Computer Font Rant

Well, the cards are almost done, but I need to put some innards in them. The thought of hand-writing messages in almost 60 cards makes my hands protest (writing 'Season's Greetings' that many times, in two languages is just asking for a meltdown), so I decided to have a printed message in each card and from there we can personalize them.

That, however, was easier said than done. I have tons of cool fonts on the Dell laptop which I consider mine (hey, DH said I could use it for my Sil - and I use my Sil a lot and he has the HP and the Mac, so I am right!), but the main printer is not wireless, so I needed to use the Flagship (sounds important, right?) Unfortunately, the Flagship (I hear cannons shooting) doesn't have all the same cool fonts. It has endless versions of Arial and Times New Roman.

Seriously! I spent 20-30 minutes (or was it an eternity?) trying to find something I could use in each of the card styles. Word in XP, though, won't show you what the font looks like in the menu - you have to highlight your text. I nearly went insane ( I know: short trip!) trying to find something that would match each card. Most of the fonts had such subtle differences I kept checking to make sure I had picked a new one. Whose idea was it to have cool names like Verdana and Tahoma when there is visibly NO DIFFERENCE!!!??? My eyes started to glaze over...but I persevered and found three different fonts, whose names are now lost to me.

So, now I have two ideas running through my head: 1) I now understand why people have so many fonts for journaling, since most of them are variations of the same font and you need to really hunt for something different and 2) If your are a font designer and you are just changing Arial or TNR, don't give the result a name like Verdana because someone might just think you have done something really cool when all you did was make the letters a tad wider. If that indeed, is what you did!

Okay, off my soapbox now!