• Castaway
  
• Deluxe Highway Signs & Comic Books
  
• About Kerning
  
• Favorite Fonts
  
• TypeTalk
  
• How to Subscribe (free)

Featured Fab Font
In honor of Tom Hanks' latest movie, Rudy and the rest of the gang from last season's Survivor, and our all-time favorite castaways on Gilligan's Island, here's Castaway from Rotodesign. It's all caps, looks like bamboo. There are no numbers (gee, how are you gonna count the days til you're rescued?) and only a little punctuation (that's OK, if you're a castaway you've got better things to worry about than proper punctuation).

Download: Windows [TrueType] | Macintosh [Type 1]

Web site: Rotodesign - more great free packages

Commercial Picks
Ray Larabie is known for his fabulous selection of original free fonts but he also has some equally fantastic packages to buy for the incredibly low price of $19.00US per family:

Blue Highway Deluxe
Mimic a highway sign. This deluxe package includes 21 variations on Blue Highway including outline and 3D and have full character sets and kerning. All fonts are embeddable.
U&lc; Regular, Italic, Bold, Light, Condensed, Expanded | Mac/PC | Postscript/TrueType | $19.00US | Online ordering available

Mufferaw Deluxe
A little bubble talk? This comic book style printing comes in 16 variations including 3D, shaded, outline, and distorted.
Upper case; Regular, Bold, Italic, Condensed, Expanded | Mac/PC | Postscript/TrueType | $19.00US | Online ordering available

Font Factoid
Kerning is data included in a font to specify how to adjust the spacing between certain pairs of characters in that font. Kerning is especially needed when text is set in all caps. There is no set number of possible kerning pairs (pairs of letters which have kerning data in the font) but Adobe uses around 280 pairs in most Type 1 fonts. Not all software supports kerning and some may support it for TrueType but not Type 1 fonts.

Adobe Solutions Network: Developer Program: Kerning
An About Desktop Publishing Letter and Line Spacing link

Favorite Fonts
The top 5 font favorites the first week of 2001:
Exmouth -- Handwriting/Script
CommScript -- Handwriting/Script
Loki Cola -- Handwriting/Script
4YEO Stamp -- Decorative/Stencils
Alison -- Handwriting/Script
Font Library

TypeTalk
Looking for a specific font or font-related software? Have a problem with font installation or looking for ideas for your next project? There's a forum just for you: About Type & Fonts.

Subscribe Today
To receive weekly reminders for new issues of Fabulous Fonts, subscribe to About DTP, the email weekly newsletter About Desktop Publishing. You'll find out all about what's new on the entire site with a special section about this online newsletter.

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