I sit here typing on what is my fourth laptop. This one had a 3 year life (which is what I would expect) they have not all been so useful.
Every time I change machines I have to transfer documents, photos and music (less of a chore now that a large portion is backed up in the cloud). I also have a clean slate of installing programmes - I start with the ones I use regularly and my creative collection on disk (Serif WebPlus and PhotoPlus).
The thing I forget every time is the fonts. Over the years I have amassed quite the collection. The play-by-mail (play by email) football game I play SoccerStar had a fashion for teams having web pages; and this meant badges. I was the 'go to' badge maker... and the amount of fonts that I downloaded just for this purpose!
Then there is my own artwork; from TV show badges to random posters and inspirational quotes - more fonts required. My iPhone has a helpful app called 'What the Font' so all you meed to do is point, photograph and upload. It meant that when I was doing some promotional material at work I could (almost) match the typeface of our company logo.
Most work done by graphic designers uses professional fonts that cost money; happily there is a huge community of artists who make free fonts (some very similar to the professional fonts). My favourite sites are 1001 Free Fonts and Da Font
So this morning I have been going through the 1500+ files trying to work out which ones came with the computer and which ones are my 'finds'. I'm still annoyed that the first computer (which died) had some fonts that I never copied off including one based on my handwriting, can't find the site that did that for me now!
So the fonts folder has 200 more items than when I started... but now I have fonts like these - and Lucida Sans which I thought was a standard... and I didn't even have to add Comic Sans which still is a standard!
So this morning I have been going through the 1500+ files trying to work out which ones came with the computer and which ones are my 'finds'. I'm still annoyed that the first computer (which died) had some fonts that I never copied off including one based on my handwriting, can't find the site that did that for me now!
So the fonts folder has 200 more items than when I started... but now I have fonts like these - and Lucida Sans which I thought was a standard... and I didn't even have to add Comic Sans which still is a standard!
