and the font of... Teriyaki / You tell me / How does it make you feel?"
Opening with an Ani DiFranco quote makes me feel better about asking a favor of you, dear readers. I'm making good progress on diluvium, and I've been reading the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman for inspiration. Not for the mythic quality, but because the lettering is really, really well done. Each character has a font and a word bubble that really expresses the qualities of that character well. The Endless in particular just match well with their fonts (not that it's quite a font, since everything is hand-lettered, but you get the idea).
The major characters/concepts in diluvium are to have their own types. Making the decisions on which ones to use is both a matter of economy (I can't afford to go buying fonts just for this) and theme. I don't want to have to label each page with the name of the speaker, and using different fonts for each voice seems the best way to go about that. With that in mind, I'm asking for suggested fonts for the following qualities:
1. Someone who is uncertain of and rightly offended by the place given her in the world, therefore she laughs a little too meanly and too readily at that world. This character will eventually find a new place for herself, one that is self-directed instead of handed down.
2. Someone who charges ahead, at first in terms of a vision that means ignoring what's around, later in terms of immediate feelings at the expense of a lost vision. This character will eventually slow down enough to really observe both immediate surroundings and long-term vision.
3. A tentative pairing or compromise between 1 and 2.
4. An inhuman view of the world, translated for our benefit but ultimately on its own terms.
5. An all-too-human view of the world, translated for our benefit but ultimately on its own terms.
Suggestions? Should I show you fonts I have available to me for free?
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RJ Gibson | white noise :: something
9 hours ago
5 comments:
How I wish I were someone who could access in my brain many fonts and their personalities! All I can really picture off the top of my head are Times New Roman, Garamond, Arial, Courier, and, for some reason, Chiller. Looking at the drop-down menu in Word, the fonts that strike me as interesting are Minya Nouvelle, Earwig Factory, and Sybil Greene--but I'm not sure any of those would meet your needs....
Karin, thanks for the thoughts. Your ideas match up with ones I received from somebody on Facebook, so there is growing popular support for Times New Roman, Arial, and Chiller. I'll admit that these were not the first ones that came to mind for me, but I'm not writing this for me. I'm writing it to impact people who almost certainly haven't studied type but recognize that it affects them somehow. A tough project, in other words :-)
Jeff,
Here's a fun answer to your question: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/helvetica/quiz.html
You could fill it out in the persona of the folks you're trying to reach.
Pamela, that quiz is awesome. Awe-some. The questions are really off the wall when thinking about Noah or his wife (or the raven), so I'm having to ask myself about aspects of their personalities that definitely haven't come up before. It's an interesting mental exercise, to put a fictional character that I know pretty well into a situation like this. Thanks!
I didn't imagine it would be helpful, so I'm glad you liked it!
You're very welcome.
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