Fonts

Fonts and I go way back, back to where we only had copy machines and typewriters and I used to cut apart interesting magazine page titles in order to get at a particular font, that only they could print.

Then came computers, desktop publishing (remember that phrase?) and font bibles.  And suitcases.  And TrueType.  And other words that mean nothing to me, but are a way for me to get fonts.

I bought my first font disk probably 15 years ago and am still using some of those fonts still.  I just downloaded a few more free fonts from Font Squirrel, a website with a good amount of free fonts (the picture is a clipping from their Display Font category). 

In another life I would have been a graphic artist, with about as much employability as my current degree in writing.  But how incredibly cool to study fonts, maybe design a few, and play play play with fonts all day long.  I even read font blogs and subscribe to a newsletter.

Blogger has a few fonts, and a few more if a person wants to go into the guts of the machine.  All are dictated by how they look on the digital web, so the place where I can really go crazy is print.  I add interesting fonts to my church lessons (no one sees it but me).  My lesson plans for school are a riot of fonts as I use particular fonts to highlight various points in the lesson plans.

My students may love fonts as much as I, but they may not type with them, nor gussy up their titles in Comic Sans, or some Gothic number, for fonts are a private passion, best kept under wraps.