FFF Fonts for Business Cards?

talk design
1

Is it ok to use them? I wanted to use my personal favorite FFF Business for my cards but I’m afraid using those fonts won’t be ok, and Kinko’s has no clue to what I mean :wink:

Sorry but I’m lost when it comes to print.

Also here’s the price plan they gave me

100 cards
Front and back
4 colors
Glossy paper (one side other side regular)

$40 and change.

Now this seems like good deal to me, but I’ve never had business cards printed before so I’m not too sure.

Thanks for the info!

2

the only thing with pixel fonts is that they degrade if you dont place them on whole pixels and if you dont use them at the prescribed size and no anti-alias. But other than that I dont see a problem. Ask them to print a proof.

3

hi
when you comes to print stuff, you should use PostScript fonts, which will gives you best output result for hi-rez printer.

for more postscript info: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/programming/postscript/postscript.html

but if you want to use FFF fonts, what i suggest and give a good result is to make all your work in Illustrator then vectorize all of your fonts.
advantages:
1- you won’t have to bring your fonts to your printer,
2- no font error or low-rez possible since its vector.

for the price, i believe 40$/100 cards is a little high (well, i know that here its cheaper) ask for prices (for an identic service) at other locations.

hope that helps,

  • zod
4

good catch forgot to mention that, try to “create outlines” from your text as a last resort.

5

Thanks guys

@DDD:

the only thing with pixel fonts is that they degrade if you dont place them on whole pixels

Exactly what I was worried about. See in Flash, I can just open the info box, but in PS I’m not sure how to make sure they are on whole plains.

Also, dude so sorry I never got those images across to you, been so freakin busy, and I have to dig to find some good quality pics. I still really want to do it though hopefully you do to :slight_smile:

I’ll hit you up on msn tonight and well talk more

@Zoddo: Thanks for that info i’ll give that URL a good read :slight_smile:

Thanks yall :slight_smile:

6

hey digital, the interesting thing about pixel fonts in PS is that it doesnt seem to matter where you place them, as long as they are the prescribed size and the document is at 100% then it looks good.
now printing pixel fonts is another neast all together. personally i think theyre way to small to print and be legible. when your making a business card you have to make sure that whoever recieves it can read the info thats printed on it. most pixel fonts are meant to be viewed at size 8 or smaller. i know from personal experience that for legibility, your not going to want to go much smaller than 10 pt. for print…any smaller looks like garbage. zoddo gave awsome advice.

7

Daniel- Thanks for the advice…

Question: I have seen business cards with really small legibal fonts, Zoddo has advised to use PostScript fonts, is that what I am seeing on these cards? Becuase I would really hate to use let’s say Verdana size 10 for contact info on the bottom and stuff.

Also here goes another topic in itself so please bear with me guys :wink:

Ok… My friend has a print shop(charges a small fortune). Now… he has templates on his site, when I say template it’s a blank psd with guides. He says not to go over the guides because the text can get cut off. This doesn’t confuse me, what confuses me is this:

His templates are @ 300 resolution, now… How the F am I supposed to design a card when visually its much bigger then it will look when printed???

Also I just dont understand what size font to use with this template?? Like what if the font doesn’t look right when printed? This whole situation confuses the heck outta me.

I really don’t know Illustrator that well, but I do know how to use it, problem being is what if I want to add let’s say a drop shadow or something, I would much rather do this is PS(prob cant even do it in Illust).

Hopefully one of you guys can clarify these problems I’m running into.

Thanks again

8

Visually larger? When you design anything for print you need to be designing at a resolution of 300dpi or more. As for the size issue… it’s only visually larger but propotionally the same. You can always zoom out and design at w/e size feels more comfortable to you. And no matter what dpi your document is… font sizes don’t change… so an 8pt type on 72dpi is the same as 8pt type on 300dpi. As for the guides he’s talking about too, I would assume those are the bleed. You DO need to design the card to go outside of that… although you don’t want the text to go outside. U can do a dropshadow in Illustrator although it’s not as pretty… all you need to do is take the base color on top of the document color and use the gradient mesh.

9

i too have seen small fonts used on business cards including my own designs. I would sometimes use a 8-9px font and then bold that for variations.

One thing you have to look at when printing really small fonts is the weight of the font letters. if the lettering is clean and solid or bold or thick, as you would see in a san serif font(verdana or arial) then it should print fine, but when you get into fonts like times and other serif fonts (font with tails or extra bits or fancy fonts) is when you have troubles, things like thin lines on a font will get lost at small sizes.

im not sure what you mean by "design a card when visually its much bigger…"
are you talking about bleed?

if your not sure about a font, do test first, print at home (do you have a decent printer?) if you have your design finalised or near final and do not want to go through a 1,2,3 thousand sheet print stage blindly then get the printer to print out a proof, so you can check the colour/type/positioning (these arent cheap though, so make sure you do that in your final stages, well cost depend on your printer).

drop shadows can be created in illustrator… but good typography dosent need drop shadows, make it legiable, clear and informative. leave the effects for imagery.

hope this helps… :slight_smile:

10

Now… he has templates on his site, when I say template it’s a blank psd with guides. He says not to go over the guides because the text can get cut off.
simplistik is right, those guides are bleed mark. I’ll add info on bleed.

Bleed is a printed area which extends off the trimmed area. Typically a designer would allow an extra 3mm of bleed to colour and image areas to allow for a little leeway when trimming. ex: I want to have a background that will cover all of my business card, so I’ll use bleed to avoid my background being cut and then “see the paper” (hope that i am clear enough… :wink: )

At 300 DPI, the work area appears to be bigger, that is because your screen can only display up to 75 DPI.

seeya

  • zodd