Jacci Howard Bear

With an array of topics such as design principles and folding/scoring techniques, Jacci's blog is very informative. Bookmark this one; meanwhile here is her blog about identifying fonts.




We have a fairly active Type & Fonts folder in the forum. The bulk of the postings are from members seeking identification of specific fonts. They may need them to recreate some letterhead or a logo or just because they like the look and want to use the font in some project but don't know the name. We have some regulars who frequently offer help and I do so as well from time to time. This past week or so I've been posting quite a few font identifications. But it's not always an easy task.

If you're a font fanatic, have a good eye for fonts, or like the detective work involved you are more than welcome to pop in there and give it a shot. Whether it's for others or for your own use, I'd like to hear about how you go about identifying unknown fonts.

I have the best success using the font identification engine known as WhatTheFont. It's not 100% accurate all the time but I tend to get good results. The trick to using WhatTheFont is having a good, clear image (and a font that's in their database). I'll often take the images posted by forum members and do a little clean up in my graphics software -- separating letters that are too close together, increasing contrast or converting to black & white, and perhaps resizing small images (sometimes it works, sometimes not). It can be a tedious process and there's no guarantee of success.

I seem to have less luck with Identifont. Sometimes I'll get a hit but not often. Rather than uploading an image, with Identifont you answer a series of questions about the font you are trying to identify. If you only have a few letters to work with (which is often the case) you can limit the questions to those letters. Don't know if it's the questions or the way I answer the questions but the results I get are usually quite a mixed bag.

There are other ways to identify fonts, including searching through lists of fonts that are organized by types such as serif, sans serif, etc. Time-consuming but sometimes the only way to get a hit. How about you? Do you use WhatTheFont, Identifont, or some other resources? Any tips or tricks to share?