Adding journaling to your pages always makes it more meaningful and special, and one of the best ways to make your pages more personal is to choose fonts that reflect the style or theme you have chosen. In this tutorial we’ll talk about some of our favorite places to find them, installing them on your computer and other tips for choosing fonts for your layouts.
What is a Font?
Most people are familiar with fonts, but for those who may be just getting started, a font is basically type software installed on your computer that makes text show up so you can write words, add the date, or share your story on your pages. Most computers come with a number of fonts already, but most of us who have been digi-scrapping for some time soon find ourselves ready for new ones before too long!
Where Do You Get Fonts?
There are a number of sites that offer free fonts you can use, as well as those that offer paid commercial versions as well. The good news is there are literally thousands of free ones available, so most of them can be obtained for no cost whatsoever. You simply visit the site, choose the ones you want to download and install them.
Here are a few of our favorite sites for discovering new free fonts:
MyFonts: This site specializes in paid commercial fonts, but they also have a huge collection of free samples and other free fonts to browse as well. Check our Ray Larabie especially for over 200 free typefaces to choose from!
FontSquirrel: This is another site that offers a wide variety of free commercial use fonts available for download. We especially like their selection of display fonts for page titles.
FontSpace: FontSpace offers a number of freeware fonts and has every theme and type imaginable. This site especially has a lot of good fonts for titles and journaling.
Google Fonts: While these fonts were developed for the web, Google’s font collection can also be installed on your computer to use in your favorite digital scrapbooking software programs. There’s a number of great handwriting fonts to choose from as well.
What Makes for Good Scrapbooking Fonts?
One of the most important things to remember when downloading and installing fonts is that quality counts. Not all fonts are created equal, so you’ll want to make sure you think about these things as well:
Legibility: This one of course is the most important. You’ll want to make sure that your fonts can easily be read so that it makes your pages not only more attractive but easy to view by others as well. This is especially important if you’ll be sharing the pages with others who might depend on the text for information about the photos on your layout.
Consistency: It’s also important that all of the letters in the typeface match with one another. Each letter should be in proportion with the rest, and ideally there shouldn’t be many letters that appear different or out of place when typing your text.
Versatility: With thousands of fonts to choose from, it’s easy to want to use them all! But, loading too many fonts often can slow down most computers, so for that reason it’s best to stick with ones you know you’ll use again and again instead of those that might only be suitable for a couple of projects.
Licensing: Another very impportant factor to take into consideration is the licensing for the font. Since fonts are technically software programs, you’ll want to make sure that you read the terms of use before downloading, depending on what you are creating.
How to Install Digital Scrapbooking Fonts
Installing fonts on your computer has never been easier. Generally you will need to first download the file and then extract it since they are generally in .zip file formats. (See our tutorial on how to open zip files here).
Once the file is extracted, you just need to install it. In Windows Vista and Windows 7, this is as simple as left clicking on it and selecting “Install” from the drop down menu.
After that, you should see your new fonts appear when you go to type your text on your layouts.
Have any questions about using fonts for digital scrapbooking? Feel free to leave them in the comments section below.
