For these games we are working on for a new kids site (more on this soon!) I had to look for a ‘popcorn’ font. I took a few old timey images and tried to match the fonts. These were the fonts that I came up with:

1. Curlz by Ascender Corp. I cut off the serifs at the bottom and slanted the letters. This is a good font for a movie theatre popcorn bag.

2. Saloon Girl by Fontmesa. I broke down each font, and gave each letter a fat 3pt outline with the ink bottle tool. Then I broke down those outlines and gave each of those the final outline. Great font for on a popcorn machine.

3. Salsbury by Larabie. This font was already made to look like the font on a popcorn bag, so no changes here.

4. Queen Rosie by Fontdiner. Another great font here would be zebrawood by Linotype.

This year, we started work on two new kids sites. Both sites are for kids that are just starting to read and recognize letters. Usually, when we use audio, there are no font limitations, since kids should get a wide range of font exposure early on, in order to categorize. But if kids are just starting to read, we want to make sure to use fonts that are legible to them and close to the primary print font. We were looking for fonts that have the following:

• a single storey lowercase a
• an open lowercase g
• an I & J with serifs
• a “ball & stick” nine
• a curved tail on the lowercase q
• a rounded lowercase y

The two best primary print fonts that we have seen out there are Sassoon Montessori, by Club Type. This font has been tested on children, you can read the reasons why this font is one of the best here.  Another, more affordable option, is the ABC Print package from fonts4teachers, for $9.95. It also includes versions with trace dots, lines and arrows, for worksheets. We like to use Report, a Larabie font.

The one thing that is harder to find, are fun display fonts, that have all the right letters. We still want to use a fun font on buttons, and headers, that is recognizable but more ‘wacky’ then the regular body type font. This is why Snert is coming out with a new line of fonts: Primary Display Fonts. They all have the single storey ‘a’, the open lowercase ‘g’, a capital I and J with serifs, and the rest. The fonts are thick, and perfect for headers and buttons!