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I tend to use Corel's Font Manager and the associated font list filters within CorelDRAW to turn on/off access to my entire font collection. There are some faces I only use rarely. I don't feel like actually installing them into the Windows OS only to turn around and uninstall them. It's easier...

Motter Femina screamed 1970's psychedelic hippie pop culture more successfully than most any other typeface of that age. Candice and Julia Script evoke similar moods but came later in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

Motter Textura was first released in 1974, created by Austrian designer Othmar Motter. He is known for other "Motter" named typefaces like Motter Ombra, Motter Sparta and Motter Corpus. Berthold was first to distribute Motter Textura, followed by Letraset (for its dry transfer sheet fonts) and...

The OPTI Manfred font is a knock-off of Motter Tektura. Some of us older folks remember Apple using the typeface on its early products before the Macintosh.

Adobe Illustrator can only do a block shadow effect if the text object (or other graphic element) is rotated in 3D space. It won't perform a parallel block shadow effect. I've seen odd work-arounds, such as creating a jillion steps in a blend operation between two copies of the same object. But...

Thanks for the help. The "G" and "3" are indeed two different typefaces. The "G" was really infuriating because I knew I had seen the typeface and even used it before. Finally figured out it was Constantia Bold with no line stroke added. The "3" is definitely a stroked version of Footlight...

Hi there, I've been going through my font collection and slightly out of my mind trying to match the stuff that is in the attached sample. ITC Veljovic is the nearest thing I've been able to find to fit this. But Veljovic is not the correct typeface. Some of the details of the characters are...

The "knowing what you're doing" part is the most important thing. Software alone won't make just anyone good at sign design or graphic design in general. An analogy: very few people are honestly good at singing; most people don't have the pipes and talent for it. The same thing goes for graphic...

They had better keep at least one working copy of CorelDRAW around for opening any existing .CDR files you have. Adobe Illustrator is pretty lousy at importing .CDR files. Anyone that has been using CorelDRAW for a substantial amount of time will doubtless have lots and lots of archive files. I...

I use Astute Graphics' VectorScribe 3 plug-in for Illustrator to do a number of different measuring chores, particularly path area. Adobe Illustrator has a built-in way to determine path lengths, but not path area. VectorScribe can do a bunch of other cool stuff. It costs £35 ($45.80 current...

Regarding the use of cameras and different kinds of lenses to use photos alone as a survey tool: that's even less reliable than using a tool like Spike. The Spike tool takes into account the combination of distance from the sign along with the kind of lens being used to take the photo. The main...

This acquisition sounds a little like putting the cart ahead of the horse. Adobe doesn't have a real 3D modeling and/or animation application. The nearest thing to it is the "lite" version of Cinema 4D bundled into After Effects. It's not really a complete solution. Thanks make composition...

Given that is a real, single stroke neon sign the source typeface could be any number of possibilities. I think the proportions are kind of close to ITC Franklin Gothic (the "R" feels right).

No "full service" sign company can manufacture every possible sign product in house. For example, we do a lot of digital printing in-house, but send art files to other service providers for niche products like billboard faces. For some jobs, such as an individual yard sign, it's probably going...

Corel's Font Navigator program is pretty decent for CorelDRAW. I have pretty large collection of typefaces. The nice thing about using Font Navigator with CorelDRAW is you don't have to mess with manually installing or uninstalling fonts like crazy. You organize your collection within Font...

We have battery back-ups on our computers and our network. We had our old Roland VersaCAMM printer connected to a battery back-up, but it plugged in to a normal wall outlet. Our HP Latex 360 printers require 220 outlets.

You can use a tool like Spike (https://ikegps.com/spike/) for getting measurements of things well out of reach. We have one. It's good for ball park figures just for giving customers price quotes. But if you're measuring something like an existing sign cabinet to do a face replacement job there...

Doing business without a printer? Our company is going in the opposite direction. We retired our old Roland VersaCAMM. We bought one large HP Latex 360 printer and soon acquired a second one. Our guys nicknamed the two HP printers "Cheech" and "Chong." We also added another Graphtec plotter (a...

I use a Wacom Intuos Pro on my home setup. Lately I've been using a large iPad Pro with Apple Pencil to on-screen sketching and drawing. It actually works very well. The Procreate app is awesome. Adobe Illustrator Draw could use some improvements (such as a Pen tool for instance). Autodesk...

Try opening the JPEG image in Photoshop. Chose "Save As" and save the file as a TIFF image. Another tip: never re-save a lossy compressed image, such as a JPEG, in a lossy format like JPEG. It further degrades the image. A lossless format like TIFF or PSD is far more acceptable. The situation...