Fontstruct : Totally awesome website of fonty goodness

So, while perusing the web last week I found this lovely website: fontstruct. Skeptical at first, I signed up and started making a blockular font. Cut to: 5 hours later.... Still working on the font... even though it was a really basic font, I couldn't stop putting the blocks together. It's like Legos for adult designers.

This site is amazingly easy to use and perfect for making that 101th pixel font that you REALLY needed. The impressive amount of blocks that you can use makes fontstructing fun to do. Whenever I would be thinking "I need a block shaped like..." and then I would find one. You can do some interesting things with blocks and not even try! The only problem I found is that I wasn't sure about the scaling of the font. Should I make it small, or large? That's just me I suppose. Some people having way too much time on their hands and make full scale blackletter fonts. Which is just amazing and ridiculous at the same time.

Some of my favorite fonts are:
Tight
Teatral
Luchador
Brickd

Awesome. If you are really cool you will go build a font. But you don't have to, I understand. Mine isn't done yet (and is lame) but I will let you know when I make a non-lame font. I will have to think of a way to nerdify my font more-so than it is now.

Oh, That's Right!

I'm self promoting in this post and there's nothing you can do about it. Was that too confrontational? Too bad! Whatcha gonna do? Stop reading? Ok, don't do that. I'll be nice. I love what you're wearing today. Is it new?

I wanted to talk today about some things I have in my shop that, for whatever reason, don't sell well. I'm proud of all the products I make but some of them just don't seem to fly off the theoretical shelves.

Take these for example. I think I've only sold one wrist pouch on Etsy since I started listing (and relisting) them a few years ago. I recently sold several at a craft fair, so I know they don't completely suck. Why don't they sell? Is it my photos? The shape of the bag? They are very functional; I use mine quite a bit. They also look great with 1" pinback buttons on the color field at the top of the pouch.

Another item that just sits and collects digital dust are the crochet flower pins. They're cute and bright and funky. Who doesn't love that? They have really cute buttons in the center, that's a huge selling point. They make a bold statement on a jacket or bag and $6 isn't a huge risk to take on something as awesome as these pins. Maybe I should photograph them ON something.

The last item I wanted to highlight is something else that sold well in person, but hasn't done so great online. The Tshirt Totes are really bold and eye catching, but have flopped on Etsy. I thought people would like them for market bags or everyday totes. They are fully lined and interfaced for extra stability. I also have to comb the stores for just the right shirts to use on these bags. I have to find ones that are funny, bold, and in excellent condition. It isn't easy.

So in this post I've had a few mood swings: from confrontational to nice to whiny. I'm not usually this erratic. Or am I? Any way, if anyone has any ideas why these things aren't flying off the site, let me know. I'm always interested in suggestions.