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Scrapbook pages are works of art in their own right,
but differ greatly from advertisements or other works by graphic
designers in that in creating a scrapbook page we are preserving
treasures memories for generations to come. Most of us have been
faced with albums, boxes, piles of yellowing family photographs
– often with no annotation explaining the who’s and
why’s. In my opinion, no scrapbook page is complete without
words – at the very least a title, and a date, but hopefully
with journaling as well.
Once you start looking you will find that there
are uncountable numbers of fonts available – a number will
come already installed on your computer, graphics programs usually
come with more, on the internet there seems to be a never ending
supply, some free, some for purchase. Your choice of font, especially
for the title, will greatly influence the “feel” of
the page – fun, serious, romantic, nostalgia ……
As a scrapbooker, it is very acceptable to use a number of different
fonts on a page, care though must be taken with their choice, as
some tend to go together better than others. When choosing a journaling
font, take great care that it is easy to read – a very fancy
font in blocks is tiring on the eye.
Some favourite fonts are:
Bradley
Hand (Galapagos Design Work)
This is a lovely handwriting font, very easy to read, neat and attractive
– great for journaling.
Camelot
Caps (House of Lime)
This very elegant font is beautiful for the capital letters of a
title or monograms.
Century
Gothic (Monotype Classic Fonts)
This has recently become a great favourite of mine, fairly formal
& very classic, it is beautiful in a title or for journaling.
Dominican
(Harold’s Fonts)
Typewriter Fonts have a charm all of their own, and this is an extremely
charming font. With its old-world charm it is extremely good on
heritage pages, it is easy to read making it very suitable for journaling.
DSP
Curley Q Solid (Suzanne C Walker)
Curly Fonts add a great touch of playfulness, fun, funkiness &
whimsy to a layout –and this is one of the nicest. If you
use Photoshop, try adding a metal layer style to make wire looking
text.
DSP
Jamie (Suzanne C Walker)
Handwriting fonts always give a lovely handcrafted look to a layout,
doing it on the computer makes it so very much easier, make a mistake
and just press delete before printing! Even more special is having
your
own handwriting made into a font, the best of worlds, your own
handwriting and the ability to delete!
DSP
Old General Store (Suzanne C Walker)
This lovely font, probably most useful for titles, has wonderful
vintage charm, blending the old with the new in a delightful way;
it also works well on a funky style layout.
Earwig
Factory (Larabie Fonts)
This font is definitely in the category of fun fonts – I LOVE
using it to accent words in journaling – in this instance
use a very plain font like Century Gothic for the main journaling.
P22
Cezanne (P22)
This beautiful hand writing (modeled on that of the artist, Paul
Cézanne) has to be my top favourite font – it is beautiful
for titling, lovely used at low opacity as a background, for accent
words in journaling.
Penstyle
(IMSI MasterFonts)
A neat and attractive script is always useful,
a script like this works extremely well in a traditional layout,
can be used for titles or journaling.
Punch
Label
So often a scrapbook page needs a label, this
font will make a label for you, beautifully. Note: only use CAPITAL
LETTERS!
Scriptina
(Apostrophic Labs)
This beautiful script, with its generous and
graceful curves, is a favourite of many scrapbookers, makes wonderful
titles.
Stamp
Act (Harold’s Fonts)
No scrapbook font collection is complete without a good grungy,
stamped looking font – Stamp Act is a great titling font.
Stitch
& Bitch
This is a very useful font for pages where
stitching is used, to continue the theme It is very neat and attractive,
ideal for titles.
Times New Roman (The Monotype Corporation)
This beautiful font first appeared in 1932
in The Times of London newspaper, is in all probability already
loaded on your computer. Being a Serif font it combines best with
a sans serif (e.g. Century Gothic) as a companion
A few notes on fonts:
It is tempting to download everything you see, but learn to be choosy
– too many fonts installed, slow down your computer system
and in the end are not necessary – you will find favourites
that you keep coming back to anywy.
A font manager (The
Font Thing, is very easy to use, very reliable and free) makes
it much easier to keep choose & track of your fonts.
© Meryl Bartho July, 2006
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