Designers: How do u handle thousands of fonts?

[JMasterJ]

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.


Thanks!

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

No answers yet from MainType users?

I use MainType rather less than FontCreator, but what I do is organise my fonts in groups/folders according to foundry/program source.

MainType can produce a nice font catalogue like this, which I have put online to share with other users of Serif™ products.

Future versions of MainType may include other ways of analysing and comparing fonts, but for now it is largely down to users to organise their fonts. You can put the same font in several different groups by using shortcuts (i.e. without duplicating the fonts).

[Dave Crosby]

When I started collecting fonts I put them in a folder named Fonts with sub-folders by the year I added them, then I got a bunch - there are somewhere over 100,000 of them. (Gasp!) and started placing them by name in alpha-numeric sub-folders (1, 2, 3, - Aaa-Aab, Aac-Aad, etc).

That became a nightmare and didn't help me find a thing unless I remembered the name.
Then I discovered PANOSE. Click here for more information.
Visual is what I am mainly interested in!





So ... I started a NEW FOLDER named 1Fonts (to keep it at the head of the pack) with sub-folders for Panose and Special Collections for Dan X Solo, etc. and am still in the process of moving the fonts I REALLY LIKE into them.

Fonts.jpg (25.72 KiB) Viewed 4345 times

My Groups go into 1Groups - for special jobs like holidays, seasons, etc. This makes it easy to Load and unload groups.