Way back when I was learning about design, I committed some doozies. What're your worst ones? What're the worst ones you've seen? (I'm just remembering that it helped me to read reviews of what makes folks' eyes bleed so I could learn to not DO that!)

1. Mixing too many different fonts. I was once the queen of the silly conglomeration of typestyles. My layouts looked like elementary school collages.

2. Choosing inappropriate fonts for the material. Oh yes, I really did use Curlz on an obituary header once. Shudder.

3. Getting too photoshoppy. It took me a while to realize that not everything looks better with a bevel and a drop shadow.

4. Making type too small to print properly. If you put 5pt Arial Narrow on cheap newsprint at a small town paper, it looks like a line.

Whatch'all got? :)

IT is easy to make some of the sins you mentioned. In the start I feel we all want to prove all and we do too much, too many fonts, too much effects....

And we become counter productive. But most learn by mistakes and grow

Our artistic side seems to get us in trouble sometimes. I did many of yours but the one about the font in the obituary made me laugh.

I laughed at the obituary one too. My mistakes were similar to yours. It's easy to get too impressed with having a lot of unnecessary flourishes that distract or make the text illegible. I guess the cardinal rule of typography should be that if you can't read it, it doesn't work!

I've committed only one sin that you've listed up there: using the wrong fonts for the wrong situations. You have to admit though, when you really get to thinking about it, who decided that curly fonts should be silly? Why can't they be more formal, huh? :P Goodness knows that they're more fun to use than the vapid Times New Roman and Arial-related fonts.

I think my major early font sin was picking one I thought was great and using it for everything. I have also been guilty of the bevel and drop shadow addiction as well.

I too have done literally everything that you've mentioned. I've also done the following:

1. Using font that's too stereotypically appropriate for the project - I've used the creepy font (looks like dripping blood) for something that was actually supposed to be scary. Instead it came out looking like something a first grader would do.

2. Using the same font and font size for a large project - At one point I became too nervous using too many different fonts and muddying it up, so I used the same font and font size. Needless to say it looked incredibly boring.

LOL, I've been looking for an excuse to use Curlz for ages too. I don't think I'll follow suit if that's okay with you. :)

I'm just discovering the joys of all the different fonts and variations you can make with a graphics program. Talk about fun! I would love to use the KingdomHearts font somewhere on something but just don't have any project that's ornate enough. I'm also turning every photo I have into a kaleidoscope.

Re maria's comment - so how do you know where to draw the line between boring and overkill? Is there a rough guideline as to how many different kinds to use? Usually I just have one for the main text and a different one for the header.