-or How to pick a personal font?

I wish this was a really cool tutorial about creating your online persona with a perfect logo and brand, but I’m just little old me fiddling with a new watermark for my photos.

Because yes, I do think some of them are good enough that I want the credit, and because I want to use a Photoshop action rather than the usual brush made from my logo.

I love my logo, I’ve used it since 1999, but a. the brush is very small and easy to overlook or erase, b. it does not clue anybody in to where the image originated and c. I seem to not always be able to make a crisp, steady click with my brush, whether cats in my lap or not.

There are a multitude of issues involved in watermarking. I personally dislike the gigantic copyright messages obscuring most of the photo. I’ve done it, and well, as you’ve seen I stopped quite a long time ago. Instead of doing the brush click in a corner, I’ve done it all over the photo, finding a critical place that didn’t look too bad with a symbol on it but also visible and harder to crop out. (I won’t go into details about being “invited” to sporting events to take photos for the participants, only to have everybody print out the watermarked samples instead, let’s just say I don’t do those “jobs” anymore).

And fonts. I used to have a font that I used for everything, letterheads, website etc. And well, I just don’t like it all that much now, but I’m having a really hard time picking a new one! Newspaper fonts are too boring, but I also don’t want to use one that resembles the Comic sans style. Not too many flourishes, it’s not a wedding cake blog after all. Do I really have to make my own font? There’s like a million out there for grabs!

It’s not that I can’t find cool fonts. The question is: which one is really “me”? I like simple, I like grunge, I like calligraphic styles. A watermark for marketing purposes needs to be easy to read, so away with the fantasy fonts.

For now it’s a work in progress, starting with a fairly neutral and boring signature until I get myself sorted. I’d very much appreciate it, if you guys would stop me in my tracks if you see that I’ve found the perfect match but not yet noticed it myself!

To be continued…