fonts

Options for previewing fonts in OS X

OS X comes with a number of fonts, and if you install third-party software such as Microsoft Office or Adobe's Creative Suite, your system may be inundated with them. This may not be that big of an issue, but if you want to see what a font looks like before picking one to use, having to slog through a large list to do so is impractical.

Fortunately, there are several options in OS X for previewing fonts that can help streamline the process, some of which may be more available or useful than others:

Font menus In most word … Read more

Monotype deal helps Google's fonts escape the Web

Through a deal with font specialist Monotype, Google's free fonts for Web publishing are spreading beyond the Web.

Monotype now lets designers use Google's 624 freely available fonts through its SkyFonts software for managing fonts on Windows and Mac machines. Although Google offers fonts for use on Web site, designers often need local versions on their computers for use in design software.

SkyFonts can be used to rent fonts from Monotype's library for short-term use. Tapping into the Google library of fonts, though, is free. Using the software will ensure people get the latest versions of the … Read more

Galaxy Font For FlipFont@ free 1.1 Review

You're lucky if your Android gadget came with more than three fonts by default. Galaxy Font For FlipFont@ free tries to liven things up by adding around 20 fonts to your phone, but it isn't terribly easy to install. While the fonts are certainly stylish, you might have more trouble than you want actually getting them onto your gadget.

This font pack is designed to work with a program called FlipFont®, which is remarkably hard to find online. Samsung and Nokia devices can usually get it, but most other phones will need to be rooted to install … Read more

Overlay your shared photos with good-looking typography

Over for iOS lets you jazz up your Instagram photos with beautifully rendered typography to make them more than just photos with filters.

This is not a complete photo-editing app. Instead, with Over, you're adding great-looking fonts to your images to tell more of the story, make a meme, or simply to add a label. You start by picking an image from your iPhone photo library. A wheel-like interface on the right gets you to the apps main functions where you can choose your fonts, edit what you have on screen, save to your camera roll, or share to … Read more

Get a Mac design bundle for free

Many software bundles come with a bit of buyer's remorse: you get a couple things you wanted, and a bunch of stuff you didn't. Maybe it wasn't such a good deal after all?

No chance of that here. StackSocial is offering the Premium Designer Freebie Bundle, well, free. (The price is right there in the name.)

This Mac-only collection includes nine items with a combined value of $257. It's intended primarily for people who do app and/or Web design, but no doubt some of the elements could be used in other occupations.

Update: According to … Read more

How to use the Font panel in OS X

Many programs, such as Microsoft Office, support their own interfaces for various fonts you may have installed on your Mac; however, many other programs like TextEdit and Apple's Pages use Apple's central Font panel to provide font management. This panel can usually be invoked by pressing Command-T in programs that support it, where you will be presented with a column-oriented view of font collections that you can navigate through, select, and set the size for.

While convenient for quickly selecting and setting font sizes, the Font panel also contains a number of additional features that can be applied … Read more

Font Xplorer makes it easy to manage fonts in Windows

Moon Software's Font Xplorer is a freeware font manager that makes it easy to view, print, sample, and handle the many fonts installed on your PC -- and take it from us, there are more fonts in your system than you might realize. Font Xplorer's text compare mode makes it easy to pick just the right font, and it can also search your system to find duplicate fonts that you can remove to reclaim disk space and keep your Windows waistline trim. This tool can load, unload, install, and uninstall fonts by folder, search for uninstalled fonts, show … Read more

Manage fonts in Windows with Cfont Pro

Windows accepts nearly every kind of font, but managing them is a different story. Freeware font managers can fill the need, and there are plenty to choose from. Veign's Cfont Pro is a powerful tool for viewing and managing your system's fonts. It can install and uninstall font packages, print and export font data, and even repair common registry errors that can affect fonts. Its Preview mode lets you see fonts before actually installing them, and a SlideShow mode displlays installed fonts one by one. Cfont Pro's extras include a glyph viewer and a Zoomer tool that … Read more

AMP Font Viewer helps you install, organize, and manage your system's fonts

Windows is so full of fonts that they'd fill a warehouse if they were cast-metal typesets, but it doesn't go out of its way to make them easy to manage. That's where tools like AMPsoft's AMP Font Viewer come in. Font Viewer can install and uninstall fonts, sample them, and organize them into categories. This lightweight freeware is compatible with nearly every version of Windows still in use, even 9x releases from the 1990s. Regular updates are logged on the program's Web site. We tried Font Viewer in 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium SP1.

Font … Read more

Google Type uses image search to generate fonts

Despite the name, Google Type isn't a real Google product. The site generates fonts based on Google image search, hence the name. You type in words, the site digs through image search and regenerates your text using image versions of each letter.

This is all based on an interesting quirk of Google's image search. If you type in a single letter and search images, Google gives you a lovely collection of image representations for that letter. For example, plug in "Y," and you may see the "Y" from "Yahoo," an illustration of a guy with his arms up in a "Y" shape, and a hand making the hang-loose sign. Any of these could pop up in Google Type.… Read more