1. Always try to have the text overlapping the main render (or in the case of these manips, just overlapping the player), but not as the focal point.

2. Stay away from stroke. It looks bad 99% of the time.

3. Try to stay simple with text. A solid arial or helvetica can go a much longer way than extravagent fonts.

4. NEVER EVER EVER go all caps in script fonts. :P Try to go all lower case as much as possible.