Fonts How-Tos

The Merits of Uneven Leading

Just because your page-layout program says your leading is consistent doesn’t necessarily mean it looks that way. Here’s how to spot the problem and how to fix it.

Five Tips for Choosing the Best Webfonts

Learn how to evaluate typeface readability, legibility, optimization, character set, and weight and thickness variety when choosing fonts for a website. Plus, I'll throw in a bonus tip!

Get to Know InDesign's Glyphs Panel

Some people never even open InDesign's Glyphs panel, and that's a shame. It can reveal alternate characters in your typefaces; help you quickly select and enter unusual characters, such as currency or math symbols; and find and change glyphs instantly no matter how long your document is.

Spacing Out

Exaggerated spacing between characters may be eye-catching, but controlling it can be a tricky business. Here's how to do it in InDesign and QuarkXPress.

The Seven Lively Sins: Try These InDesign Type Effects

Some people think it’s a sin to alter a typeface. But I say that, used with skill and discretion, InDesign's transparency effects can make your type more lively.

What You Need to Know About Webfonts: Part 2

Don't limit your web designs to the same five fonts everyone has on their systems. Part 1 of this series introduced you to @font-face basics. Part 2 will steer you through webfonts' legal complexities so you can get the best fonts for your sites while staying on the right side of the law.

Type Effects: The Ins and Outs of Inlines and Outlines

Adding rules to normally invisible character outlines can add novel--and historical--effects to your type. Here's how to do it in InDesign, QuarkXPress, and Illustrator.

What You Need to Know About Webfonts: Part 1

Are you still limiting text in your websites to Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, and Verdana? (And no, fonts in images don't count.) Learn how to use webfonts and your Web design horizons will open to a beautiful new world. In Part 1 of this series, you'll get a little history and an introduction to writing the @font-face rule so that all browsers display your font choices correctly.

Five Healthy Habits in InDesign

Adopt these InDesign habits and you'll work smarter and faster. We've made it easy by providing five free downloads that give you a running start on each habit.

Track Down Obscure Glyphs in InDesign

There are many characters that don't appear on standard keyboards. Here's how to enter those hard-to-reach glyphs in Adobe InDesign.

Kerning: A Master Class

Five tips from the trenches for the devotee of hand-kerning. Take this advice and you'll have a visually harmonious page that will please the designer's eyes and be easier for the reader to comprehend.

Centering Lines of Type? Don't Trust Page-Layout Software

A print ad shows that centered lines don’t always look that way. Learn the source of the problem and the fix.

QuarkXPress Tips for Type, Pages, & Paths

Learn how to replace fonts across a QuarkXPress document; give editable text a fuzzy edge; flip a Bezier path from top to bottom; and start a file with a spread.

The Joy of Ornaments

Create your own typographic ornaments and decorative rules to use in many designs.

Photoshop How-To: Really Hot Type

Through the magic of Photoshop, make any text so smokin' you can almost see the heat rising off its molten letters. Bonus: You can go back and edit the type without burning your fingers.

Take Advantage of InDesign's Nesting Instinct

Using InDesign's nested styles isn’t only time-saving, it’s habit-forming.

Photoshop How-To: Turn Type Into Gold

Go for the gold inside Photoshop! Follow along with this video how-to and you'll end up with metallic type that looks much more realistic than the results of many other tutorials, yet is easy and fast to create.

Turn Text to Ice in Photoshop

Create your own typecicle with a combo of Photoshop's wind filter and some layer effects. Because it's done through smart objects, you can change the text at any point.

Shifty Behavior

Raising and lowering individual characters is the job of the baseline shift, an important part of your typographic toolbox with a thousand uses.

Dot Dot Dot . . .

Spellbinding . . . Subtle . . . Mind-Boggling! They're points of ellipsis, and here's how to make them pretty.