Hand Made Font-For Creating Brilliant & Unique Marketing Campaigns, Websites or Logos
Updated June 16, 2015 Website Pre-Development Checklist and Website Development Checklist
May 20, 2014
Website Pre-Development Checklist
Designing marketing campaigns and websites can be a lot of fun; and, when designing my first website (content and images) I stumbled upon a really cool site Hand Made Font. I still wasn’t all that familiar with the importance of SEO and pretty much wanted to use the fonts for everything. I think you can see why I was so excited from just the small examples above and below.
It also had to be explained to me that you just couldn’t type these letters in using your keyboard they had to be hand set and basically made into a picture (jpeg) via Mac (my pc much like me lacked the necessary skill set). The guys (really two guys Vladimir Loginov and Maksim Loginov) emailed back and forth with me a few times to make sure I understood the process and helped me select my first 10 fonts for a client. They are an Estonia based company and take individual pictures of each letter, number and symbol within the series. It’s really an amazing process with brilliant results.
I was correctly talked out of using theses fonts for everything as it was explained these fonts (although super cool) were best used as accents on printed marketing pieces and for creating unique logos because of SEO. They can still be pulled into the website but you want to make sure the body of the text is SEO rich; and, the fonts aren’t recognized as actual letters but as a picture (since that’s really what it is-a picture of a letter).
Using the “A” (for a common allergy-food) for all allergy related marketing including a tie in with the website, mailing materials and other marketing efforts creates a cohesiveness within a particular department. It also trains customers or patients to be aware it’s something of interest coming from a brand they trust already trust, their physician’s office (creating a sub-brand within a brand.)
When designing your own company logo or any campaign it should take time to develop and evolve organically. My logo and naming my company were two years in the making. (I can hear the collective, “THAT took two years? THAT’s the best you could come up with?) The short answer is yes. You have to start somewhere and I learned that if you “wait” until you have X amount of money to pay someone to do this or that you could wait forever. An opportunity presented itself for me to learn a lot and I applied what I learned when I had to tools to create what I needed, a logo and tagline.
The lettering for my logo may look familiar if you visit Hand Made Font. Rob from CornDog Computers basically taught me how to photo shop the fonts over the phone on a Mac (I borrowed from my client along with the permission to use one of the fonts for my logo) and Bryan West cleaned it up for me. Bryan also explained the importance of creating the logo image as a jpeg because it was (clear) behind and could be placed anywhere on top of any image without the white box around it. These poor people had to speak to me in my language and it wasn’t computer; and, none of whom should be blamed if you really dislike my logo.
When deciding a company name, it should reflect personally and creatively if not somewhat psychologically what you do and who you are as simply as possible. My first and middle names both begin with M’s, as did my paternal grandmother and great grandmother (both of whom I’m named after), so there’s the history of the double M’s to spell MMpiHer (also the idea behind Her).
I’d always grown the business not only for my employers but for our clients; and, now I show companies how to grow business both profitably and ethically into their empires. There’s a little more to the company name but that’s all you’re getting for now. And I ask you the first time you saw the word eminem written did you think of little hard shelled candy with chocolate in the center? And no I do not think I’m that great that I’m comparing myself to a major celebrity; but, I like to solve problems creatively while helping others growth their businesses (or empires), where my client’s businesses are the celebrities.