idea for organizing fonts and dingbats

[courtneyray]

I just got my cricut and SCAL a few weeks ago and have been lurking on this board and decided its time to post something. I have already acquired TONS of fonts and dingbats thanks to everyone on here who is nice enough to post. When doing projects in SCAL I get so frustrated with looking for a dingbat or font that I KNOW I have but cannot find for the life of me. Today, I decided to come up with a solution to that problem. I took a word doc and have typed the entire keyboard out and keep copy/pasting that for each font. I labeled it with its appropriate name and the goal is to print all the pages and put them in a binder. That way, when someone wants me to do a project for them, they can look at everything I have and I will also be able to keep my sanity. Hope this helps someone else out there although it is time consuming and I expect it to eat all my ink in my printer.

[Sweetness4713]

Good idea and welcome to the boards.. Don't be afraid to post more. .We don't bite.. Well at least some of us don't.. ROFLMAO..

[Jayne]

OMG....that must take ages.....not a chance of me doing that...lol...but good luck

[courtneyray]

Yes, it is taking forever! Since I'm a newbie I don't have THAT many fonts yet so I figured I'd start now and when I get more I can add them. Nothing better to do on this rainy Sunday....

[firstcut]

I have an easy to use inkscape template on my blog that will allow you to print a one page character map for any font you have installed. There is also an Adobe Illustrator version.
http://cleversomeday.wordpress.com/2010 ... -template/

[courtneyray]

ohh thats perfect! When i dl it, it is a .txt file and i can import it into inkscape but it won't let me change the font. am I doing something wrong?

nevermind. when i looked at the comments on the bottom i found what i was looking for. awesome! thanks so much!

[Jayne]

I have 2000+ fonts....lol

[firstcut]

I have thousands of fonts as well. I mainly do this with the mixed theme dingbats. Otherwise I have no idea what images they have. I also like having printouts of my favorite dingbats. The ones from letteringdelights come with a pdf character map already.
Macs have a built in way to print a one line sample of each font so that works much better for standard fonts.

[lindamac]

that seems like so much work! Why can't you use Font Explorer or another of the same type program?

[firstcut]

Font Explorer (at least the Mac version) won't print a character map. I do use the built in character map and fontbook to help me pick fonts and characters on screen a lot, but like having the pages to flip through when I'm away from the computer. I am always finding dingbat images I didn't know I had.