A Guide to Advanced Fonts

First, let’s get a better understanding of what makes fonts look polished and tasteful. These are a few really important things to keep in mind as you make your font.

Colors: This is a crucial part of making your font look nice. You should almost always match your avatar to the colors you use. Of course, if you made a font that does not match an avatar, the default avatar is typically used. Also make sure to use a dark, legible color for your neoHTML so that people can read it. There is nothing more irritating than trying to decode a font in light blue.

Font Face: The right font face can make or break your font. For your neoHTML, try to use a more standard, easy to read font face like Georgia or Tahoma. That way, no one has any difficulty reading your posts. For siggies, you may want to use a more decorative font to add some pizzazz. I love using Pristina, Vivaldi, and Impact.

Size: Size is more of a personal preference than color or font face; there is no one size that everyone uses. I personally like to use smaller sizes like one or two, but this is up to you. Just make sure it isn’t so small that you can’t read, or so big that it takes up a lot of space. Also, if you are using a symbol font like Webdings, use somewhere around size four so that you can tell what the symbol is.

Now that we have some conventions to keep in mind, let us go on to some advanced font skills! These are some trends that I have noticed around the boards lately.

Fading: I have seen a lot of nice, simple fonts using this method. Fading is when part of your siggy starts as one color and then slowly fades into another. You can fade shapes or text. The easiest way to do this is to find a hex code table with similar colors next to each other. Then, simply change your font to a different color (but the same size and font face) every few letters or symbols. I love using this for avatars that have colors that are close to each other. For example, the Easter Cybunny avatar is great for fading blue into purple.

Off Center: Before I begin this section, note that making your neoHTML invisible is not allowed and super annoying. That being said, in order to make your font shift a little to the left or right, you must put an invisible stretch of font after or before your siggy. If you want to push your font to the right, put your invisible section before. To go left, put it after. But what should you put in your invisible section? Many people use underscores. Others like to put messages or designs. This is a preference that is up to you!

Pictures: This is my favorite type of font. I believe it takes the most creativity, and it turns out beautiful. To make this font, people use a bunch of squares in different colors to form a picture. It is often fun to recreate your avatar in font form. For example, make a Bruce if your avatar features a Bruce. They are also great for holidays; make a pumpkin for Halloween or a decorated tree for Christmas. This type of font takes a lot of effort and practice, but it pays off. I suggest designing your font by drawing it and then coding it. Know how many blocks you need on each line and when you need to switch colors or shapes. On these, hard work usually pays off. I have seen some fantastic picture fonts around the boards!

Names: This is a pretty recent trend I have seen around Neopia. People will write their names in a combination of symbols, fancy font faces, and colors so that people know how to address them on the Neoboards. These are fairly simple to make, and handy so that people don’t have to stalk your lookup in order to know what to call you. And we all know we have done that before!

Songs: Similar to name fonts, people tend to take song lyrics and use them in their siggies. If you want to do this, pick a song that you really love, and listen to it. See what lyrics really stick out to you as interesting or meaningful, and use those. Then you will have a trendy font that you can use all the time. And when you grow tired of that song, you can easily pick another one.

In conclusion, there are a lot of interesting trends in fonts these days, and now you know how to use them. They are all relatively simple to make, and end up looking really great. Of course, you do not have to follow any of these trends. In fact, I have seen some fonts that do not fall under any of these categories, but are still very nice. Who knows? Maybe you will start a completely new font trend. But whether you are experimenting with one of these styles or your own, just remember to have fun and make a font you are proud of. There are a lot of font rating boards out there, and people may not like the font you have made. Even so, what matters most is that you like your font.

I hope you found this guide helpful! If you have any questions, rants, raves, praises, criticisms or comments, feel free to neomail me, jj2277.