Handy Mail Art Fonts

Dingbat fonts -- those wonderful typefaces made up of various themed symbols -- make my world go 'round. I love them as potent little terrariums of creativity. They take up so little space on the computer, but then WOW! you unlock them in Word or PowerPoint or your favorite image editing program, and out roll unlimited possibilities. They are scalable of course, either as you resize them in your type program, or subject them to whatever your image program can do, and colorable in so many ways.

I used to visit dafont.com in search of pretty black and white dingbat fonts whose characters I could transfer onto polymer clay, and then color with pencils before baking. Lately I've been using Mail Art and postage themed fonts, which I play with, and then print onto vellum paper and transparencies for use in collage.

The little graphic above represents only a smidgeon of what's available in MailArt Graphics by K-Type, which contains an unusually abundant number of characters.

He also produced this just-right alphanumeric font for mail art lovers called Mailart Rubberstamp:

There are other rubber stamp fonts around but I like this one because it's not obviously doctored to be grungy but still has a hint of poor spacing. Plus I love small caps.

I doctored the two characters below with PaintShop Pro filters, but you could also print them onto faux parchment stock or copy them on a laser printer and then do tape transfers layered onto a collage surface. These are from (you guessed it) Postage Stamps by Dixie's Delight:

Hmmmm. Not sure whether barcode fonts would confuse the postmaster, but hey, it's worth a try! This one is called CIA Code 39 and the designer is not identified at dafont:

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