If you’ve run into me at Asmbly, you’ve probably heard me talking about the box I’m planning to make to propose to my partner. I’m trying to nail down the last details and I’m satisfied with almost every part of my design except the font (and the thread color)! I don’t have a strong eye for fonts, but my beloved does, so I’d be grateful if someone here also does and can provide opinions.
Here’s my latest render with the front-runner font in place:
I am deeply unsure of this font! My hopes for a font would be that it:
Be Legible! And thick enough to show up as relief in embroidery on silk
Have consistent letter sizing, kerning, and baselines
Feel intentional and fit for purpose. This makes me lean towards a cursive-style font, but then I get nervous they are cheesy, theme-y, or trying to be my own handwriting. However, when I try a regular serif it feels very impersonal.
Am I hitting the mark here? If not, does anyone have a font they love for romantic designs or advice on how to find one?
Less of a specific font suggestion, more of a sneaky way to go around finding one:
If you know of a font that your partner likes – maybe from a favourite book, poster, etc. – you can do a reverse lookup using one of these sites:
Simply take a picture and upload it to the site, then follow their instructions on cropping the photo etc. The sites will then suggest which fonts look closest, usually with a download link. Some of the resulting fonts are free for personal use, others require a license (but searching for “fontname equivalent” usually produces an off-brand but free version).
Hi there, what you have a good start. I laid out all the ones that might remotely work for this, the font name is on there too in white. This should be an easier time to compare them. All of the fonts are free and most if not all are from the Adobe font library.
Things to note:
• some script fonts might have issues fitting inside the ribbon(the “y” in ways), and being they’re scripts you can’t use all caps, to fit them you’ll have to make them smaller.
• I’m sure you know this already, but I’d do a test embroidery on the ribbon first, depending on the width of the ribbon and how thin the embroidery comes out they might look different from the mockup.
• In general, I would pair a script for the text with a cleaner font for the number, or vice versa, that way you have a bit of variety so the design doesn’t get stale.
• Not sure if dark purple is what you plan to use for the embroidery, but I’d recommend a lighter color for so the text pops more, easier to read, gold might work.
I love this thread — love typography, love the suggestions already given, and love love!
On the note of “how to find a good font”, one thing I love to do is use the preview text field in dafont’s browsing to be able to immediately see what my text would look like with each font. That makes it a lot easier to compare them before downloading so browsing goes more quickly. Here’s a search in Script>Calligraphy with your text and numbers — Script > Calligraphy fonts | dafont.com
I love @OctopusDream’s advice of using a different font for the numbers. One thing that I would recommend for the font you choose for the text is to go with a scripted one that is italicized like Sheila in Alex’s mockup. I think the italicizing will pair nicely with the flow of the ribbon and to me feels more romantic. For the numbers, a non-italicized font would be best.
I really like that Sheila font in @OctopusDream’s rendering for a few reasons:
It’s modern and doesn’t have an old timey feel to it like scripted fonts with lots of curls sometimes do.
It’s legible while also having a little bit of drama to it with the lowercase letters being very small in comparison to the capital letters.
Overall, I would call that font modern, whimsical and romantic.
Guidance on selecting the right font for your partner:
Do they like drama? If so, the Sheila font @OctopusDream suggested is great.
Are they into medieval stuff? If so, scripted fonts with more tails like Tangerine in @OctopusDream’s rendering work well.
At the end of the day, your partner is going to be thrilled and love what you made for them. Even more so, they are going to love hearing the story of your process and how you went about making decisions. Whatever you land on, be sure to save info/pics/test pieces for everything you do in the process. If they are at all sentimental, they will really cherish hearing about it all and seeing what you went through to come to the final piece.
@OctopusDream I really appreciate the time you took on this! It’s so helpful to see them all side by side. The plan is actually that the lighter purple is the embroidery, so the letters are a not-embroidered area of the main fabric. Definitely going to do some tests.
Really helpful way to think about it. Thank you. My partner likes visual drama for sure.
A very helpful reminder. thank you.
Thanks so, so much everyone for your super thorough and helpful suggestions! Really great tips here for finding and thinking about good fonts that I will definitely be using for many projects in the future.
Seeing all these other font suggestions, and also maybe half of all the fonts on the entire internet, I think it turns out I’m really liking the font I chose for the letters. I did hate the numbers and agree with everyone that they should not be italic. So I’ve replaced that font with something more straightforward.
So I think I’ve landed here and am pretty happy. I know the contrast between my two colors is kind of low, but I’m picturing a kind of tone-on-tone situation because I want it to be beautiful and visible at arms length, but in the end I want the rings inside it to be the stars of the show.
I ended up doing laser burnout instead of embroidery, which helped me get the detailed look I wanted in the end. You can see how the whole project turned out here: Ring Box
