Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with fonts

What's comparable to Myriad Pro Condensed?

deern the headlice — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:16:52 -0800

What's a nice font that's comparable to Myriad Pro Condensed? For the site I'm designing, the client's logo (an illustration) is fairly close to Myriad Pro and overall the site is pretty Apple-y. Using Myriad in this context is just going to look excessively Apple-y.

I would love a recommendation for another quality sans-serif font that looks good bold and condensed. I've tried Frutiger and that's pretty decent, just wondering if there's anything else you'd suggest - thanks!

Size matters

Obscure Reference — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:19:07 -0800

How can I print 34 lines of text so that it takes up exactly 6.125 inches? Or equivalently, so that each line is .18 inches. I tried different fonts in various word processors but always ended up a little to large or too small. There's probably an obvious way to do this using some easily available software (preferably free) but I can't seem to figure out what it is.

Help me name this font

klinefelter — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:57:06 -0800

What the font? Can anyone help identify the font I used in the logo and header of this site?

Can I hire someone to create a Paper Source-like image?

semacd — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:00:10 -0800

I want to copy the Paper Source feel for my wedding font and motif. How can I do that? A few related questions here. #1. I like the font the Paper Source uses in their own ads and informational materials. Can anyone suggest where I could download a similar font? (Bonus points for free.) I've been searching but don't even really know what category of fonts that would fall under. #2. I want to pay an artist to make me a custom motif that has the feel of the paper source dragonfly (but ours would be a totally different image) in the sense that it looks sort of rough and imperfect like a stamp or maybe a woodcutting. I want to be able to use that little custom motif on my invitations, program, website, welcome packet, etc. So (a) where should I advertise for that project and (b) how much should I pay and (c) how should I describe it? I already hired one graphic artist but he has been creating pretty/cutesy obviously computer-generated motifs that remind me of clipart and it's really not the look I'm after.

Commercial font licence advice needed

primer_dimer — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:24:40 -0800

Is it ok to use free-for-commercial-use fonts in a pdf-generating webapp? Firstly, You Are Not (My|A) Lawyer. I'm just hoping that someone can give me a clue on whether or not my proposed use of free fonts is ok. Short version: is it ok for me to generate and (effectively) sell PDF files which use a free font?

Background: I am writing a webapp that will (among other things) generate gift certificates. The user picks a template and enters some details (name, ammount, etc). The app then generates a PDF file which the user can download and print.

Question: is it ok to use fonts with a free-for-commercial-use licence for this? I've taken a quick look at a few free font licences, and they seem to disallow distributing the font. Since my app would have to embed the fonts in the PDF, does that count as distribution?

I've also seen some references to "Derivative work" but the wording seems to say that this only covers binary data from which the original font could be recovered... is this right?

I'm hoping that some of the creative types on mefi might be able to give me an insight into all this, since reading the various EULAs and licences is of no help whatsoever, and I want to do the Right Thing by respecting other people's work.

How can I dump every character in a font to a text file?

Beautiful Downtown Burbank — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:25:52 -0800

How can I dump every character in a font to a text file? I am trying to generate a text file that contains every character in a specific font. I also need the characters to be broken up into small groups so that they are approximately subtitle-length. Thus, when I'm finished, I'll have a text file of several (to several hundred) subtitles, comprising every possible character in the font.

I'm trying to do it through Character Map, but I have to individually click each character, then click select, then when I get enough characters for a line, I click copy, then paste it into my document, then back to the character map, delete the text out of the select field, start again. This isn't completely terrible, but my problem is that I'm trying to do it for Asian fonts, which can have several thousand characters each.

Ideally I would like to be able to get one copy of each character in the entire font in one text document. Then I could do the line length editing myself, because I would be saving so much time on the copying and pasting.

Any utilities, free or paid, that anyone knows of that can automate this process for me?

A font question...

lottie — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:24:48 -0800

What's a good free font that I can use to replicate the mechanical font used on boarding passes and concert tickets? It generally looks like it's made up of dots. I need to design a fake boarding pass looking invitation slip for an event, and want the font to be authentic looking. What font should I use, and where can I download it free?

