Font Fetish

[Furious]

See these are the dumb things I worry about: FONTS

You can't have too many differnt fonts styles in a project (even if
they're in the same family like bold, condensed, italicized etc) or
the item become impossible to read. PLUS, the font needs to be small
enough to fit all the information yet still be legible, even on
colored backgrounds.

Serfied fonts will be too mess y for the small fonts...

Hrm... I have a feeling I'll be firing up photoshop tonight...

[Furious]

While I'm waiting for a mock palying card template to download, here's
what a font from Photoshop looks like (see fontexample1.jpg in Files)

Photoshop isn't the perfect page layout program - that goes to Quark
and InDesign - but most printshops should be able to read the PSD
format. Unless there's a demand to see the .psd versions of files, I'm
converting them (for display purposes here) to .jpg with minimal
compression. Files are at 300dpi, so things will appear larger than on
a 72dpi screen
.

As you can see in example 1, there's not too much difference in
Photoshop's font enhancements when the font is at 10pts (or smaller),
yet there is an improvement over the raw font.

Next I'll compare complex font enhancement that we're familiar with.

Oh, there's like 2 or 3 names for every popular font. I'm using the
fonts and names that shipped with Photoshop CS2.

[Furious]

(fontexample2.jpg)

Note that the tiniest changes even in a vaniila font like Arial
changes the personality of the text.

Basic font guidelines. Very small text, are san serif (no feet like
Arial) while mid-size text such as book type can be serif (footed like
Century Schoolbook or Times New Roman). Large text sizes can be either
or, depending on the effect you want.

More or less we may need to use a san serif font to place large
amounts of texts on a playing card. Serifed fonts can be easier to
read, especially on colored backgrounds, but they need to be larger.
Usually a 6pt font is about as small as you can go without driving the
reader crazy.

My psd card template downloaded so I'll play with it next.

[Furious]

Hrm. The template I downloaded wasn't quite what I was looking for.
SInce the final images are going to be relatively small, I would much
rather deal with a canvas of a small size with high resolution than
large size with a lower resoultion.

A 72dpi 19"x28" playing card image will most likely look awful when
converted to a 300dpi 63 mm × 88 mm ( 2½" × 3½" - B8 size). Photos may
be more forgiving but drawn art will take a hit. Think of trying to
read a world map the size of a playing card and you get what I'm
talking about.

Let's see if I can salvage the template...

[Furious]

By converting the template to 300dpi B8 size I also reduced the
template file size from 15MB to 5MB which will make things much easier
for file transfer and hopefully will be less headaches when it's time
to go to the print shop. The template will be significantly smaller
when used on a card-by-card basis.

The template has all the corner numbers and denominations (which we
may not use, but at least we'll know where to put our own data). The
template corners are square, but that's no biggie.

Let me goof around with fonts on a card...

[Furious]

Heh. When Photoshop uses 3.2GB of ram in a 4GB system, it will blow
up!

(font card.jpg)

But at least I got a screen capture off before it crashed. If you
minimize the pic so the card is visually a B8 size on your screen, you
can judge the legibility of some of simple fonts.

This big things to note here is the readability of the fonts and the
fact that textures and colors - like that blue and white field- will
reduce that readability.

[Babylonthebride]

I like Segoe, it looks silly, like it should. :D
Arial would be good as a header, too, it looks more no-nonsense,
though.
For the fine print we will definitely need a non-contrasty background.

[Smaug]

i just need to say, if anyone suggests comics sans they will recieve
the modhammer of doom!

[JP]

Is there a reason we couldn't use a slightly larger card, say like a
tarot card? This site here has plain printable cards that measure
2.75 x 4.75, that would give us more space.

http://www.plaincards.com/Store/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=59&cat=Blank+Tarot+and+Flash+Cards

[Count St.Pierre]

I like Segoe too. We could easily divide the cards so the important
text is on a background that doesn't impede reading.

[Furious]

There's no reason why we couldn't make a larger tarot-sized deck,
however there could be complications that we need to consider:

1) The larger the (scale of the) card, the more difficult it will be
to hold multiple cards in your hand, unless you have taloned
basketball-palmers like I do.

2) While a good card print shop should be able to print any dimension
card we wish, the only two 'standard' game card sizes are B8 and the
slightly thinner bridge size. Deviation from the norm will require us
to make sure our chosen printer can accomodate us, preferably without
any extra cost.

I can adjust the template to any card size, that's not an issue, but
the size needs to be decided before we get too deep into card art and
text.

[Melanie]

Question:
Will we able to print the back of the card as well?

[Furious]

> Will we able to print the back of the card as well?

Yes. And some sort of protective varnish/gloss to coat the cards would
be a good idea.

(textncolor.jpg)

Basic testing of fonts on color and texture. *shrugs*

Files that I'm posting (at least the really unecessary ones) will be
deleted when storage space gets tight.

[Furious]

(webigram.jpg)

VERY rough draft of an ambigram of something we know

IF this is an idea that we like for some sort of logo, I'll work on it
more, but doing this made my head hurt. :p

[Furious]

(webigram2.jpg)

A true ambigram and not just a mirror image like the first one. Needs
a lil' work on the 'ld' in the middle, but now I can emulate any style
that I want (maybe having to *shudder* hand draw it).

