Stupid Font Tricks

By jimdiggitydog

I’ve spent too much time (not billable hours, mind you) trying to find a slightly weird font that I’ve used in some job. It’s not a typical font - and it’s not a typical foundry.

It’s something specialized that I can’t remember. And, to top it all off, I’ve converted the font to outlines to make it easier to fill and manipulate. So, when I open the file - no font warning telling me what it is…

I’m boned and I have to spend an hour rolling through Suitcase and the 8 billion fonts I have.

But - there are ways.

There are options to find that font (I detailed What the Font here), but they assume you’re using fairly normal fonts from a big-name foundry. The easiest and most time-effective thing to do is to know what the font is at all times.

So - a few simple solutions to remember the fonts:

1. Make a folder. Name that folder the font you used.

2. Make a note document (Word, TextEdit, whatever) that contains a list of the fonts used and keep it in the folder with the files for that job.

3. This is what I normally do - before you convert the font, copy and paste the text outside of the page within the document. That way, you get the ease-of-effects of the converted text, plus you get to have the “Missing font” dialog that will tell you the font used should you need to change it up.

It’s pretty simple stuff - but it’s saved me a bit of time.