Sanity Check - A Terrific Example of Using a Theme for Inspiration
Jun 23Creating freebies for a site is always a great way to draw traffic, but the folks over at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society have truly taken this to another level. You may not be entirely familiar with the works of author H.P. Lovecraft, but these folks live and breathe for Cthulhu. They’ve created historical fonts (which are not free, but very inexpensive - an entire CD for $20).
Best of all, there’s a treasure trove of free historical documents that you can customize. Drivers licenses, a private investigator’s license, telegrams and picture postcards, to name a few. The best (in my ever humble opinion), is a very realistic “Certificate of Insanity“. We all know someone who is certifiable, yet running loose in the (workplace, dorm, neighborhood) world. Wouldn’t a certificate of insanity make a great gift?
You’ll need a later version of Adobe Acrobat reader to customize and print out these goodies. Some of the files are large, so it was easier for me to click the link to the PDF and select “Save Link as” or “Save Target As” (depending on which browser) and download these instead of trying to open them in a web browser window. Once you’ve opened them in the Adobe Acrobat reader, you can read the instructions and customize the text.
The Adobe PDF Reader features an icon in the upper right corner of the screen, labeled “highlight fields” that will help you to find out what you can customize. I found it very helpful to locate the text fields within these documents.
In the category of more useful printouts, you can download a PDF that includes everything you need to create your own vintage library. The free kit includes library pockets, library cards, call letters for the spines of books, and labels for your restricted or reserved volumes.
All of these goodies are created by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, who make props for films. They’ve also produced some films of their own, most notably The Call of Cthulhu, a black and white film done as a silent. These people are dedicated to creating a historical look and feel for typography and documents that is truly inspirational.