Put Character Into Your Words

While fonts are an important way to give your promotional materials character and distinction, providing graphics and art to it can provide that X-factor to your identity that makes it stand out from the rest.

One artist who is a favorite when it comes to providing illustrations and artwork is Michael Clark. According to an article, Clark is a calligrapher who gave up life as a banker and taught himself the art of lettering. Today he lectures on the subject at calligraphic societies and universities. He is also designing logos and titles for a long list of companies, book publishers and advertising agencies.

We don't need to become another Clark to design beautiful and attractive letters and words for our materials. Here are some steps to help us become almost expert calligraphers in our own right.

Anything in excess is bad for the health…

The key to using graphics in the text is to use it for a few words at most. Don't overuse by making an entire paragraph of graphic text, unless it's absolutely necessary.

As with the old adage, anything in excess is bad for your health. So does excessive amount of graphic text looks ridiculous and childish in your promotional materials. Do everything in moderation. It would also make your materials simpler and elegant, rather than garish.

Creating Graphic Text…

You don't have to be an artist to create graphic files. You just need the right software. There are several software available in the market today. Adobe has a complete suite that will help you design and provide beautiful artwork to your words.

There's this latest in the series of Alien Skin, Eye Candy 5: Nature. It's a set of plug-in filters for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Jasc Paint Shop Pro and Macromedia Fireworks. The program helps users simulate various phenomena in nature such as fire, smoke, rust, snow, ice, solar flares, halos, water drops and drips.

Measuring the size of character…

We need to realize that reading words that you could hardly discern because of its size won't help our cause. Size does matter. The remedy is to design flexibly so that anyone will be able to read what you have to say.

Leading the way…

One writer said that back in the days when type was made of little metal pieces, typesetters put rows of lead in between the lines of type. That has become passé nowadays. Nevertheless, leading is still important in creating your words.

To give your material readability factors, a little extra leading in between lines helps a lot. You could write your graphic text in such a way that readers will not be confused about the jumble of words that your text has become just because you did not provide leads.

Consistency…

Finally, your objective should be consistency in all your graphic text. When readers see something valuable and useful, you bet they'll come back for more. So try to create something that has character and meaning. Don't be like the blonde bombshell—beautiful outside but nothing inside.