To all you graphic designers out there, can I get some feedback on your font handling techniques? I understand all the different font programs out there, and I try not to keep too many fonts in my Windows Font folder… but my dilemma is, I am not a master typographer… when I need to design a new web site or logo etc., I know what theme and feel the font should have, but I cant equate that to a specific font in my head. So basically what I have been doing is using AMP or Font Xplorer to basically look through all 7000 fonts if this is an important aspect to the design. So unless it is one of the 10-15 fonts I know, I have to spend 10-20 excruciating minutes looking through all my fonts with the text I need.
There is no way every designer who doesnt have 7000+ fonts memorized do this every day for a new project. And even if you can group them in folders, are you supposed to suck it up and spend one day grouping all these fonts yourself? And even when you do, there will be a ton of fonts that can be categorized as 2, 3 or 5 different types… so then you put them in every one of the applicable folders?
I guess I just need a general tutorial on how to pick a font from thousands when you know the feel but not the name of the font.
How do u tell the quality difference between fonts? Do you print them out at like 8pts and 500 pts or… what is the general methodology, ie, if I found a font in my stored collection i really like, but its for a real important client for a huge billboard… i cant risk a sloppy font, so…
Serifs are classic-looking fonts such as Georgia and Times. Look at the letter “n”, for example, and you should notice a sort of flick that helps to blend the letter into the one in front of it. In other words, you get more of an adult, joined-up style of writing. The problem with serifs is that they don’t display too well at small sizes.
Sans-serifs are fonts without serifs. The word “sans” is French: it means “without”. This group includes the likes of Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Trebuchet and Helvetica. The text on this forum uses sans-serifs.
Cursives include those wedding invitation style fonts such as Shelley.
If it makes it easier, you can also make your own categories. I have a category called “interesting”. I look at it every time I start a new project as it contains all the stuff I’d like to use.
I doubt I need more than a few hundred even if I did a lot more logo design… so u did edit it yourself one by one too huh? I am doing that right now, pain in the butt, esp when I have work to do… but I am doing it… I was hoping there was some easy way to group them by name or something… too bad fonts arent categorized by a suffix or prefix to make this easier, but I guess all “art” is subjective so… oh well.
And what is are the major differences between serif, sans-serif, cursive, etc?
Btw do u use TT and PS? I have what seems to be a lot of corrupt PS’s and I cant delete them, and I think it causing lags in my Adobe stuff.
Ya, its not easy considering now like 10 different experts have told me 10 different things, its amazing. I just started using The Font Thing and it is working well for organizing my fonts, which will take a while. And i do web design from top to bottom, so that does include designing logos and header graphics, etc… so sticking with the Windows fonts wont cut it for now… esp when I do have all these fonts at my disposal and I dont have to pay for any more. I have just started using AI more, but I dont think I will be designing my own fonts anytime soon. I’m not a great freehand artist…
I don’t think there is an easy way around this, and honestly from a designers point of view unless you are creating logos which are usually hand drawn in illustrator or something then you shouldn’t turn away from
Fonts are primarily stored as vector files (drawn with lines) so they can be scaled without degradation to very large sizes without loss of quality if they remain as vectors (lines).
Some programmes rasterise fonts (turn them into pixels), if and when this is done they should not be scaled as they are optimised for the size at which the conversion takes place. Early versions of photoshop rasterised fonts where as later versions could keep working with live text and vector objects right up to the point of spitting out the final file.
If you are using vector based programs either keep the font live, or once you have the layout as you want it convert the text layer to paths/outlines. (eg. Adobe Illustrator = select text object go to TYPE menu > Create Outlines.) There won’t be any loss of quality for retaining text in this manner and the printer who receives the file doesn’t require you to supply the font.
The only thing you may want to do is keep a record somewhere of the font that you used as once it is converted to outlines/paths it will lose track of the font name it used to be. Open it up in a few months and you’ll have a tough time remembering what it was.
The other thing to note is that sometimes it is good to save a copy of the file PRIOR to doing lots of converting to paths as if there are typos etc or the client wants a phrase changed it will speed up the alterations.
Font layout can be manually managed, even if you have a free downloaded font, by manually adjusting the spacing between letters. The kerning pairs are often left out of these free fonts so they don’t always look good when a phrase is used because of larger/smaller gaps between letters. You can make them look more presentable by doing this yourself if there isn’t too much text to fuss around with.
