Using PhotoShop with Picture and Display Fonts

Sometimes you want to take one design and look at it in different ways. That's where PhotoShop succeeds admirably.

I took 2 of my fonts, Bill's Dingbats (which has a small collection of bar glassware) and Bill's Metropolitan, a sophisticated display font that hearkens back to the cocktail era of the 20s, and put them together:

That gave me a header design to use as a column leader.

However, I wanted to try it somewhat differently to see how I would react to it, and I did this by playing with PhotoShop's filters, adjusting brightness, fuzziness, negativity, etc.
Here's one example:

Now we have a significantly different feeling...more of an evening presence.

You can try lots of variations and have fun.

Designing a Catering Company's logo...

This was a project I was given and I used three UTF fonts and some Photoshop touchups to create it. The fonts are Bill's Modern Diner (waitress), Bill's Cast O'Characters (waiter), and Bill's Light DECO for the text, used, actually, at three different sizes:

I tried a lot of different background colors, but eventually ended up with a really fresh light green.

I LOVE using fonts to create graphics!

Bill's New Elzevir

Some display fonts are very different from others in that they are never the first ones you think of using. That's New Elzevir to me. It's often my second... and better... choice. I designed it based on a font I found in a turn of the century (19th to 21st) specimen book.

Here's a sample:

Yes, I used a European crossed 7 in the numerals... but I've been handwriting sevens like that since high school.

Anyway, you can have it for $29.00.

Using Two Fonts to create a Ballot

I used Bill's New Elzevir (coming soon) for the text and and Bill's Printer's Pals for the checkboxes.

The Elementary School Package

Quite awhile ago, while my son was in the throes of elementary school (he's a Graduate Student in History now!), I created a pair of fonts which were made to be used by kids learning their alphabets at an early age. I based it on the way I was taught to neatly write letters on a three-lined sheet of paper in first grade... then I matched it with a set of small illustrations that were alphabet-based, plus a string of graphics based on numbers 1 to 10.

The results were Bill's School Letters and Bill's School Daze.

Here are some samples:

I sell the Elementary School Package... both fonts... for $29.00 complete (that means it also includes versions for Macs, PCs and an Open Type set good on either system...Unix, too.) I also pack a keyboard chart for Bill's School Daze.

If you would like to order the package, go here:

Theatre Poster Ad trim

I was working on an idea for a standard Opening Night rim that posters from any show can be put in for magazine or newspaper ads. I took a poster from a production of Sondheim's ASSASSINS that I directed a few years ago, then I built the rim using two fonts, Bill's Broadway DECOrations and Bill's Brushed Broadway. I used PhotoShop to distort the typefaces.

Bill's American Ornaments

This is a collection of some of the best Ornaments from the American Type Founder's specimen books of the early 20th Century. One of the places I used them was for this header for a bicycling article:

This font has images I use a lot ... there are some nice basics here:

Anyway... this font goes for $29.00, you can buy it online with your credit or debit card or with your PayPal account. You get the complete set...font software for PC, Mac, and the Open Type format, plus a convenient Keyboard chart.