How about you make your own custom font out of your handwriting!
Download purecaffeine.com bold font (licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND)
Use a service like YourFonts*, print out their template, fill in the boxes with your handwritten letters, numbers and symbols, scan it, upload it and get your own font generated for $10.
Then create a custom Balsamiq Configuration and reference your new, installed font. I recommend you don’t use an apostrophe in your font name … I did, and couldn’t get it to work so had to use a hex editor to rename the font.
This is a sample wireframe of the GMail interface using the font generated from my handwriting:
* I am not affiliated with YourFonts.
// purecaffeine.com: user experience design, social experience design, social media, Gov 2.0, design thinking and service design blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Nathanael, thanks for the tip. I’m starting to use Balsamiq Mockups a lot these days so I’ll definitely be giving it a go.
Great tip. I’m still at a loss as to why Balsamiq decided on Comic Sans in the first place.
Nathaniel, this is awesome.
Mo, if I had a $…here’s a link to start with: http://community.balsamiq.com/balsamiq/topics/feedback_needed_on_comic_sans_replacement
and here’s some older ones: http://community.balsamiq.com/balsamiq/topics/comic_sans_bad_reception_from_designers which was followed by this one: http://community.balsamiq.com/balsamiq/topics/the_font_saga_continues_i_need_your_input
Now that we’ve switched to requiring Flash Player 10, I hope that we’ll be able to take advantage of the new text rendering engine to embed a pretty font instead. I think I am emotionally ready to try and tackle this thorny issue again.
I’m off to install Nathaniel’s font! :)
Another quick note. Here’s what to put in your BalsamiqMockups.cfg if you want to use Nathaniel’s cool font:
<config>
<fontFace>purecaffeine.com bold</fontFace>
</config>
It’s a weird feeling to be wireframing with someone else’s handwriting, a little bit of an out-of-body experience…trippy! :)
It’s pretty messy isn’t it :) And that was me trying to be neat!