When I'm kicking back with a cuppa extra-strength french roast and a Romeo y Julieta maduro it doesn't take much for the musings inside the chamber of chaos called my cranium to make their move. Let's take a moment to discuss fonts. Yes, that's right -- fonts. I'm a dyed-in-the-fur fontaholic. I like the look of 'em and what they do to add style, decor, and thematic clarity to a document or image. Why, even the title header of this here posting was created during an arduous, but ultimately rewarding process of trial and error. I don't want to reveal how many fonts I've got on my PhotoShop or Word drop down menu, but I can tell you that it's never enough.
Good examples of the kind of impact an imaginative font makes on a publication for instance, are the variety of wildly stylistic and evocative title designs that accompany monster magazines. The candle-drip design used for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and the rough and irregular lettering design for the title of Charlton's MAD MONSTERS are just two cases. These types of designs are what give our favorite monster 'zines their distinctive and unique identity.
Accordingly, I have experimented thus far with two or three title designs of my own. There's tons of free fonts to be had on the web. Google-ing "free fonts" will provide for you many hours of fun with what I call "going down the rabbit hole" in search of font treasure. For instance, one can easlily replicate the legendary and unmistakable FAMOUS MONSTERS font by using the "Misfits" font that can be found all over the place. I used that for my first title header.
The MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD heading at the top of this BlogSpot is a newly-released creation from one of the best fontographer studios on the planet -- and maybe in the universe -- COMICRAFT. I subscribe to their Font of the Month Club and thought that one of the pair of fonts offered this month, "Shiver" ("Shake" is the other one), might work to convey a certain introductory impression for the blog. A little tweaking in PhotoShop Elements and, voila! a new header was born. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it or not -- and I may even go back to one of the earlier ones -- but one thing I do know, I'm a sucker for a good font!
I like type out a word and then make an image of it, so that you can then distort, or use various filters, etc. to make unique designs.
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