Not the people around you, this is just a reminder to beginning designers that there is a valuable source of ready-made scalable vector shapes and word designs available to drop into your designs for engraving purposes in the form of the lowly Dingbat.
(Got reminded of this when some of us were discussing fonts yesterday.)
Just a few examples of some cool things that you might want to incorporate into your designs…you can scale them up to any size you need:
Man, I love fonts. For anyone who is planning to make things commercially, remember most fonts are copyrighted, just like everything else. Even fonts that come with your computer and are ubiquitous, like Helvetica, Arial, and Times New Roman, are proprietary, so definitely take advantage of the resources @Jules posted - they’re great and outline the licensing.
If anyone wants to make their own fonts without the expensive software, fontstruct is an easy, basic web app. I’ve also used an app called iFontMaker (I think it’s $7 or something pretty cheap) that works well for more hand written or curvy fonts. They’re time consuming, but kind of relaxing. And you get faster when you start to realize repetitive shapes you can just copy and paste. Like, make n, and you have r, h, m, and u mostly made. Make p, and you have q, b, d, and maybe g done.
I was just looking at one site, and read the disclaimer:
All the dingbat fonts presented for download on DingbatDepot.com are generally free to use for any personal use, however, if you would like to use them in a commercial project please check the Readme file for usage rights in this regard.
Just be aware of that when downloading the free fonts.
Not the people around you, this is just a reminder to beginning designers that there is a valuable source of ready-made scalable vector shapes and word designs available to drop into your designs for engraving purposes in the form of the lowly Dingbat.