Need Font Wrangling Advice

captainscared — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:42:23 -0800

I need to clean out the mess that is my fonts on OS X 10.6. What are the default system fonts? I have a large number of fonts and now I seem to have created a mess using various font organizers.

Question:

Does anyone know the default font installations for the various libraries ( /System/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts, etc)?

Also, what is the best way to coral all of my fonts from various folders, check for problems, and toss out dupes?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

PS Free apps are obviously preferred to paid ones.

Really weird Snow Leopard font problem

ferdinandcc — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:51:19 -0800

I just upgraded to Snow Leopard, and since then, some of my fonts are MAJORLY screwed up in iWork '09 (Pages, Keynote and Numbers). Specifically, my entire extended family of Hoefler Text.

Here's a screenshot of what my Hoefler Text fonts look like inside Pages:
http://www.ferdinandcc.org/hoefler1.png

(The menu should read as follows: Engraved, Engraved 2, Roman, Roman Alt, Roman SC, Regular, Italic, Alt, Italic SC, Italic Swash SC, etc.)

And here's Hoefler Text in action (Hoefler Text Regular appears fine, but Italic looks screwed up):
http://www.ferdinandcc.org/hoefler2.png

The fonts worked just fine under Leopard, and also work fine in my other apps I've tested them in (TextEdit, Pagehand, Scrivener), and they also show up just fine in Font Book and Fontcase.

Here's what I've tried so far to repair the issue:

1. I reinstalled the fonts. Didn't work.
2. I used AppZapper to get rid of all traces of iWork, then reinstalled iWork off the disc. Didn't work.
3. I repaired disk permissions. Didn't work.
4. I entirely deleted ALL Hoefler Text font files out of both my user/library and my /library. This is where things got really weird. When I deleted Hoefler Text, it quit appearing in Font Book, TextEdit, etc. but in Pages, et. al it was still there!
5. I purchased FontDoctor and scanned my font folders. No problems there. However, when I copied all my Hoefler Text fonts to a folder on my desktop and then scanned that folder alone, it said the fonts were incompatible with this system (but if that's the case, then why do they work in every other application on my Mac, including Font Book?)

Note: the file type is PostScript Type 1 outline font.

These fonts are very important to me, as they're part of my organization's corporate branding guidelines and are used in all our documents and publications!

Time signatures are important, hemiolas be damned.

nosila — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:25:43 -0800

I am trying to locate the time signatures in the Opus or Helsinki font set (which come with Sibelius). Does anyone know where these are? I have PopChar, which is really great, but I've been through all the various Opus and Helsinki characters and can't find any time signatures.

I'm just trying to insert time signatures that look like time signatures in a MS Word 2008 document. Seems like these would be pretty common, but either I am totally fried from creating theory assignments (possible) or they just don't exist.

I've always just used 4/4, 3/4, etc. before, but I'd like for my handouts and assignments to look a little better. I know this is sort of a specialized question, but any help from music people or font gurus would be appreciated!

P.S. Yes, I have used the flow chart.

Please help me find a font

luckyveronica — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 14:16:33 -0800

does anyone know where i can find a font like the one used for the "mister rogers' neighborhood" type? does anyone know where i can find a font like the one used for the "mister rogers' neighborhood"? like the kind found here or here. Even though there are other similar fonts, I can't seem to find anything with the "swooshes" on some of the letters.

How do I transfer these fonts?

kbanas — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:45:26 -0800

Fonts, fonts, fonts. I'm trying to move some fonts between platforms for a client and it is an absolute nightmare. I need some help understanding OS X font "suitcases" and what do with them! So, where I work, I've got two people collaborating on an InDesign project. One person is on a Mac. The other is on a PC.

Mac person is trying to send her work to PC person. She uses the "Package" function of InDesign to create a nice little bundle of work and all the necessary fonts and whiz-bang. I don't use InDesign, or have access to it, but I'm familiar in principle with what's happening at this stage.

I've got a copy of the fonts right here in front of me that she's trying to package up.

