One problem that I don’t think has ever really been solved for a graphic designer is an easy way to find the right font for a job. How often have you known what you are looking for, maybe something fun, maybe a modern font, but the task of finding that right font is tedious. You end up spending so much time trying to find that perfect elusive font that it leaves you less time for the rest of the design. Sometimes with lack of time or budget you just reach for the trusty old favourite, when the right font could have really added “personality” to a design
For ages I have meant to organise my fonts by style, but a new job always arrives and I put it on the back burner. Free fonts sites such as DaFont, in my opinion, make it far easier to search for a font by style category than some of the commercial ones and are great for headings and sometimes logos. I am always wary of using free fonts for body copy as the kerning is not always great and they do not always include a full set of characters.
Suitcase can be of help by typing in a word and viewing it in different styles, the only downside is the font has to have been loaded into suitcase to view it.
The best solution I have found so far for seeing what fonts I have on my machine, without having to install them in something like suitcase is FontCat for Mac. In FontCat you can open a whole folder of fonts, view them all, and create printed sheets of them if you want. There is a free trial version if anyone wants to try it out
Has anybody else got any good solutions for finding and cataloging fonts?
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12 Comments
I use http://www.abstractfonts.com for my fonts.. Yes also use Adobe font manager to view my installed fonts. and also enable them when I need them..
Hi Santosh,
Thanks for the tip on abstract font, its nice and easy to find fonts there too. I like the way they organise them into styles too.
I agree with you! sometimes find the correct font is a pain!
This site (www.myfonts.com) is also helpfully
Choosing the right font always takes me forever too! I use a program called The Font Thing, that works great for quickly viewing your desired text in all the fonts available on your machine.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~scef/tft.html
Hi Randa
That program looks great, I like the way it looks like you can organise your fonts by style too. I wish they had it for mac too.
I went to UrbanFonts.com for my recent choice of fonts on my blog header. I found them to be pretty good, but I lack experience to order to compare accurately.
Kind of related, if you know the style of font you want and you have a sample image, upload it to http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/. Alternatively, you can take a quiz at http://www.identifont.com/identify.html to help you identify a font if you already have a brief idea of what you want.
Thanks LaurenMarie, Some good tips there
I just started using Linotype’s FontExplorer, and I’m in love. It is by and far, the most powerful font browser I’ve used to date, and what’s more, I can add notes to any font specimen or family, which I find to be really really handy, because I can finally ditch my huge text file of font notes, and import it all right into FontExplorer. I can also browser Linotype’s online foundry of families, and purchase them directly from the app if I wish.
FontExplorer is definitely worth checking out, and sounds like a viable long-term solution to some of the issues you addressed in this post.
Would some of my readers face problems reading my blog if I use abstract fonts or some unusual fonts?
James, depend on your reader font knowlegde , but my suggest is don’t use any font that hard to read because it can make reader confusion ,for paragraph you can use san seriff like calibri, arial, etc. i did’t say unusual fonts is bad, but better to use normal font.
It was all so much easer for my farther. He would simply go to one of the type cabinets, pull out a dray and show it ti his customer. He had nearly 20 fonts for them to chose from which was an unheard of range for the small community he served.
Choice sometimes makes thinks harder not easer.