Also some of the downloadable free stuff don’t contain a full letter set (no apostrophe etc), get creative with what you do have (base line shift the comma that is included).
I come from a mac background where historically font management was more of an issue than on PCs, I have always used a commercial font manager that auto activates fonts as required. This works well for me as my bread and butter is the Adobe suite which is almost universally supported. I’m sure the same functionality exists for PC users some of the companies make both a mac and a PC version.
These usually run an initial sweep of your system collecting fonts that have been installed or used by software and collating them into a library. The software launches on start up and fonts are handled from there. You can create collections of your favourite fonts or short lists for a particular job.
Personally I’ve collected massive amounts of fonts across the years but can happily say that there is a big difference in font companies that produce quality and fun free fonts for the occasional header or special project. It is really easy to collect zillions of fonts that you will never use, or use once so a font management programme helps by not using system resources when you’re not using them.
As for collections, you’ll typically find a few fonts you love and end up working with a smaller set than you think branching out when required. There’s nothing quite like your own memory for fonts. Either cull or use a WYSIWYG font viewer to pick what you like.
But my problem is searching for a specific font for that specific design I am doing… I assume you have them categorized so at any given time, if you need, say, a “classy old school” font, you have a folder for those correct? Then my biggest point is, did you spend that much time putting each of your thousands of fonts in these folders one day or throughout the years you obtained more fonts?
My problem is, I have so many, and I never organized anything because I wasnt heavy into typography until more recent design work. So now I am finding it too frustrating searching through all these, let alone I have like 2000 in my windows font folder because I cant decide which to take out, because that will also take a huge chunk of time.
So is there any easy way to do this, ie, “All fonts that start with ‘Helvet’ will be a classy font” or something where I can get a clue of what a font is like just from their name, etc?
A way that works for me - Every time I use a new font, I write it in the Illustrator file. By writing it…I have a better chance of remembering it. It also helps when a customer asks what font that is because outlining the text will lose the font information.
I always have the lowest amount of fonts installed possible and only add typefaces into the fonts folder when I find a use for them (thereby building up my library of “critical fonts” as I go). Honestly I doubt anyone has a need for so many fonts being installed, therefore having a folder with all your fonts (unused) perhaps stored on a removable hard disk and when you find a need for a new typeface you simply browse the disk until you find something you like (then install it) seems like the best way to go about the task. It takes a while, yes… but there’s no point bloating your system up with an unmanageable collection of unused fonts.
I am not a designer, and would not need that much of fonts.
But this question can be generic, and here is what I would do with the selected lovely fonts.
I suggest to load the selected fonts only - while you are working. wanring: It could be harmful to execute like this
Copy the entire fonts somewhere in your hard disk.
Consider the best fonts and put them in a different location.
You can make multiple sets of fonts and storage locations.
Then, make a bath file to copy/paste those fonts within %WINDIR%\fonts.
Make a reverse batch script to remove them from there too.
WARNING:
DO NOT remove windows’ own fonts.
Before you begin a design, load the related font-sets.
After you complete a design, delete the fonts you loaded.
Loading too many font files will definitely impact the OS’s performance.
Managing fonts is a real pain, especially, when you have thousands of 'em (as I do, after all these ears, huh). I’m on Windows, don’t know how it is on the Mac, but when you install a thousand of fonts, the programs start to act real slow. Historically, I was using Fontexpert (http://proximasoftware.com), which allowed me to organize fonts in groups and - I think, that every font manager allows it - to keep the most fonts on disk, arranged by folders, and install/uninstall only the ones you need. (Btw, Fontexpert has a nice 3rd party companion called DiskFonts http://anastasiy.com/diskfonts for Illustrator (and other Adobe progs) to preview fronts right inside the design program you use).
So to make things short, I’m keeping my fonts in folders on disk organized by family and serif/non-serif property and then I install it with my favorite program only when I need it. I have a large, real large folders tree that I have sorted myself through all these years…
Many programs like MainType (which I use) have an export to web function where you can produce a web page containing every single typeface (making use of text you select and various sizes). While it’s not a perfect solution, you could try zooming into the exported page and see how the font scales based on the font smoothing technology (or based on the size of the text being used). As for print - because fonts are vector based, the “jaggies” shouldn’t be much of an issue as the font scaling isn’t based on the screens ability to smooth the edges, it’s based on the printers pixel density, it should look fine on a billboard.
