National History day Exhibit Projects

3. Fonts

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font for text | font for title | cool fonts | where to find fonts

Some fonts are easy to read, others are not. Some are good for a title, but if you put it in an entire paragraph, you could make your reader sick (you can take a minute if you'd like to look at some examples of what I'm talking about).

Stick to one or two fonts for your exhibit. One for titles and one for text. Or if you can find the perfect font, maybe you can use an all caps italic for the title and the regular font for the text (see my Garamond example way down below). Don't use 15 different fonts--or even 5. It's too messy and busy. Keep it simple.

The best way to decide on a font would be to narrow it down to two fonts you like. Then print them both out in a title and a paragraph and ask your mom or dad if they can read it easily--or better yet, ask your grandma or grandpa which one is easier to read. Ask some kids. Choose the one that wins. What you with your young eyes may be able to read easily, could be murder on folks over 30.

Font size for text. Now be fair to your grandma. Don't print something out in a 6 point font and ask her if she can read it. An exhibit should be printed in at least an 18 point font. Some captions could be at 16 point but try to not go smaller than that. But remember, different fonts will print out in different sizes, so 18 point in one font could be the same size as a 20 point in another. Experiment and ask others what they think. People love to offer opinions.

You can try making the font size a bit larger on the most important caption to emphasize your point. Or if space is an issue (and when isn't it?) figure out how big your piece of paper can be while still getting everything else on the board, and then enlarge your font to the biggest it can be and still fit on that size piece of paper.

Font size for title. For the title at the top of the center panel of the exhibit (the one that isn't on a paper with a paragraph of text on it) the letters can be as big as you choose to make them and still fit the title in one (or maybe two) lines. There are lots of different ways to do it. If your exhibit is about trees or forests, make the title out of little sticks glued to a tan background (make sure you have enough contrast in color so people can see it). If your exhibit is about toys, make your title out of Lego's or marbles and glue them on a board. You want it to be creative, but it still needs to be readable and neat as a pin. Messy exhibits make it harder for the audience to understand your message.

So you want to use a cool font but your top title has to be, say, three feet wide and you don't have access to a large format printer. Don't despair! You can make a stencil out of any cool font. We did this for the exhibit title you can see here in this photo of the Hollywood Cowboys exhibit.

If you do it that way, you can actually paint on your panel in the style of any font you have! Cool, huh? I can't draw worth a hoot, but I can print letters out on a computer, and cut and paint and I look like an artist! The only limitation you will have is the height of your paper and I doubt you'd want letter more than 8" high, anyway.

You could also make letters from interesting papers that way. Look at these examples. Here's how to do it: 1. Find a paper you like. Use wrapping paper or print out an image from your computer (you can find free images on the web). 2. Make your letters as high as you want them to be. 3. Cut them out with scissors. 4. trace around each letter on the back of the wrapping paper or whatever you are using. 5. Cut that letter out with scissors and voila! a word made from cool paper. See illustrated step by step instructions here.

Cool fonts. Okay, here's the fun part. There are so many cool fonts in the world it's just hard to choose. Remember I said that your color and design and font should all be related to support the theme of your exhibit? Take a look at some of these fonts and think about what topics they might go with:

"Burnstown Dam" a western font good for a title	This font is called "Grinched"	This font is called "Calvin and Hobbes". It's good for a title in a kid-related exhibit, but it will make you woozy if you make a whole paragraph out of this.	This is called "Fossil." It might be good for a dinosaur exhibit
Probably a title font--not for a paragraph. I hope I don't have to tell you what kind of a theme it would work for. Font is called "Circus"	This is a title font called "Terylene Top" It reminds me of the 1950s or 60s	I like this one. It' a funky title called "Chorizo"	a fancier font for a title called "Aladdin"
This is "Fiorne" It looked to me like a title font for something from the Middle Ages. So does this one called "Oxford":	Looks like that, doesn't it? The font is called "Fox Trot" and it's quite a readable font. Kind of 1920s, too.	This font begged me to make it orange. Those are supposed to be little flames coming from the top of the letters. It's called "FlamingDCHeavy"	This is a pretty common font called "Comic Sans". It also works well for kid kind of stuff. Another kid-handwriting font is "lemonade"
Now I'm going to make you look at a few examples of my favorite font, "Garamond". It's great for paragraph text and it's pretty common.	Isn't that just spiffy looking? I'm not sure I'd do a whole page in it, but for a sentence or two it would be great.	I used this font for the titles on the website for the American Revolution exhibit. I just love those "A's".	This font is called "Collegiate" and it makes a good title for something about schools. There are lots of similar fonts out there.
What can I say? It's just fun. It's called "3Hour Tour" There's another similar font out there called "Gilligan's Island"	This is called "Lucida Handwriting". I've used this font when I want to show that something was handwritten. But you might be able to find something better.	This is called "NevilleScript" It's a big more "festive" than Lucida. A bit harder to read, maybe, but it's nice. It reminds me of a woman's handwriting--don't know why.	Flower Power! A good titling font for a 1960s/70s exhibit. It's called "Hippy Display Caps"
This one is called "Mesquite Std." Rather western, I'd say.	Music notes might come in handy. This is a webdings font called "Composer"	This font is called "Morocco"	The fanciest font I have. It's called "ShelleyVolante"
This is a casual font called "Tempus Sans"	This is called "SnowtopCaps"	"ToolShopCaps" What else is there to say?	The font made to look like a famous signature. It's called "Walt Disney Script 4.1"
THE perfect font if you were doing something on dinosaurs. It's called "Jurassic"	I don't know where I'd ever use it, but I like it. It's called "Legothick"	Which is how I see this font. It's called "Mona Lisa" Not a font to use in a car racing exhibit.	Perfect for your exhibit on the history of Wall Street. It's called "Currency"