terms of use for each of them to avoid contentious situations. Also don’t forget to share your favorite free curly fonts with us in the comments section.
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Maybe many of you have known everything about these two formats but I’m sure that sometimes rookies are confused by these two smart acronyms. Here is a brief history of them for you. Initially True Type format was the first outline font standard developed by Apple in the 1980′s and without a doubt has caused a new era in computer fonts sphere. TTF has offered a sort of font performance and high controlling opportunities that were unbelievable for that time. Actually you were able to control how every pixel of the font on computer will be displayed. This technology was fully supported by Mac OS and Microsoft’s Windows and has gained huge popularity among web designers. The Open Type Font was TTF’s successor and it was build using basic structure of its predecessor. Microsoft along with Adobe Systems has announced the release of this technology in 1996 and OTF was meant to replace the TTF.
Difference
Despite the major success of TTF such industry giants as Microsoft and Adobe couldn’t agree with Apple’s copyright for this invention and as their solution they have decided to improve Apple’s offspring. So, basically you won’t find many differences in these two formats because these are based on one method of displaying outline fonts – that is the usage of glyph tables. Now let’s get to the point – the major difference between these two formats is about their capabilities. TTF uses glyphs tables to control the fonts. These tables are using line segments and quadratic Bézier curves to outline font elements. OTF improvement contains usage of CCF (Compact Font Format) tables along with traditional glyph tables. Also few smartfont options have been added to the OTF format which allows improving typography and language support capabilities.
Current Situation
Well as we can see TTF fonts still weren’t beaten by the OTF, there are tons of them out there and there is a particular reason for that – True Type fonts are much easier to be made than Open Type ones. Of course the recent trends show us that Open Type fonts have more fans and maybe soon the majority of web developers and designers will cut off TTF at all, but for now we can only state the fact that these two formats are making our lives easier even by competing each other as two similar products.
The problem of displaying non-standard fonts has been solved due the growing popularity of various solutions similar to CSS @font-face etc. But even so it is too early to state that you embed almost any exclusive font to your website with the help of few clicks. Clients are getting more meticulous and often you just can’t convince him or her that this font may cause some extra problems for you. So, today we want to tell you about some popular tools that might help you in embedding some original fonts and satisfying your clients seamlessly.
The main trick behind all these tools is using some scripts or even third-party storing for your fonts. So if you won’t afraid to entrust the faith of your fonts to someone else than these solutions will help you a lot. There are some web developers that don’t trust all these tools and maybe they are right though so far there are no live examples of their paranoia. So, let’s begin.
Google makes developers’ lives easier by creating Google Font Directory. Just browse trough, pick a font and paste a code to your website. Also you can download font files to your computer and use them in a classical way and don’t forget that you can use them on any non-commercial or commercial project.
Cufon is the most popular font embedding service nowadays. Just upload your fonts to the website, choose the glyph, customize your font and enjoy the power of JS scripts that would embed your font instantly.
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There are tons of new fonts released year by year but we still have to observe old and boring fonts dominating the industry. Yes, they were cool and popular back in the day but it is time to step back and retire. Of course we are not going to force you to abandon some of them, but if creating web design products is what you do for living – we think you’ll understand our list and even add something from your own experience.
1. Comic Sans
Vincent Connare has designed Comic Sans casual script typeface and it was released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It was used as mimic of font used in comic books and its main problem was its “cuteness”. You have to agree that cute font used on official documents makes you perceive them as something not really serious. The typeface has been supplied with Windows 95 and further versions so it has it was really widespread among web community. It has gained worldwide hostility because inappropriate usage in various situations. There is even a community called “Ban Comic Sans” and these guys advocate stopping the usage of Comic Sans in serious subjects. According to many trustworthy sources this is the most hated font on the web.
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2. Brush Script
Brush Script was created in 1942 by Robert E. Smith for the American Type Founders (ATF). This is a casual connecting script typeface which emulates hand-written letters with an ink brush. It has gained huge popularity in 50′s and 60′s. It was widely used in various advertising posters and is often associated with the WWII era. To tell you the truth this font is not that bad though now we can claim the fact that Brush Script has really complicated relationships with the web due to its terrible abilities to be dated properly. It can add some vintage charm to the web page but I’m sure that you’ll be able to find some more good-looking fonts that won’t have such fat lines.
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Creating a big and successful heading won’t be a real challenge for the designers due to the right choice of proper fonts. Original and eye-catching headlines will help users to properly digest content and of course will set right hierarchy of the text. Don’t forget that font is a powerful tool that helps in delivering your message to the readers so you shouldn’t underestimate the power of big and bold fonts. Here you’ll find a selection of popular big fonts that are absolutely free to download.
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Trick or Treat! It means that Halloween is almost here folks and it is time to start preparations for the holiday! And since we’re a design blog we have got a present for designers – this present will help you save some money on Halloween preparations. By the way it’s a perfect time now to start preparing for Halloween and decorate whatever your project is for this holiday. Visualize mystic mood at your website and just have fun. Today we’ve collected 20 Horror and Scary free fonts for all Halloween Fans. Here you’ll find many original typography items that reflect various horror traditions from the favorite books and movies.
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We all understand the typography’s basics – it makes it possible to use text as an effective design element in your design works. But sometimes it is very important and educational to know the history of this craft. We’ve decided to investigate the origin of some popular web fonts and recover some interesting facts especially for you. Modern generations of young web designers sometimes know much more about the history of Apple than about the Renaissance (although this epoch has brought us many wonderful typefaces).
You probably never thought about the history of fonts, and didn’t know that a lot of them originate from times we’re used to think of as of Medieval. So today we want to let you know more info about the fonts we use today and that are really ancient. Here is our small list, enjoy.
1. Bembo
Initially this font was created by Francesco Griffo around 1495. Original name of this font is Bembo Book roman and it is classified as old style serif typeface. Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation revived this excellent typeface on 1929 giving its short name Bembo instead of the old one. This typeface’s characteristics are minimal variation in thick and thin stroke weight, small x-height, ascender height exceeding cap height.
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2. Bodoni
Bodoni was designed by Gianbattista Bodoni in 1798 and it was inspired by the works of John Baskerville. There are many modern revivals of this typeface but only two of them are most successful. These are ATF Bodoni (1906) and Bauer Bodoni (1926). Bodoni’s digital versions sometimes have “dazzle” effect due its strokes that are very thin at small point sizes.
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Appealing and original typography will help you to establish your website’s visual coherency and will help you to set the right accents. Typography is one of the best methods that creates strong connection between text, headlines and images. Also it is very user-friendly technique that will enhance your website’s user experience by delivering your content with elegance and style. Recently typography has gained huge popularity among web design community due its effectiveness and strong users’ influence.
You should always remember that simplicity is the cornerstone for any typography and it is not that easy to create simple and readable design element. Another great tip is to use up sizing to contrast the headline and make right content hierarchy. Of course these are only a couple of tips for creating effective typography elements in your designs, but we’re sure you get our main point – typography is a science. We are glad to offer you this small collection that consists of 10 Extremely Useful Typography Cheat Sheets for really inspiring design performance.
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