It's sloppy because I'm drawing with a mouse *shrugs*, but other than
that, could we use it?

[Smaug]

i think i'd like to see something like that, but with balloons rather
than words

like the joker on a pack of cards!

or balloons and words!

[Melanie]

Yeah, I'm envisioning a ballooney design with Other Stuff In! Can we do that?

2010/2/15 Smaug <smaug...@gmail.com>:

[Melanie]

That's to say, we'll come up with the design, I just want to know if
we can use that rather than words...

2010/2/15 Melanie <babylon...@gmail.com>:

[Furious]

Adding balloons would be much easier, since I know where to put the
lines now. In fact balloons + balloon strings would add a kiss of an
alternate color and help camoflauge parts of the ambigram that are a
bit weak (weak as I, aka Captain Picky, see it).

The two styles that come to mind for this ambigram are either a
curlicue calligraphy, or (even better if the game's theme is
leatherbound books) a style slightly more decorative than The
Nightmare Before Christmas font (#90 on http://www.typenow.net/themed.htm).

Without a graphics tablet, I'll have to quickly re-learn the Photoshop
pen tool or draw it by hand.

[Furious]

(webigram3.jpg)

Looking much better, but I'm not completely happy with the middle yet.

[Artguy Chuck]

WOW Furi! that is looking TIGHT!!! You are good! Keep it up man!!

[Furious]

Thanks!

(webigram4a.jpg)

Slowly working out the problem area... then I need to tilt and align
everything...

[Count St.Pierre]

Not much to offer here, other than I really like the direction your
webigram is taking.

[Furious]

(webigram5h.jpg - older drafts deleted to make it look easy :p)

HAH! I'm onto something! Needs more polish and balancing, but HAH!

hah

[JP]

I agree, you are on to something. It's a tad more difficult for me to
discern than the last version was, but I do like it, I really like the
style and direction it's heading.

[JP]

WHT?! I'm really starting to get annoyed here, this thing is eating my
posts. So, I was saying, I agree I really like the direction this is
going. This one seems a bit more difficult for me to discern than the
last version, but stylistically I think it's better and just love the
overall shape of it. Good job.

On Feb 17, 12:12 am, Furious <enscott1...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Furious]

Thanks JP. I completely changed the shapes of the letters R L D S to
make it fit together better. Now I have to improve the ambigram's
balance (angles of letters, line weight, letter spacing). Also need
to re-do the apostrophe. Yuk.

[Furious]

On Feb 17, 8:35 am, JP <jed...@gmail.com> wrote:
>... this thing is eating my
> posts.

JP I've changed your account authorization from Default Allow to
Override Allow. Even with this, it seems the Group won't immediately
show your post unless you go up a level (like to Discussions or Home)
and then back in. If there's still problems, PM me on the Board.

[Furious]

(webigram6.jpg)

I think the adjusted spacing and extra pen swoosh helps things. Not
sure what to do about the apostrophe yet, but it sort of fits... hmf.

[weeble]

(what am I doing wrong that I can't see the .jpg's you are posting?)

[JP]

Over on the right is the Home, Discussions, Members, Pages and *FILES*
list...

[Furious]

> (what am I doing wrong that I can't see the .jpg's you are posting?)

> > (webigram6.jpg)
>

This Group has a lot less functionality than I expected. I'm fairly
certain that hotlinks don't work, so go over to the Files option on
the right side of the Group Page and see them there.

[JP]

Funny you should say that, I'm also quite unimpressed with the Google
Group features ... but it'll suit for now...

[Furious]

*snorts*

$550/share stock value for this? O.o

(webigram8.jpg)

And this is the last polishing of the WE ambigram until we find a
place for it. I still see glitches but it's time to step away from it
for a while.

[JP]

I got to play around with a few Fluxx decks last week and found out
they were the regular playing card size, or maybe even the smaller
playing card size. I was surprised, I thought they were bigger
*shrug* So, I say keep on designing with a standard size in mind,
whatever that is. We'll make it work.

[Furious]

I'd think using the standard B8 or bridge sizes would also give us
more options in packaging the decks, like customized boxes or
cellophane wrap or clamshell cases or whatever.

[Chuck Hues]

*~blinks.
***~Flinches a few times and realizes that "THIS THING WORKS!!!"- - -

I finally found it again!
-I lost the computer - and many MANY links, <---Short memory span-  bad combo.

Smaugy is going to splain some Boardian background to me and I'll get some sketches tossed to the side
to get some action started. -The biggest festival of the year is next week and it BEGINS Festival season-
but, I'll find a few moments to do something to bump the project.,

I hope that you are alive and well.
I haven't seen you in ages it seems.
I be missing you!

-----PLEASE WRITE TO MY REGULAR EMAIL so that I won't lose track again!!!
I never use Gmail unless we're active here.

My email is:
art...@seehuesarts.com

Cheers Furi!!!

~chuck