Using Debossed Fonts: MatDesigner

Ever since the Wizard™ could cut letters, the quest has been to cut them smaller and smaller. Even when the tight curves were engineered out of the letters or cut as V-Grooves, the minimum height was still over an inch.

Debossing presses into the matboard. There is no cutting, so the minimum size is about three-eighths of an inch.

There are four fonts designed for debossing.

• Bristol is a traditional serif typeface.

• Vienna is contemporary sans serif typeface.

• Ariadne is a flourishing italic typeface.

All three of these fonts deboss as single lines.
Thorndike is a Roman typeface and it debosses as a double line so there is width variation in the letter strokes. It looks best a little larger.

There are even punctuation marks in these debossed fonts as well.

Add debossed letters to the mat design like you would add any other LetterMat opening.

Click the Openings tab at the top of the edit screen.
Then click the LetterMat button under Other Openings at the bottom left.
The default LetterMat will appear.

To change the font, click the Properties tab then click the drop down arrow beside the Font Name field.

Scroll down and click on the one you want.

At the bottom left under Cut As it reads Normal. This means that it will cut as it was designed. It does not mean that it will cut as a normal bevel.

All the debossed fonts were set to deboss using the thin tool. If you would like to select one of the wider tools, click the drop down arrow beside Normal and select the tool width you want. This field will then reflect your choice.

Type the words you want into the Text box at the top.

Note that there are now some punctuation marks.
Change the Height.

A suggested minimum height is 0.38 inch.
Click the Keep Aspect Ratio button. This keeps the letters in their intended proportions.
You can condense the letters or expand them, but this is a good place to start.

Kerning changes the size of the space between the letters.

Tracking changes the size of the space between each word.

If you click the + and – buttons beside them, the values change a sixteenth of an inch
with each click. (One millimeter with each click in metric).

Hold the Atl key on the keyboard as you click the + and – buttons and these values change 0.01 inch per click. (0.2mm per click in metric)

Zoom in on the caption so you can get a closer look as you make these changes.

Click on Tools at the top, click on Zoom, then select the zoom level you want.

An easier way is to hold the Control key on the keyboard and click the + key to zoom in.

You can click it up to four times to get 150%, 200%, 250%, or 300% magnification.

Scroll bars appear at the bottom and on the right so you can move the view around the entire design.

Hold the Control key and click the – button to zoom back out.

You can add more captions and openings. Use the Alignment buttons and guide lines to align and space the debossed items just as you would for every other item in the design.

With debossing, spacing is more critical than with cut letters.

Some of the letters in the Ariadne font have extra flourishes and do not space very nicely. The letters of this font are all at an angle and some of their extended parts make their bounding rectangles even larger.

This example shows the results from the program’s kerning.

• The E is too far away from the m.

• The y is much too far away from the l.

• The period is too far away from the T.

• The o is too far away from both the R and the g.

• The s is too far away from the r.

Click the Advanced tab at the top.

Select the caption and click the Explode Font button at the bottom left under Other Options.

This breaks the caption into its separate letters.

Each letter can be individually moved now.

The E has already been moved closer to the m using the right arrow key on the keyboard.

Now, select the E, m, i, and l.

Hold the Alt key on the keyboard and click the right arrow key until these letters move as close to the y as you want them.

With each click of the arrow key they will move 0.01 inch. (0.2mm in metric)

Select Emily and the T.

Move them to the right until the T is as close to the period as you want it.

Keep selecting groups of letters and moving them into place using the arrow keys.

All that remains to be done in this illustration is to move the s closer to the r, then move the g, e, r, and s closer to the o.

Remember the Undo button. If you unintentionally change something’s size or move it as you are selecting it, the undo button will restore it.

Once this manual spacing is complete, it would be helpful to lock the letters back together. Then, as you add the opening, move it around, and space it with the caption, you will not accidentally move any of the individual letters.

Select all the letters.

Click the Advanced tab then click the Group Selection button.

When you click it, all the letters will disappear.

Do not panic.

Click the Properties tab.

At the bottom left under Options is a Merge Paths? button. It will already be checked.

When you click it and uncheck it, the caption will return.

Explanation: All of these letters are just lines, not closed paths. Only closed paths are recognized in merging. Lines will group, though. Once their paths are unmerged, they reappear. And they remain grouped.

You can now add openings, grooves, and more captions.

The Emily T. Rogers caption will stay in one piece and can be moved around and aligned using all the Wizard™ tools without fear of disturbing the spacing of the letters.

Any LetterMat or true type font can be set to deboss.

Design the caption. Note that the height of the letters is set to 0.7 inch which is far less than the suggested minimum height for this LetterMat font.

To set the letters to deboss, click the Properties tab and click the drop down arrow by the field under Cut As on the left.

Select one of the three deboss widths at the bottom.

Spacing these small letters is critical. Zoom in for a closer look.

Kerning is the space between each letter and Tracking is the space between each word.
Hold the Alt key on the keyboard when you adjust these fields.

Now, as you click the + and – buttons, the values will move 0.01 inch per click instead of the usual sixteenth inch per click. In metric the value will change 0.2mm per click instead of the usual 1mm per click.

This gives you much more precision as you refine the spacing of these small letters.

All of the alignment tools work with debossed items just as they do with all other items to center and space the caption and the opening.

There are hundreds spectacular fonts you could load into your Windows font directory. The software can manipulate them, but the blade cannot always cut them.

Remember that they were designed with very little consideration given to how they would cut. However the details and sharp corners are not much of a problem with debossing.

Click the Add TrueType Font Opening button under the Openings tab.

Click on the Properties tab to edit. When you click the drop down button by Font Name, you can choose from all the fonts in the computer’s Windows directory. The font in this example is from a disk of fonts.

To set a True Type font to deboss, click the drop down arrow under Cut As and select the tool width you want.

Just as with the LetterMat debossed fonts, the spacing needs to be refined - particularly with these small captions.

In MatDesigner™, items space according to bounding rectangles – imaginary rectangles drawn around each entire figure.

The bounding rectangles of the R and the Y do not account for the way they could nestle together more closely. In typography, spacing is done according to kerning pairs: an R next to a Y, or an A next to a V is spaced differently than an N next to an I, or an O next to a C.

So far in this example, the caption has been exploded, and the C, the H, and the E have been moved to look better together. Remember, for more precision, hold the Alt key so that the arrow keys move selected items 0.01 inch with each click.

To give the caption a bit more flair, the sizes of some of the letters have been changed. Look at signs and logos for ideas and inspiration. Here, the H, the E, the R, and the L were reduced an eighth inch, and the Y is now a quarter inch taller.

Use the alignment buttons to get the tops of the letters even. Note, that the C is a few clicks higher just to give it emphasis.

All that is left to be done is to space the last three letters. Select them one at a time, and use the arrow keys to nudge them into place. When you are finished with spacing, select all the letters and click the Group Selection button so that they do not shift accidentally. The caption can then be moved around the layout as you add, manipulate, and align the openings.

Don’t forget about the other design tools in MatDesigner™.

Here the letters were exploded, fanned, and merged. Then rotate the grouped caption.
Copy and paste it to get a duplicate.
Rotate it a degree or two more and offset it just a few clicks to get this energetic effect.

The double V-Groove with the gap in it is template 706. Set the Nameplate Height and Width parameters to 0. Make the opening very small and make the Offset parameter large. Then change the size and placement of the gap with the appropriate parameters.