We in the Prepress department have a love/hate relationship with fonts, but we tend to love them more than hate them. We've been known to clamor rather excitedly over a newly discovered font. And we can't help sharing our excitement with others.
But there are millions of fonts out there. (by the way, do not load them all onto your computer at once, you will be sad!) And it's impossible to identify even a small portion of them at a glance. Have you ever had someone ask you to make them a business card with type that looks exactly like their favorite movie title, or hand you a sample of something and ask you to make their letterhead look like that sample? And they have no idea what that font is called. What can you do?
When a customer asks us to match a font, one of the first resources we turn to is the website Identifont.
This website has come up with the correct font for us time and time again. It's not perfect, but it makes our lives much easier. All you need is just a portion of the font, although the more letters you have for an example, the easier it is for Identifont to help you find the correct font.
Just enter in the letters you have, capital and lowercase, and Identifont will then ask you questions about how those letters look. They ask about serifs, strokes, slants, and curves, and how the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. And after you answer, they give you a list of fonts they think match your sample the best. It's that easy.
Identifont is not the only resource out there, but it has proven to be the most reliable in our experience, plus it's free, you don't have to log in and remember a password, and you get an immediate response.
For those of you who need more tools to try out and play with, you can also try the website What The Font?!, which seems to be pretty popular, the message board Typophile, a website similar to Identifont Type Navigator, or try just browsing through lists of fonts on any of the font websites that come up with a web search of "fonts." (But that sounds like the slow way of getting an answer. We'd rather have the answer handed to us on a silver platter!)
There may be millions of fonts and only one of you, but don't worry! There are myriad tools out there to help you identify the exact one you are looking for. If you need any help getting started in the search for that elusive font, email us at info@lorrainepress.com, and we'll try our hand at helping you identify your font.
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