Several of them are "Postscript Type 1" fonts, and while I had some issues with resource forks and such, I managed to get these copied over onto a test Windows XP box without much trouble. I found a program called "MacDisk" that dispatched all the forking issues and gave me nice usable fonts I could directly import into Windows.

The trouble comes with the rest of the fonts, which are "Font Suitcase" bundles. Windows obviously has no idea what to do with these things. A lot of Googling introduced me to an app called fondu, which I ran on these suitcases and which promised to extract the font files.

On a couple of the suitcase packages, I got lovely True Type font files on the other side, and that's great and I am happy. However, for many of the suitcase files fondu simply produced dozens of BDF files.

I understand BDF files are "Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format", and Windows should be able to install them (according to the internets). However, when I attempt to drag these BDF files into the WINDOWS\FONTS directory, I get the message that Windows is "unable to install the font. The file is either invalid or damaged!"

Well, shit.

So, I guess what I'm asking, knowing relatively little about fonts, is how would one go about getting a "Font Suitcase" package from an OS X environment onto a Windows environment?

Phew.

What fonts does Adobe install on my Mac, and how can I separate them out?

yesno — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:22:03 -0800

What fonts does Adobe install on my Mac, and how can I separate them out? Adobe's fonts are wonderful but I've never appreciated the way that Adobe just installs files willy-nilly all over my Mac. Even Microsoft installs its fonts in /Library/Fonts/Microsoft rather than /Library/Fonts, the way Adobe does.

Basically, I would like /Library/Fonts to just be the fonts that are standard on the Mac. I'd like to put all other fonts into ~/Library/Fonts/subdirectory. I don't see that any third party has business putting anything in /Library unless it's absolutely necessary.

So, can I get a list of what fonts are what? (Adobe doesn't bother separating out its fonts in Font Book either.) Then, if I move all the Adobe fonts out of /Library/Fonts and into ~/Library/Fonts/Adobe, will anything break?

that distinctive tilted "e"

jammy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:10:42 -0800

Font-filter: Help me identify these two fonts i'm looking for both the title font & text font in this image (the 'h' is smudged in the title "The") - here's another image of the text font

already tried identifont - many close approximations but no cigar

thanks!

Help me find my long lost font

psmealey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:34:18 -0800

Can you help me identify this font? A long time ago, I was looking for a good band logo font, and a friend of mine sent me a couple of samples, and the ones I went with are here and here. I seem to recall the name being something like "jailhouse"... but using that search in google has turned up nothing for me after looking for many months. I lost the files long ago, and my friend doesn't remember the name. A little help? Thanks!

Firefox font troubles.

beautifulcheese — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:17:34 -0800

Firefox (3.5) keeps changing the fonts on me. I need larger than average fonts to see clearly and it keeps resetting back to no minimum size and checking the "allow sites to use their own fonts" box. How do I fix this? It first only did this each time I started the browser but if I reset them to my chosen options it would stay no matter how many tabs I opened. Now each time I open a tab it resets back to default and I end up with tiny fonts that I strain to see.

Also any idea on what an optimum font/font size would be for a 21" widescreen monitor so that I don't have to lean into the screen to see. Not sure if that can be figured out without having my eyes though.

I font to be readable

paphun123 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:29:26 -0800

Why do my Firefox and IE browsers, as well as iTunes, occasionally scramble a word or word part in normal text and instead display foreign characters? Why do Firefox and IE browsers occasionally scramble a word or word part in normal text and instead display foreign characters, such as an A with a carat over it, or the Euro symbol, or the text string and% on some web pages? Also, when the Washington Post imports articles from other sites into their website, odd symbols appear in the article text, eg.: "Public health officials have said so-called ?social distancing? strategies ¿ sharply..." Finally, in iTunes podcast episode descriptions I frequently see the text string &md*ash (please mentally remove the asterisk, which I added in the middle of the string to force it to appear on this web page as it does in iTunes. Another example in iTunes: the word encyclopedie (with an acute accent diacritical mark placed over the middle e) is written as encyclo?pedie. What will fix this? Do I need to install another font? Thanks for your help.

