stephenj148 said:
Being a younger designer, sometimes I'll put up a design somewhere and the more experience person will gasp at the font I've used. However, how am I supposed to know, other than using the font, that it's not a good font to use.
Here's my 2¢.
As overly simplistic as it sounds, you just need to be able to visibly judge whether the design looks right or not. It's not just the type either. The tracking, line spacing, placement on the page or display area and its combination with other elements all make or break the look of it.
Most people do not have the eye needed for designing with type. You need to love type. A strong natural talent will allow you to be brave and try things few others were willing to do.
Find signs you think look great and try to deconstruct the elements that make them successful.
Legibility is extremely critical with outdoor "environmental" design. Signs, billboards, outdoor posters, vehicle wraps and other "out of home" advertising elements all require legibility ahead of decorative effect. If you can't read the design from an acceptable minimum distance then the design sucks. Simple as that.
Additionally, you have to be aware of how lighted (or non-lit) signs will look at night time. Certain effects that work in daylight may cause problems at night. For example, a back-lit sign face featuring dark letters with a white outline may look nice in daylight, but that white outline may cause the dark letters to literally disappear when viewed from the street due to overglow. Unfortunately some of those try/fail lessons can only be learned from experience.
Learning about type and reading up on new typefaces and typeface trends will help with some design choices. Buy or rent the documentary
Helvetica on Blu-ray or DVD. There's some excellent stuff in there about type and the importance of design in general.
Visit the typophile.com forum. You'll see a lot of comments on what not to do with type.
You really really have to be careful when combining different typefaces in the same layout. Some combinations are visually toxic, like motor oil poured onto a bowl of ice cream. Here's a nausea-inducing one: Brush Script, Serpentine Bold and Arial Black together. Visual garbage! I know a guy who used to put that combination onto banners frequently.
A long time ago I really liked the typeface Papyrus (the Letraset Fontek version of it, not the horrible MS Office cut of it). But it's been so overused, in part because of its availability. The movie
Avatar didn't help matters, but at least they used the Letraset version of Papyrus in those subtitles.
I hate Arial with a passion and will only use it when a project specifically requires it. I designed a gate entry sign for an US Air Force Base a few years ago. Their design standard required Arial. So be it.
I think HTF Gotham is a great typeface. I also think Tobias Frere-Jones is one of the most gifted type designers currently in that industry. Sadly Gotham is becoming so over-used that it may fall victim to the same love/hate syndrome that affects Helvetica.
Myriad and Trajan are also attractive typefaces that are very over-used, due in part through their bundling in Adobe applications. Myriad is all over any Wal-Mart store. Lots of movie posters and other things use Trajan.
Not all freebie fonts are bad. A good eye for type can tell the difference. There's a few good faces at Font Squirrel. I think Titillium Text is an attractive, somewhat techie looking face. I'm not as fond of Google's open source web fonts.
I have loved drawing letters and other graphical stuff (along with illustrational subjects) since I was a little kid. I have numerous Letraset press on type books that date back to the early 1980s. If I knew enough about Python scripting and had lots of spare time I'd probably design a few digital typefaces of my own. It's much easier to just draw an "ad word" and vectorize it.
