Step 7 - Working With Type Part 1 - Selecting Typefaces

So much can be said about typography - it's really the core of design. In the early days of printing, much of design was completely type-based - and you can still do an all-type cover and make it interesting. But for now, we're going to use type to create our book title, a subtitle of some sort, and our author's name.

Here's the current layout, sans type:

Kinda looks like it's missing some critical information.

Let's add the book title first - which, if you don't recall, was the randomly generated "Broken By the Black Smoke". And I decided that it's a historical mystery novel that takes place during the Salem Witch Trials. I did this to give myself some boundaries - otherwise, I could do pretty much anything with a pretend book project like this and justify it. That wouldn't be fair, though.

I'm going to put my title in that black space at the top. And since my title is five words long, I know it won't fit all on one line. Even if I used a condensed font (one that's more narrow than a typical font), there would be too much black space above and below the title.

So I'm going to stack the title. Now, you've probably heard that it's good not to use more than two or three typefaces in a layout. I don't believe there are any hard and fast rules, but I will say that I agree with that general guideline.

And because my title has the shorter, less important words "By the", I'm going to try to make them smaller than the other three words. Maybe I'll knock them out of another shape, which just means reversing the text and making it black on some other background.

I'll start out using all caps, too. Upper and lowercase, or even all lowercase, can work, but that might not give me the power I need for a cover like this. Also, working with upper and lowercase letters will leave more empty space, and that might be harder to work with. SO CAPS LOCK IS GOING ON FOR NOW.

I click on that big black A icon in the Toolbox and that brings up the Text Tool. Then I click and hold near the top of my black space, then drag and release, to define a text box for the first word, "BROKEN". Don't worry about getting the position perfect - we can modify it later.

Sans is the default typeface. Serifs are the little ends on letters that some typefaces use. Some serifs are thin and straight, some have a bit of a curve to them, and some are very thick (this is starting to sound like a picture book).

Now I type the word "BROKEN" into the text box (which was already selected). I see a tiny orangey-yellow cursor moving, but I don't see text. This is because our default text size, 18 pixels, is tiny compared to our nice big, high-resolution layout. So that's a good thing.

Also, our default text color is black, so we can't see it anyway. To change it, click in the box and drag from the middle to the left to select that invisible text (you can also always use the key shortcut Control- or Command-A).

With that text selected, I click on the black color swatch, which brings up a color palette.

I click in that color field and drag to the lower right to get white. And I am going to recommend that you stick with white (if your layout looks like mine with the text going onto dark shapes) or black (if you went with a white or lighter background). Color can work, but let's get everything else looking good before we play with that.

I click in the font size box, add a 0 making the font size 180 pixels, and hit enter. Now we're working with a reasonably sized block of type:

That orangey-yellow seems to be GIMP's interface color of choice. If you want to see it unaltered at any point, click after the last letter - though you'll have to highlight the text again to work with it.

Okay, so I now have this:

And there's no world in which a san serif typeface with rounded ends - cute as it might be for something like a children's book cover - is going to work for a witch-related mystery novel. So I need to pick something else.

I've been designing for over twenty years, so I have a lot of fonts on my system. If you're not a designer, you probably have a small selection. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there's a lot to be said for working within limitations and using a classic face. However, most people use those default faces, so our cover can look generic if we don't find something distinctive and appropriate.

I'm going to dig through my font collection - but I won't do so blindly. Just randomly checking out every font can be fun, but going in without a purpose can wear down your sensibilities, making you think, "Oh that looks good. Oh no - that one looks better!" until you lose all sense of what you're trying to accomplish.

So I'm looking for a bold typeface, probably sans serif, possibly with a distressed, weathered, or aged look to it. If I can't find something like that, I can look for a font that meets those needs. Or I can try to give the final text an aged look in some other way. For now, I'll see what I already have that might work.

By the way, if you're looking for free fonts, there are plenty of sites that offer them. HOWEVER, some of those sites spread viruses! Sorry to scare you, but it's true. Here's a hint - if there are a dozen blinking banners on the page that slow down loading, it's probably bad. Try a site like 1001 Free Fonts. They're legit and you can even type some sample text to see it in a bunch of typefaces before you download the fonts.

Moving on: I just noticed that an additional Text menu appeared under the toolbox. Unlike the Text menu that appears above the text box, this one has a dropdown to select the font. So I highlight the text in my box, then move to this new Text menu and click on the Aa icon to drop down and select some fonts.

This is where things get fun. Type, when done correctly, can express your concept better than an image. The right typeface will subliminally reinforce what you're trying to communicate - and the "wrong" one (in scare quotes because it's hard to say that any design decision is definitively wrong) will work against you.

So here are some of my contenders. I want to find a range of typefaces that might work, but not so many that I muddy my decision process.

First contender - a distressed typeface named Sans Culottes:

I like it already. It's got bold, consistent line weights so I know it will be readable, even at a small size. But it's not just a bunch of big block letters - the distressed texture looks natural and gives it character.

How about another? A weird face named, cryptically, 4990810. Not too different from Sans Culottes, but the characters look a little warped, and they're not all on the same baseline (meaning they go up and down a little):

Blackwood Castle is nice in general, but it may be hard to read (especially small) and I'm not sure I like the spacing of the letters when it's all caps. Still, it may work:

Here's a handwritten script font named Bolide MF. I don't think it will work for "BROKEN" - script fonts don't usually look good in all caps - but now I think this may be ideal for "BY THE".

Zombie is cool - but probably a little too over-the-top for my concept:

Bride of the Monster (love that name):

Blackbeard:

And finally, Brothers Bold:

And I'm going to stop right there. I like Brothers Bold a lot for this word. The lines are thick, it has character, it fits together well. Not necessarily what I was looking for - it may not be totally period or spooky - but it has a classic look that suggests, to me, something old. I'm going to use it.

I have my font - but I want to use it again for "BLACK SMOKE". And I don't want to try to hit a carriage return and add those words inside the same text box - that will make positioning both lines difficult.

You could make a new text box and change all the settings to match what you already had, but that's unnecessary work and possibly errors. So instead, I right-click on the layer and Duplicate Layer:

That gives me another layer exactly like my existing "BROKEN" text - and it's directly on top, so you can't see it. I click the Move tool from the Toolbox, then click and hold on the "BROKEN" text and drag it down and to the right a little:

Then I click inside that box and change it to "BLACK SMOKE". Initially I selected all the text and typed the new text, but strangely, GIMP defaulted to its original tiny typeface and small size. Another ding against the GIMP interface. Hey - it is free. So instead, I typed my new text after the existing text, then deleted the existing text. Don't make me do extra work like that again, GIMP!

I think it's starting to look darn good. I make a new text box and type "BY THE" in the typeface I discovered earlier, Bolide MF (two typefaces that start with B in the same book cover? people are gonna talk!):

Incidentally, I temporarily selected my Black Cover layer so that the outline from my text boxes would disappear, letting me see the layout more clearly.

You know - I think that's pretty sweet. There's some tweaking to do, but I like what we have so far. So let's leave it there for now and the next step will be Working With Type Part 2 - Adjusting Text.