There are various ways to find fonts for your scrapbooking designs. But first you need to know a couple few things.

Online vs Paper

It’s so much easier to make a scrapbook online with easy access to numerous fonts available. However, if you’re aiming for a physical scrapbook, not a digital one, then you may need to enlist the help of a few tools. You can print fonts which you’ve found online and cut them manually, but if you’re aiming for that clean professional look, this may not be the best way to go. For this purpose, you need die-cutting machines that can cut fonts on paper, cardboard and various other materials.

What die-cutting machine you use

The kind of die-cutting machine you plan on using determines the fonts you can create. With Cricut machines, you can use fonts interchangeably across most of its various products. For instance, you can use a Cricut Expression cartridge on your Cricut Imagine. But you cannot use Cricut cartridges on a Sizzix machine. Take note that you may be limited to the fonts supported by the machine. This is the case with Cricut products – you cannot cut your own designs. Make sure you choose a machine that will fit your needs. If you’re in for flexibility of designs, then the Cricut may not be for you.

Having great looking fonts that fit your theme will enhance the look of your scrapbook. As such, it is vital to find the best font designs for your scrapbooking projects.

I’ve read countless website reviews where the author waxes lyrically about the superb use of color or the wonderful images on a site, but that kind of site just doesn’t cut it for me. I have yet to find a beautifully designed website that has much value in terms of usability, which I know will sound like heresy to some. Maybe it’s because I’m a practical guy at heart that I like websites that offer function over form – and yes, I do believe it’s possible to build a pretty looking site that can function properly as well.

One site I’ve had my eye on for some time now is shaverguide.com – it’s a site about electric shavers, and I’m not sure you could get more mundane than that! But I like this site for a number of reasons.

First off it is obvious it has been built for the sole reason to sell electric shavers, a good thing if you are searching for the best electric shaver, and not just as an ego trip to show off the designers talent. At first glance you’re left in no doubt what the site is about – it does exactly what it says on the tin as the saying goes.

As with any site, color is an important factor, but it should be used to tie the site together not as a stand alone design feature. While this site will never win any design awards it will appeal to its readers which, in turn, will result in an increase in business for the site’s owners.

Freezer paper is great for art.  It is cheap, versatile and readily available!  If you are trying to design a new font you can easily sketch your design ideas onto freezer paper – a lot easier than trying to ’draw’ them in software using your mouse.

Not happy with your creations? No problem – discard the used piece of freezer paper and start over.  For maximum satisfaction I recommend scrunching up your discards into a tight ball before throwing them in the general direction of the waste paper baskets – I feel this more genuinely captures the authentic feel of being a frustrated artist!

You may consider me old school, but I have no plans to move by artistic endeavors from paper to digital anytime soon.  I think too much is lost in the transition.

A lot of people nowadays fancy themselves as website designers. They shun professional help and advice thinking they can do just as good a job. At the same time a lot of professional website designers are being disingenuous with their customers. They fail to tell their clients about the bigger picture, and the customers get a good looking website that does not convert to sales. This topic recently came up when I was approached to make a website about Full Moon Parties in Koh Phangan. I told them that it is naïve to look at website design in isolation. This is only one part of a much bigger process. The overview is paramount to producing and promoting a website that will be successful.

Some fundamentals to consider are:

1)    Target audience and competition. You have to have a clear idea about who you want to attract to your website. Nowadays people just stick Social Media all over their websites without considering whether this type of media input has any relevance to the contents of the site. For example, if you are a company that produces carbon graphite rods do you expect anyone (even people in the industry) to have any inclination to ‘like’ a site about such a dry engineering niche?
2)    Monetization. You have to be mercenary. The website doesn’t necessary need to look good to make money. Sometimes having an ugly website can encourage people to click away from the site as fast as possible. That could be the monetization of the site. Planning how a website can make money is what you start with in website design, not add on at the end.
3)    Loading times, flash, plug-ins and widgets. The temptation is to make a site as sleek, as animated, and as interactive as possible. If you are promoting a night club that might be a good idea. If you are selling toothbrushes it becomes a much lower priority. Flash movies cannot be viewed by iphones. Sites that are entirely Flash Movie rank poorly in the SERPs because Google spiders cannot read the content. Flash also slows loading speeds. People are apt to quickly give up on a site if it loads slowly. If you are using a WordPress format with plug-ins can often be the means by which hackers get into a site and bring it down.
4)    You should design a site you can handle. New content is key to getting noticed. A site must be up-to-date and relevant. If the website designer charges for each new page added you might find yourself at the mercy of the website designer. It is much better to have a website that you can update yourself.
5)    SEO is just as important as website design. Having a beautiful site that no one finds is like having a masterpiece in your attic (only it won’t stop you aging). Website designers are notoriously slack about SEO. They miss out meta tags, alt tags and lots of other SEO tricks. They think their job is done when the site is published. Putting up a site is only 20% of the task completed; the other 80% of the work is promotion. It is much better to have a basic looking site that people visit and that converts, than to have one with lots of whistles and bells that languishes at 100 in the Google rankings.
6)    Make a site easy to navigate. The temptation is to try and be innovative with design. This is a good idea, but a site must be user friendly. If a visitor cannot navigate easily through a site he or she is going to leave very soon. Other website designers and owners are impressed with innovation more than the average net consumer.

These are just a few of the fundamentals of website design. They are easy to understand ideas. What I have written contains very little jargon. This piece has attempted to be relevant, concise and clear. That is what you must aim for in website design.

There would be no aersopace industry, for example, unless computer designs could be replicated down to a pixel of accuracy onto the hardest metals and alloys. This is thanks to electrical discharge machining or EDM. This is a process whereby an electrode fires electrical discharges across a surface. This process is often called sink erosion or wire erosion. Each electrical discharge removes a few particles of metal or alloy. The movement of the electrode can be linked to a robot and computer that precisely cuts a shape either 2D or 3D into the material. The issue of human error is removed from the equation. EDM tooling of piston rings, turbines, carbon vanes, radial bearings, mechanical seals and a host of other pieces that have led to cars, satellites etc. can all be manufactured to exact measurements. This improves performance, safety, fuel efficiency and unleashes the possibility of ever more complex innovations being realized.

Without EDM the power of digital design would be severely limited. It is the missing link to producing a synergistic approach to design that can move freely between the digital format and actual engineering. EDM is in many ways an unhailed hero in bringing perfection to the process of design.