C’mon, be honest. 😀 With dozens of sites that offer free downloads of fonts, I bet you have hundreds installed on your desktop or laptop.

Okay, I guess I’m just trying to find someone who’s addicted to fonts as I am. 😀 But, some may argue that my addiction to installing fonts on my computer can be justified by the fact that I’m a graphics / web / blog designer. And I use that excuse every time someone teases me to stop downloading more fonts already. 😀

Did you know that the terms font and typeface are actually NOT synonymous or interchangeable? Check these Wikipedia articles on fonts and typefaces. They’re pretty interesting. 🙂 But, to avoid confusion, I’ll just use font for this post. I don’t think I need to be politically correct here anyway.

As of today, I have 1,245 fonts installed on my computer. I have all sorts of fonts – serif, sans serif, script, ornamental, and even symbols / dingbats. Have I used all of them? No. Not yet, I mean. 😉

Ever since I realized that I have this knack for playing with words or texts to come up with simple yet eye-catching posters, banners, etc., I started to accumulate more and more fonts almost weekly. My main download site is DaFont.com, of course. 🙂

Here are a few samples of my designs where I played with font styles, weights and sizes:

• A banner I made for our monthly comments contest over at Orange Magazine TV’s blog:

• The image, I borrowed from Deviantart. The quote, I read it somewhere.

• For a wedding invite design a client ordered from me (the names were changed):

They wanted to use black, grays and light purple so I was SO happy to design this. I’m glad they LOVED the whole design, which I didn’t include here. I’ll post it once my design portfolio is up. 🙂

They loved the design so much that they even invited me to their wedding, but I had to decline ‘cause of another design project I was working on… (and because I had trouble figuring out what to wear. I don’t like formal events ‘cause I’m more comfortable in jeans or even breeches than to wear a dress or gown. 😀 )

• Of course, my blogger card. I changed that now to remove the word “blogger” and to indicate I’m a designer, too.

I also have a ton of scrapbook pages I designed for friends and family. My bro Ken calls them “certificates”. LOL 😀

I just love playing with fonts! And I’m glad I’ve got a ton more resources now. 🙂

You might be wondering why exactly I consider myself a font junkie. Here are some “signs”:

• When I go to a font download site to search for something that’ll suit the design project I’m working on, instead of just downloading what I really need, I end up with no less than 10 new fonts installed. Sometimes, I even don’t use them at all for that design I’m doing. 😀
• My bro and a couple of my friends have seen me downloading away and had to stop me by closing my browser windows. 😀
• I have folders for my monthly font downloads.
• I complain that I don’t have the right font for a project. Then, I download more fonts, and I still end up using the ones I had before that download. 😀
• I have all my font files in a USB flash drive so I have them available wherever I go, no matter whose computer I’m using. This one is hilariously ridiculous, I know, but a friend of mine actually found it adorable. LOL 😀
• Whenever there are customers who encoded a document at my computer shop and they wanted it printed, I usually comment on the fonts they use on it. There were even a couple of times I gave my student customers tips on what fonts look good once printed on paper. They found it cool though. 🙂

Now, tell me I don’t have a fonts addiction. 😀 But, hey, it’s still under control. It’s the designer in me who wants to have a lot of choices when I work on something.

For my upcoming posts here, I’ll be sharing with you some applications / programs I use so I can manage and sort through my fonts wisely and a couple of tips on how to handle this font addiction. 😉

I want to end this post with 5 of my current favorite fonts:

What are your favorites? Share them in the comments section, will yah? 🙂

Did you notice I’ve got a ton of emoticons on this post? 😀