One of the banes of my existence as a freelance graphic artist has been trying to track down weird fonts. You routinely get logos or layouts that have the fonts converted, and they’re invariably something obscure or tacky or from a strange foundry.
If you’re like me, you’ve got thousands upon thousands of fonts from every manufacturer out there, and rolling through them all can take a long, long time – and make you crazy because of the subtle variations.
But – a great tool has come to the resuce: What the Font from MyFonts.com.
You scan the offending font and upload it to their server, answer a few questions and it gives you several fonts that it most likely is. The better your input is, the more precise the answer is. Plus, once you’ve got your answer, it gives you links to the font manufacturer so you can buy the font if you need to.
Best of all, it’s free and it’s fast. It’s not always dead-on, but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to the perfect tool. Very nice, very slick.
Now, if it would just revoke the design license of folks that use Comic Sans, I’d be a happy man!
Might come off as a silly question, but I need answers. I was formerly employed by a large company as a designer. I have left the company to start my own freelance design business. I still continue to do design work for my former company. Do I need to purchase a set of fonts in order to legally do my work as a freelancer? What is a good set to buy? Or is it better to buy them on an as needed basis? Any recommendations would be appreciated. My background is in surface design but i do work with fonts often. This has always been a cloudy area for me. Thanks!
Thanks for reading – and no, that’s not a silly question.
As far as the legality – I have to plead a little bit o’ ignorance on that. I will say – it is ALWAYS better to have your own, fully licensed copy of ANYTHING you have on your computer. Fonts included.
As far as having a bunch of fonts, – really, it all kind of depends on your needs. If you work with a lot of fonts, or plan to work with a lot of fonts, then you should go ahead and buy a collection.
BUT – I would suggest buying a font library from a big manufacturer – Adobe, Letraset, ITC, etc. That way, you get the real fonts that you’ll need. They might not be all that exciting or funky, but you’ll get the Avant Gardes, the Garamonds, the Futuras that you need – and they’ll be the full versions that are actually used by printers and service bureaus.
You can always get the funkier fonts too, but you really need to get a good, solid straightforward collection to form the foundation of your whole library.
For some of the more unusual fonts, you can get freebies all over the place. A couple of my favorites are
http://www.1001freefonts.com/
http://www.typenow.net/
http://www.acidfonts.com/
Just Google “free fonts” or “free cool fonts” and you’ll come up with a variety of things for download.