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␡August 31, 2017 3 Comments
Welcome to the Samantha font tutorial! Here you will find all of the training you need to start using the Samantha font. This is one of the most beautiful fonts around. It offers so much flexibility; opening up a world of possibilities in your designs!
I cannot recommend this font enough! The Samantha font is truly unique in how stylish and varied the glyphs are. I've spent literally hours searching for the "perfect" glyph. You can fine-tune your designs to perfection.
There are a lot of Samantha tips I have learned along the way doing my own designs, and I am going to share my favorite ones with you. The following will walk you through how to install the font, how to find the "perfect" glyphs, and how to use implement the font in an actual design project.
The pricing of the Samantha Upright Pro font can vary. I recommend going to MightyDeals.com and purchasing the font through them.
When I bought it was for only $17! It was regularly $75, so it was is a great deal!
With this stylish font, you get:
This one font is really all you need to get started. There are several different flavors of it, including Samantha Italic Pro (also usually selling for $17 individually on MightyDeals.com), or the option to buy the entire font bundle. The font bundle includes all four different variations on the Samantha font:
Buckle your seat belts, bolt down your cutting machines, and gear up. Soon you'll be a Samantha Font Pro! Here is an outline of what we will cover:
Download the font from the website you purchased the font at. If you used the link from above at MightyDeals.com, you will get a pop-up like this when you attempt to download the file:
Typically, downloaded fonts will be a ZIP file. The one from MightyDeals that I bought was named SamanthaUprightPRO.zip. The name of the file that you see may be slightly different than mine, depending on what version of the font you purchased.
Before you can start using the font, you will need to install it onto your machine. The steps to do this depend on what kind of computer you are using.
On a Windows machine, I recommend using the Character Map program. This is a built-in program that will already be installed on your machine, no matter what version of Windows you are running.
To open up Character Map, either click the Windows button at the bottom-left of your screen, or press the Windows button on your keyboard.
Type "Character Map" into the search box, and select it from the list of search results.
This will open up the Character Map program.
At the top of the window, open up the drop-down menu which will display a list of every font you have installed on your machine. Scroll through the list and select the Samantha Upright Font.
The grid of glyphs will refresh and it will display the massive list of glyphs available for this font. You can scroll them to view them all. Click on one of them to expand the image and get a slightly larger view of it.
The process of selecting glyphs and copying them into your clipboard is not so intuitive, so let me detail the process. Below, I have selected a glyph for the letter 'L' by left-clicking on it. In order to copy it, you first have to select it. Click the Select Button to add the glyph into the "Characters to copy:" textbox.
You will see that the 'L' glyph gets added into the "Characters to copy:" textbook. It is really, really small, but it is there. That is one of the quirks with Character Map that you'll just have to live with, the text size there is just too darned small.
Lastly, click the Copy button to copy the glyph into your clipboard, where you can then paste it into other software.
On a Mac, I recommend using the program called Font Book. It comes built-in to the Mac operating system, and works like a charm.
Go ahead and open up Font Book. You can press Ctrl + Space to open Spotlight, then just type in Font Book and press Enter.
First, we need to set up Font Book so that it is allowed to show us all of Samantha Font's wonderful letter fancifications (that's a word, right?). Go up to the top system bar and select View > Repertoire. This step is important! You won't see the glyphs if you don't set this.
In the middle pane of the Font Book, you'll see a list of all of the fonts that have installed. Left-click the Samantha font that you have installed.
The right pane will then display the HUGE list of glyphs available. Below, you can see some of the permutations available for a capital letter 'L'.
Copy a glyph into your clipboard by left-clicking on the one you want, and then pressing Cmd + C.
Now you can go back into your program of choice (Inkscape, Silhouette Studio, Design Space...) and paste (Cmd + V) the glyphs into your own designs.
Let's go through an example and I will demonstrate, step-by step, how I used the Samantha Font on a design I made.
1. Start a new project in Silhouette Studio. (Hotkey: Cmd + N)
2. Choose the Samantha font from the font drop-down menu in the top toolbar.
3. Select the Text tool from the left toolbar. (Hotkey: t)
4. Left-click on your canvas and add a line of text that says: "We made a wish..."
5. Below that, add a second line that says: "and you came true"
6. We are going to replace the beginning "W" of the phrase with something a little bit fancier. Open up Font Book and select a capital W that strikes your eye. Left-click the glyph of your choice and copy it to your clipboard (Cmd + C).
7. Back in Silhouette Studio, delete the "W" at the beginning of the phrase, and then paste (Cmd + V) in the new "W".
8. Next, replace the letter "m" in the word "made". Go back into Font Book and find a "m" glyph that you like. Copy (Cmd + C) it into your clipboard.
9. Back in Silhouette Studio, delete the "m" at the beginning of the word "made", and paste (Cmd + V) in the new "m".
10. Go through the rest of the text and replace the letters that you see fit. You can change as many or as few as you like. The Samantha font looks great all on it's own, but when you take the time to find the perfect glyph replacement, you can really take a design over the top.
Here is how mine ended up.
Once you have it the way you want it, let's go about filling in the text with a background color.
11. Click and drag over both lines of text to select them.
12. Click the Fill Panel button on the right toolbar. Select a pink color from the array of colors.
13. Voila! The finished product.
December 31, 2018
Thank you for this ahhh’some and ahhh’mazing tutorial! Am I looking to buy the desktop or web version of Samantha Font Pro on Mighty Deals? And for what you used in this tutorial, is it just the one version for $17 on their site? Thanks! <3 Happy New Year, too!
February 22, 2018
Do you have suggestions on fonts that pair well with Samantha Upright Pro?
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November 22, 2017 4 Comments
Peggy Hayes
September 10, 2019
Is there any way I can get these directions in a printed copy?