I’m Ange, a graphic designer who’s been designing for over 15 years.

I thought it’d be fun to create a newsletter on fonts and other designery* things. There are so many font libraries and resources out there. This newsletter will highlight a font that I’ve liked or discovered that you might find useful in your projects. I’ll also share any resources I’ve found.

I have much respect for font designers. I need them to make my designs sing, to get messages out there. We have fonts with different shapes. Tall, thin, rounded, handwriting, graffiti style. Any font you think of, it’s out there. Or you can design your own, but that’s a subject for another newsletter.

I searched on a few different sites looking for fonts to jazz up my brand and website. I found a few that I liked but it also got me thinking. There are 1000’s out there and it’s difficult to choose.

But you know what was on my website and on my all my headers before? Plain black Lato font that says LYONS CREATIVE.

Does that look creative to you?

Nope!

In fairness to myself this was a placeholder until I got my act together. But that placeholder was there for over 2 years!

But going back to Lato.

Lato is a free font on Google. If you scroll down on Google fonts you can find out about the font and the designer. I’d never scrolled down that far in the past. Have a look later.

The word Lato means Summer in Polish. The font was designed by Łukasz Dziedzic based in Warsaw.

I’m not knocking Lato at all. It’s my most used go-to for publications. It fits in with a corporate brochure as well as magazines. As the designer says:

“The semi-rounded details of the letters give Lato a feeling of warmth, while the strong structure provides stability and seriousness. Male and female, serious but friendly. With the feeling of the Summer”.

Isn’t that lovely?

But as a designer, I wanted something with more colour and personality…

So, here is my new logo, using Goku Stencil Regular typeface for ‘Lyons’ and the Montserrat light typeface for CREATIVE:

I design lots of reports and infographics. Icons are always helpful when photography or words aren’t suitable. A site I came across recently is:

Icon Scout

Few clients have the budget for bespoke illustrations, sadly. So, as well as image searching, I have to use stock illustrations. It is getting so much better as creatives monetise their products.

Over the last few years. A lot of clients ask to change the colour of skin in these illustrations, but other considerations are needed, like the hair and clothes.

Check out this site for diverse illustrations for your next project:

Black Illustrations

Thanks for subscribing and for your reward I’m leaving you with a joke:

Comic Sans walks into a bar,
…bartender says, 'Sorry, we don't serve your type.'

Ahh the oldies are the best (I can see you rolling your eyes).

Until next time. If you have any thoughts, please reply as I’d love to hear from you!

Have a lovely day! 🌈