Lessons
Lesson Info
Class Introduction
Type tips for photographers. Interesting class. So I can't see online, but I'm gonna ask you guys. Over the course of the year, how many of you have to add type to a photo at some point, during, OK, so everybody. This is one of those things we all have seen it done really really badly. And my goal is to kinda give you guys a, give you a little formula to follow, some basics on what, what can help type look better, alright? And then, 'cause there's two parts to this. There's type that doesn't look very good, and your eye knows it. Whether you know it or not. Whether you're like a professional typographer and you know all the little nuances of this stuff. Our eyes pick this stuff up. And so there's type that just doesn't look good. It just doesn't look professional. And then there's getting it to fit on the photo. Because now you might have white type that you have to put over a photo with white areas. Black type on dark spots, all these different things. So there's two parts of it, is k...
inda getting a feel for what's good type and then how to make it work on a photo because at some point you're gonna make a photo book cover, you're gonna make a Facebook cover, a YouTube image, a Twitter, whatever it happens to be for your personal photos or your business or whatever, and you want it to look good, so. That's the two parts. First off I gotta, I just have few slides here for ya, 'cause I wanted to show ya, so. If you were kinda scrollin' through YouTube, and you saw a cover, and you saw that cover, or you saw that cover, which one would you wanna watch? That one, right? Ah, here's another one. So if somebody had a nice gallery printed and (laughing) and they had their photos hangin' up on the wall, and they have Comic Sans and trust me guys, I see it almost every single day. Somebody sends in a photo with Comic Sans. Um, so you got that, or you have that. Right? That's the one that you wanna see. So important stuff here you guys. And you can see it. Whether you know what made the difference in there, you see it and we all see it. It's ah, one of the things that's interesting, I always equate, I always equate type so my ah, my wife and I she like, she'll turn on the TV and I can immediately hear if it's the sounds, if the TV sound. 'Cause we have one of those little soundbars that's like right under the TV, and I got that because I can't stand the sound from the TV. So she'll turn on the TV and it's like nails on a chalkboard, she doesn't even hear it. Then I turn the soundbar on, I'm like no no no, I turn the mute button on that, I turn the soundbar on, I get the good audio goin', she's like, oh yeah. So it's kinda like that. It's like she'll hear it when it's off and when it's on, she can see the difference but when that TV goes on and it's not on, she doesn't see it. Where it's nails on a chalkboard. So I think we all kinda see it, whether we know it or not we still see a lot of this stuff. Alright so ah, got kind of a couple of those ideas down. Let's take a look here so, I think the very very first thing for is talkin' basics. Is a font has a feeling to it. And so as you start to, as you start to add text to your photos, you have to start to think about that feeling that you wanna get across. I taught this class actually at an event in New York a couple of weeks ago, and it was so funny because right before the class, right before I was about to show this example, a guy got up and he showed me his photobook, and he had just this beautiful elegant script font for a wildlife photobook. Just doesn't work. It didn't look right, you know. And it was a cover of his photobook and this beautiful font but it looks like the kinda thing that we should have for a wedding. So a font's got a feeling you know, you can look through here and see like, you know, there's just, they don't fit. And then if you look at that, the fonts make a little bit more sense for what you're writing about or whatever the material happens to be. So that's an important thing to know too. What I'm gonna do, 'cause there's a question I get all the time, is what are some good fonts? Like good kinda semi-trendy but, but safe fonts for us to use? So I realize I get that question all the time. I'm gonna give it to you in the beginning of a class. So that way you don't have to wait for it, but. Here is, here's a few different fonts that I like to use. These are all, if you are a Photoshop or an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, these are all in something called Typekit. So if you're not familiar with it and you're a Creative Cloud subscriber you have it. You get to, you get to actually have, you have access to thousands of fonts. You actually get to have or download and use a hundred at a time. So you just go onto Typekit and you can just search through all these fonts are on there, but you search through and again, you can download it and if you find you've downloaded over a hundred, which good luck if you do. If you find you've downloaded over a hundred, then you can just kinda say, you know what I don't want this one any more and mark it, it'll go off and then it'll open up another one. So you can ah, you can experiment. There's a ton of stuff on there. It's a good, it's a good easily searchable place too. But some good ones ya know, ah Avenir, Montserrat, I think it's pronounced, Proxima Nova, those are good um, those are good sans serif fonts. So one of the basics I was gonna go over is just there's serif and sans serif, alright. So the serif like Trajan Pro, that's a serif font. It's got those little, little kinda adornments on the edges and whatnot. And then sans serif is just without the serif so, that's the top three above there. So that's a kind of a little visual difference for ya. Gil Sans is a nice one, especially if you're gonna do like thin, kind of a thin elegant type of a look. Sheila, Nautica's a really good one, if you're doing a nice big script font, it's a really pretty one too.
Ratings and Reviews
kasmath
Yeah! I was so excited to find another class by Matt Kloskowski at Creative Live! Matt is an amazing teacher who comes up with all kinds of ideas. He is clear, concise and easy to follow. He has a wealth of knowledge that he loves to share and his enthusiasm and love for his students comes through in his teaching. I have his Lightroom Course and am so happy and pleased with it because I have learned so much!!! I highly recommend this class of Matt's and hope you will love his classes as much as I do!
Audrey Agin
Good Teacher. Gives good practical ideas to add Fonts to your photo project & is not distracting. Thank you.
Cheryl Tarr
I loved this class. Matt provides a very clear explanation of different techniques to add text to photos. Short and sweet!