one of the best ways I know of to start seeing what fonts do is to just look around you. look a products on store shelves, book & movie titles, titles for TV shows and such. it's all around us and we have been rasied to understand the cues that they give us without knowing we have been taught. just start seeing it and soon you'll just start to know what font would be right for what you want to say
Marlene, I don't think a person can just pick that up by studying labels at the grocery store or looking at movie house posters. They won't understand what they're really seeing and have nothing to relate to except their own un-knowingness. What you're describing is like walking through the forest and pointing out all the various leaves, flowers, scents and trying to put a name to it all. Unless you have a guide to steer you a little bit, it will just overwhelm the average person. I do think what you're saying is good, but they need a guide with them. There are so many reasons to use this or that, but when doing that or this... it cancels the first idea out, unless you're working in reverse or a certain color combination, but if you pull it back and use a lighter stroke of the same font and spread the kerning out or tighten up the negative space it will possibly overshadow the foreground and main copy, but not as much as if you simply subdue the colors, which when in conflict with a geometric shape or graphic take on an altogether new appeal and we start all over........................
This kinda thought pattern goes through a basic designer's mind in about 2 to 3 seconds and it's hard to explain how or why.
In my experience, lettering, pictorials and other forms of advertising are all a visual and that's not easy to teach over the internet. You have to study it and you need good teachers, books along with typography and calligraphy books to get you going. On your own learning will be painfully slow for the average person coming in to this field today. It's not like the people of years ago that had basic art and print backgrounds from school. For the most part, most of these people don't know composition, lettering or discipline and it is after-all a visual art, but now produced mainly by the computer. However, there's still no magic button to communicate your interpretation
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