Looking for victorian or old west style fonts.

Mrs. Buck Turgidson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:09:10 -0800

Looking for font recommendations: something that conveys the feel of late 19th century, somewhat victorian, somewhat "old west" but not the typical "wanted dead or alive" poster style. Thanks!

Font Book collection importing.

starman — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:12:09 -0800

Need help importing collections into Font Book. I set up half a dozen "collections" in Font Book 2 on Mac #1 for handy organization. My goal is to recreate these collections I've organized on Mac #1 to Mac #2.

Font Book lets you export collections, which I did to an external HD, but when I drag the collections into Font Book on Mac #2, it will only copy over fonts I don't have (and add them to the collection -- anything I already have is ignored and not added).

Any ideas?

I am a typeface... songs about fonts

Katemonkey — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:16:55 -0800

Looking for songs about fonts... I've decided that what I really need in my life is a playlist involving songs about fonts. So far, I have two - "GBI" by Kylie Minogue & Towa Tei and "Times New Roman" by The Applicants.

It would be extremely helpful if they were easy to purchase, i.e. iTunes, Amazon MP3 store, etc.

It would be hilarious if there was a song about Comic Sans.

trying to make a font, having problems

compound eye — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:29:50 -0800

what's wrong with my font? Hello.

I have created a font to use in a program I am writing.
This is the first time I have made a font. I drew the letters in illustrator and and imported the shapes into font forge (on osx leopard)
I tried to export my font in a number of formats, but font book doesn't like any of them. I've used font book's validate file option, which found no errors. But font book won't install the file.

any suggestions?

FontFilter: What font would work well with various family members of Briem Akademi?

deinemutti — Sat, 02 May 2009 17:25:57 -0800

FontFilter: What font would work well with various family members of Briem Akademi? I'm a graphic design student and I'm beginning to design a personal identity set: business card, letterhead, envelope. I have my basic design finished, which uses Briem Akademi for the name (family members are semibold, regular and condensed).

While these look fine for the name, I don't think it's going to work for contact info as far as readability goes. I don't know whether I should use a sans-serif font or a serif font. Any ideas/suggestions?

I'd like to enroll in the Chinese Graphic Designer 101 program, please.

miss lynnster — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:15:28 -0800

I'd love to get tips/resources for 1) learning more about the Chinese language and culture for work travel, 2) doing graphic design for a Chinese audience and 3) learning more about working with Chinese writing (this was helpful, for example).* Thoughts? *Bonus points if anyone can tell me if there are any Chinese typefaces I could access that have a particularly whimsical, fun, or child-like feel. My new job has a factory in China. I will definitely be traveling there at some future point and want to get a head start on studying the language and cultures a bit so that I have more understanding when I'm there. Can you recommend any other sites or tips that would make a tough language easier and less intimidating? I'll probably get the Rosetta Stone for Mandarin, but do you know of a good place to learn Chinese in Los Angeles or online? And if you've tried learning it, what are your tips?

The other thing is that my boss wants to sell more of our toy products in China than we currently are. For this reason I want to learn more about Chinese graphic design and working with Chinese characters. We can get the translations easily from people in the China office, but I want to make sure my designs look fun, appealing and readable to a Chinese audience.

Thanks.

I can has embedded fonts?

aheckler — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:17:43 -0800

Where can I find a list of fonts that can be legally embedded using @font-face? Yes, it's only supported by a few browsers right now, but I'm looking to try it out. I know of a handful that can be legally used in this manner, but I'm hoping there's a catch-all list out there somewhere.

Failing that, suggest your favorite embeddable font. Bonus points for stylish yet high-quality serifs!

How can I reinstall missing Vista system fonts?

Scramblejam — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:42:49 -0800

I recently uninstalled Left 4 Dead, and when I did, it seriously messed up my fonts (on Vista SP1). Now most common fonts, e.g. Arial, Verdana etc. display italicised or bold, or use an alternative. I've found installers that replace the files for a session, but on reboot they are gone again. Can anyone recommend a reinstall procedure?