Everything You Need to Know About Fonts

If you are making a font for the first time, here are some dos and don’ts you should follow:

Do...

1. Make sure your colors match.

Otherwise, your font will not look very good. There are a few programs out there to do this, or you can ask someone to do it for you. If you decide to ask, make sure you do it nicely!

2. Have a creative siggy.

If your avatar is just screaming an idea for a cute siggy, go for it. Or, if you have a great siggy idea, find an avatar to match.

3. Make it your own.

Add symbols, colors, anything to make your font stand out. Or, you could go with something simple. Whatever you want!

Don’t...

1. Use chatspeak

It is tacky and makes you really annoying. So, make sure your siggy has proper punctuation and spelling. You might also want to refrain from chatspeak, period. I have very little respect for people who use it.

2. Use premades

If you are completely hopeless at making fonts, do not resort to premades. My advice to you is to either try to find someone else to make you a font or find a page of lesser known premades and then edit a lot!

3. Steal someone else’s font

There are few things more annoying than seeing someone use a font similar to the one that took you hours to create. Make your font original and unique.

Now that you know some really important things about fonts, I will give you some step-by-step instructions to make one.

1. Take your Pick

The first thing is to find a nice avatar (aka avie) to use as inspiration and colors for your font. To change your avatar, click on boards and then preferences. Use the drop down list to pick the avatar you want. If you don’t have very many secret avies, there are guides all over Neopia to help you get some. Still, there are some very nice fonts out there with avies that aren’t secret. Now that your active neopet is posted along with your font and avatar, you may want to pick the neopet that best matches your avatar. If you have four pets already, you will have to pick between your four. If you have three or less and matching your pet is very important to you, you can even adopt a pet that matches your avie. Another good method is to paint your pet a neutral color. Such colors are shadow, white or even invisible.

2. Siggy

Now is a good time to think up a siggy. A siggy will appear at the bottom of your neoHTML. You can use a saying, phrase that matches your avie, a link to a page or beauty contest entry... there are many possibilities. For example, I used the Harris – Hi avie and wanted a siggy to match. I came up with, “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.”

3. Get Rid of that Pesky Siggy Line and Center

Now that you know what your siggy and avie will be, it is time to create the actual font. Go to preferences once more. The first thing you should do is get rid of the siggy line. To do this, put a forward bracket in the neoHTML space and a backward one in the siggy space. Your boxes should look like this:

neoHTML: [

Siggy: ]

Also, if you want your font to be centered, you should have [center] at the beginning of your neoHTML and [/center] at the end of your siggy. Your boxes should look like this:

neoHTML: [center][

Siggy: ][/center]

4. Learn the Basics

Now, you will learn some basic HTML things. The best way to learn such skills are to go to the neopets HTML guide. You can find it here:

//www.neopets.com/help/html1.phtml

I highly recommend you read the entire guide... it will really help you learn HTML.

5. Colors, Sizes, and Fontfaces

If you have read the guide like I told you to and have understood it a little, you are on your way to a fantastic font! First, we are going to start with the neoHTML. Please type in neoHTML in between [center] and [ in the neoHTML box. Before neoHTML, write [font] and after it, [/font]. It should now look like this:

neoHTML: [center][font]neoHTML[/font][

Siggy: ][/center]

Now, type in c= after the word font. After the equal sign, put the color you want. You could type in a simple color like red or blue. If you want it to match the avie, you will need to match colors using a program or by asking nicely. Don’t be alarmed if the color looks something like CCFF66. Make sure that you put a # before your color if you have a number and letter combination. Your font should now look like this:

neoHTML: [center][fontc=color]neoHTML[/font][

Siggy: ][/center]

Now, we will put in a fontface. For neoHTML, I recommend a fontface that is easy to read. Some of these are Georgia, Serif, Times, and Courier. To put in your fontface, type in f= and then your choice of fontface after the equal sign. Now your font should look like this:

neoHTML: [center][fontc=colorf=fontface]neoHTML[/font][

Siggy: ][/center]

Also, if you want to change the size, put s= and then a number from one to ten. Now, you should see:

neoHTML: [center][fontc=colorf=fontfaces=size]neoHTML[/font][

Siggy: ][/center]

Your neoHTML should look pretty good.

6. Siggy

Now, you are going to put a color, size and fontface just like you did before. This time, you will put it in your siggy and instead of writing neoHTML, you put your siggy. As for fontfaces, you may like to try others such as Impact, Vivaldi, or Elephant. There are many others you can use too. By now, you should see this:

neoHTML: [center][fontc=colorf=fontfaces=size]neoHTML[/font][

Siggy: ] [fontc=colorf=fontfaces=size]Siggy[/font][/center]

7. Make it Pretty

If you have followed my instructions, you now have a basic font. It is time to add some things to make it look nice. One way to do this is with underlining, bolding or italicizing. This will make your font stand out. I recommend only using this for part of your siggy. Don’t do it to the entire thing or to your neoHTML. You can even bold, underline and italicize at the same time. To do this, you need to put [b] where you want to start to bold and [/b] at the end. If you want to use italics, put an i instead of a b. To underline, put a u. You can also make symbols. The easiest way to do this is to use the fontface Webdings or Wingdings. Just put [fontf=eitherwebdingsorwindings]A Character here[/font]. You can use letters, numbers or symbols as characters. I suggest you do this by finding a chart of special characters and then picking the one you want. You may also want to have the size at four at least. If you don’t, it may be hard to see your symbol. Now, you have finished your font... and it should look something like this:

neoHTML: [center][fontc=colorf=fontfaces=size]neoHTML[/font][

Siggy: ] [fontc=colorf=fontfaces=size]Si[i]g[/i]gy[/font][fontf= eitherwebdingsorwindings]character[/font][/center]

Thank you for reading my guide and I hope it helped you make a fantastic new font!