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Experimenting with different fonts and font combinations to use in our design.

Quick reference

Exploration

Experimenting with different fonts and font combinations to use in our design.

When to use

After trying out a few primary fonts we can begin looking at fonts that we can use as a secondary typeface.

Instructions

  • Begin by opening the Exploration -Exercise.ai file
  • We have narrowed down our typefaces a bit and now have two that could serve as our primary font
  • Explore a few more fonts that can work with your primary font using the free resources Dafont or Font Squirrel
  • I have downloaded a few grungy typefaces that I think will work well with our design, but feel free to try some others
  • Grab your Text Tool (T) and click below your primary font
  • Use one of your new, secondary typefaces and type out the word 'Ragin' 
  • Hold down the Alt/Option + Shift Keys and drag down a copy before applying another typeface
  • As you continue to do this with a third, fourth, or fifth font, try to also elminate any that don't seem to work well
  • To get a better sense of how these fonts will work together, try placing one on top of the other, or directly above or below each other to see what they look and feel like as a combination
  • Try this out with each of your secondary fonts to see which combination works best
  • From here we will try and narrow it down so we end up with one primary font and one secondary font

Hints & tips

  • Finding good font combinations can take a bit of time. Try to have some fun when experimenting with different typefaces and remember that it's more about the feeling that you get from a typeface - if it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't.
  • When pairing up fonts it can be helpful to change the size or color to see how it changes the overall mood and vibe of the fonts.

 

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  • 00:05 So now that we have a couple of fonts here,
  • 00:07 a couple of type choices that we can use for our primary font,
  • 00:10 we wanna come up with another typeface that will work well with this.
  • 00:14 Or something that can at least provide some contrast or
  • 00:16 a little bit more visual interest.
  • 00:19 What I did is went ahead and revisited some of the free font resources that I was
  • 00:23 telling you guys about, such as DaFont, and
  • 00:25 I tried to download a couple of grungy and cool looking typefaces.
  • 00:31 So this first one that I grabbed is called Another America.
  • 00:34 So all I'm going to do is double-click in here.
  • 00:36 And by default, it just says Lorem Ipsum, which is basically just some dummy copy.
  • 00:40 Well, we're gonna go ahead and change this to Ragin,
  • 00:43 because we're gonna make a logo for the Ragin Bulls, all right?
  • 00:47 And then I'm gonna hold down the Alt+Option+Shift keys and
  • 00:50 drag down to make a copy.
  • 00:51 And then I'm going to change this to my second typeface,
  • 00:55 which is called Eclipse Demo.
  • 00:58 And I really like this one.
  • 00:59 I think this one looks a bit cooler than our first one.
  • 01:02 So let me go ahead and scrap that one.
  • 01:05 And then we have our third one, which is simply called Road Rage, all right?
  • 01:09 This is another nice grungy looking font that has some motion to it.
  • 01:14 It's a little bit skewed and on an angle, which kind of implies motion, right?
  • 01:19 It's all about the feeling that you get from using it.
  • 01:22 You'll see now that we basically have our secondary fonts,
  • 01:25 which were these two grungy ones down here.
  • 01:28 And it's pretty nice to sometimes get a sense of how these look when they interact
  • 01:32 with each other.
  • 01:33 So what I might do sometimes is grab a copy of it, again,
  • 01:36 by holding Alt+Option+Shift and just dragging it on top of our BULLS text.
  • 01:41 And then let's just go ahead and maybe sample some colors from our logo.
  • 01:45 And we can kinda see how this looks on top, and
  • 01:48 you get a sense of how it might interact and work with our other typeface here.
  • 01:53 So I can do the same thing with our first grungy font,
  • 01:57 which I believe was called Eclipse.
  • 02:00 And we can also see how that looks with a few of these colors here.
  • 02:06 Okay, and that will start to give you an idea of how these fonts can work together
  • 02:10 once we combine it with our logo.
  • 02:12 So I really like the way that the second one is looking here, the Road Rage font.
  • 02:16 So I think I'm going to use that.
  • 02:18 And let's just go ahead and delete the Eclipse typeface.
  • 02:22 And now I basically have my secondary font
  • 02:25 that I can use with either of these two typefaces.
  • 02:28 So we see how it looks with our second font here.
  • 02:31 And then let's just go ahead and duplicate that and put it on top of our first font.
  • 02:35 So from here, we just need to decide, do we wanna use our grungy font, Road Rage,
  • 02:40 with QUARTZO demo bold, or do we wanna use it with our built titling font?
  • 02:47 Well, in that case, I think it could be a little bit of a tough decision here.
  • 02:51 But I think that the second font is a little bit more interesting,
  • 02:55 a little bit more heavy and just kinda fits the personality a bit more.
  • 02:59 Although I do tend to favor these kind condensed fonts,
  • 03:02 I don't know that I want this tall, squished lettering for our logo.
  • 03:07 So I'm gonna have to make a executive decision on that one guys, but
  • 03:10 feel free to use any typefaces that you want.
  • 03:12 But for me, I'm going to go with these two.
  • 03:15 So we now have our primary and our secondary font,
  • 03:17 and we can begin treating these to create a nice and interesting lock up.

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