Comments on: Finding Your Signature Font

By: Graham Jupp

Graham Jupp — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:02:59 +0000

I run a couple of DIY font creation sites that you guys might be interested in. If you make your own font you wont have any issues with copyright and you’ll have something that is unique.

http://www.fontgrinder.com is for creating complete handwriting fonts in around 15 minutes.

http://www.bingdat.com is ideal for Dingbat fonts and Signature Fonts. You can also use Bingdat to create a Drop Cap font. Hope you guys find the sites useful.

Cheers from Australia.

Graham

By: Lauren

Lauren — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:50:58 +0000

Hi Adele – That’s a great question, with a really complex answer. It depends on your target audience, your brand, the types of marketing materials you’re going to be producing, and many other factors. At the risk of sounding pat, I’d suggest you pick up a copy of our book (at the library, if you don’t want to buy it) and read the marketing section — particularly chapters 5 & 6. We don’t talk specifically about fonts but we do talk about things to consider when having a logo designed.

The other thing I would say is that the two mistakes I see people make vis-a-vis fonts are: 1) Choosing a font that looks great but isn’t legible (especially at small sizes — you definitely want your logo to look great and be readable, even when it’s tiny); and 2) following type trends and ending up with a logo that looks dated in five years or less. I’d advise avoiding the cool font that everyone’s using these days, unless your brand is incredibly trend-conscious.

By: Adele

Adele — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:08:36 +0000

Your advice is quite useful as far as it goes, (sorry about this) BUT, I was really hoping you would go one stpe further and give some advice about how to actually choose the right font – once you see the options, was is a good criteria for actually picking the right one?

By: Daniel Braha

Daniel Braha — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:02:09 +0000

You have a great way of making it all so easy! Thanks

By: Lauren

Lauren — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:49:24 +0000

Hi, Lori Ann: I’m no lawyer, but as far as I know, copyright for typefaces only prevents you from distributing the font itself, not from creating works with it. So as I understand it, logos, books, cards, or anything you create with a font should not incur any further costs beyond the initial purchase cost of the font.

Usually the licensing fees for fonts restrict their use to a set number of computers (typically a maximum of five). One thing to consider is that if you’re designing your company logo with a particular font, you may want to use that font in other contexts (e.g. text headings in any documents you produce, like invoices, proposals, etc.), so I would suggest you purchase enough licenses so that everyone in your company (as well as any consultants who might need copies of the font, such as graphic and/or web designers) can have it installed on their computers.

Hope this helps — and if anyone has further information to add, or corrections to my comments, please post them here.

By: Lori Ann

Lori Ann — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:32:19 +0000

Someone asked me if there are any copyright issues with using a font, whether free or bought, and making it into a company logo. I have no idea. Do you have to ask for permission?

Thanks for the post! I just stumbled this site.

By: sarahelizabeth

sarahelizabeth — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:30:33 +0000

Wow this is great information!! thanks so much

By: Lauren

Lauren — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:09:20 +0000

Ooh, fun! Thanks, daisy janie. :)

By: daisy janie / scoutie girl

daisy janie / scoutie girl — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:57:34 +0000

I know you have a cajillion ideas left out for this concise how-to, but I wanted to add http://www.fontifier.com. Here, you can create a font based on your own handwriting. Very cool. I played around with fonts til I couldn’t see straight, and finally wrote my biz name on a piece of paper, scanned it and vectorized it in Illustrator. Just the look I was going for.

Great, great post here!!!