AV News 201 - August 2015
Now to the scale of what lettering you put on the screen . There is nothing wrong with filling the screen with the words of your main title , but don ' t forget that nowadays we have High Definition , and even small lettering can be clearly read , and it can have lots of impact against a plain background . Some TV titles are like this nowadays , and can be very compelling .
It can be effective to make the several lines of your title match each other in length for example , so that they form a block . This is easy to do in Photoshop ( CS at least ) - look for the little window that contains so many useful controls . There ' s one for increasing the proportionate width of your lettering , so that you can subtly condense or extend it to match the line above - or you can just adjust the font size by quite tiny increments to achieve a matching line length .
It will also allow you to regulate letter spacing , change to bold or italic or both . There ' s a lot tucked away in this little panel ! ( But please don ' t italicise inappropriate fonts - black letter was never italicised - the mediaeval scribes didn ' t know about ' Italic ' handwriting , which belongs to a later , Renaissance , era !)
Certainly it is unwise to use oversize lettering in other places - captions within the show , and end credits don ' t need to be all that big . Huge lettering is a bit like shouting , and indeed it might be seen as immodest to put for example your own name at the end in letters which seem twenty feet high , delicious as such an ego trip would be ! While on the subject of subsidiary type matter , this is the place for those less elaborate fonts , chosen to harmonise ( or indeed contrast ) with your main font which , as I ' ve suggested , may be in some kind of decorative ' display ' face .
So there it is , for the time being anyway . My reminiscences and ramblings through the rich and populous world of typographical design must close for now , but it ' s a subject dear to me , and on which I ' ve always something to say , and I ' ll welcome your own thoughts or queries on any aspect of it if you care to contact me .
‘ Script ’ Fonts ‘ Typewriter ’ Fonts
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