Comments on: Fake a Missing Type Style

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:28:18 +0000

Linda, you might consider getting a book like Sandee Cohen’s InDesign Visual Quick Start Guide, or check out the videos at lynda.com. You can make text bold in the type style menu, under the Font menu in the Control panel (when it’s in character mode), or in the Character panel. If no Bold appears, then there is no bold available in that font.

By: Linda

Linda — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:26:48 +0000

Help, I’m upgrading to Indesign from Pagemaker…
How do you BOLD text?

By: Jak Keyser

Jak Keyser — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:39:09 +0000

Oh yeah — I forgot. I keep an old Power Mac around with OS9 and an old version of Fontographer. I have had occasion to fire it up and customize a font. I have created semi-bold versions that didn’t exist, but were really critical for the job.

By: Jak Keyser

Jak Keyser — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:34:51 +0000

I have another method for fake bolding that has an advantage for the font “Papyrus”.

Adding a stroke tends to smooth out the jagged edges that give “character” to the characters.

Instead, I make a copy in of the text string in-place and nudge enough at 45 degrees to create a thicker character. For larger sizes I might nudge 2 or 3 copies in different directions, but at a lesser amount, to get the best result. When I say nudge, I mean a tiny amount, just enough to get the job done. Watch out for pointed features looking doubled up.

By: Gero

Gero — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:40:15 +0000

YES! Finally someone else who admits making hollow checkboxes with fill/stroke effects on Zapf Dingbats

All the best,
Gero

By: Alexandre Giesbrecht

Alexandre Giesbrecht — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:00:31 +0000

I don’t know if that’s entirely related to this post, but I needed to replicate a page which was originally designed in the 60’s. The font was very, very close to the Bodoni I have from Font Folio, but not exactly alike. So I created a character style with the variations I needed. For example, type size (somewhere between 9 and 10 pt) and type width (98%, although for some letters it could be 97%, 99% or even 101%). In that case, the skewing wouldn’t work for the italics, since they’re really different, but that version was available, and didn’t even need to be altered in any way.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:11:19 +0000

Okay, I have been sufficiently chastized into changing my post above to 10-20 degrees (instead of 20-25, which is what it originally said).

Aleta: I don’t have any rule for how much of a stroke to use. I like your idea for a calculation; seems about right to me.

By: Thomas Phinney

Thomas Phinney — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:56:45 +0000

On faking an italic, real italics tend to be about a 10-12 degree angle. Fake italics created by the OS tend to be 20 degrees, and look a bit goofy. Going any more than 20 degrees (say, to 25) is a really bad idea… unless the objective actually *is* to look awful.

By: Becca

Becca — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:31:10 +0000

Nevermind. Found it in another ding font

By: Becca

Becca — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:27:21 +0000

Thanks for the tip. But my zapf dingbats doesn’t have the om symbol. Shucks.