[Image: Various font styles /Artwork: designslinger]

Read an interesting article today in Print magazine about people who design typefaces. It may be
hard to believe, but there are actual human beings who take the time to design the lettering you see everywhere. It doesn't just come out of a computer program. So, we thought - as an experiment - that we'd take our name and use four different fonts, so you'd be able to see how the type choices will change the look of designslinger.

[Font: TAG LET Plain /Artwork: designslinger]

The word font, type and typeface are often used interchangeably, which is not exactly correct.
A font is a complete alphabet compromised of a certain style and size (size is referred to as "point" size). Because of the computer, people are much more familiar with type styles and point sizes, and the computer has also resulted in a change in the strict definition of a font. It's pretty common today for a font to simply describe a certain style of lettering no matter its point size.

[Font: Snow Cap BT /Artwork: designslinger]

Computer usage has certainly made more of the general population aware of type styles.
I remember a time when fonts for graphic work were available on Letraset. Anyone else recall those days? You'd pick the font you wanted and Letraset provided you with an entire alphabet with the more popular letters repeated several times. The individual characters were stuck on to the back side of a very thin sheet of plastic vellum. You had to rub the top of the sheet to release the letter on to whatever surface you were using to layout your design. And, you did it letter by letter, line by line of copy. Now, you go to your computer and pull up a font and off you go!

We chose these four fonts from our font library. We haven't altered them in any way, but fonts are
altered quite often by users. Some designers have no problem with their fonts being altered beyond their original design, some don't like it because the scale is altered beyond recognition.

[Font: Sherry Regular /Artwork: designslinger]

Its a hard call when you've worked so hard designing something, only to find it used in ways you
certainly never imagined or intended. And, as the world becomes more and more accessible to more and more people, designers in all fields will find their work challenged by anyone with access to it.

[Font: Westwood LET Plain 1.0 /Artwork: designslinger]

So, what do you think? Are some of these fonts better than others, more suitable to the name
designslinger than others? Welcome to a very short exercise in graphic design.