The Queen of Fonts
So, I just started working here and it's pretty awesome. My official job title is "Front End Developer" but my email signature says "Creative Designer," which I think I like a little more.
I started out as any Creative Designer would, making minor updates to projects and asking too many questions. For every project I’ve gotten I’ve installed at least three fonts… which added up pretty quickly. Before long I had over 700 fonts on my computer. It’s a good idea to keep your font library as small as possible. More than 400 fonts installed on your machine can make your computer and design programs run slow and make them somewhat unstable. It’s also a pain searching through hundreds of fonts to find the one you want.
I asked my Project Manager if we had any type of font management system and thanks to my curiosity I’ve been appointed “Queen of Fonts.” My first order of business is to research and find a font management system for the designers here so they don’t suffer the same fate of a bogged down system. I am still in the process of reviewing products but so far I’ve downloaded and tested out three major font management systems:
Extensis Font Reserve
$79.95 per license I’ve used this program on a Mac and now on Windows and I’m not very impressed. It’s easy to use, search for specific fonts, and install/uninstall fonts, but there’s an extra step to view fonts that I’m not fond of. I also don’t like how their trial version limits the number of fonts you can view because I can’t get a good feel for how it works with a huge font library. More Info...
Font Xplorer
$ Free It’s got a basic preview window and temporarily install fonts, but that’s about it. The price is right for the functionality but I tend to be wary of products that try to appeal to my generation with intentional misspellings (i.e. anything Xtreme, Krazy or 2Kool4Kidz). More Info...
MainType
$149 per license Active and inactive font tabs, easy to use, great preview options, drag and drop functionality, favorite’s folder… my favorite. I think I like it because it’s the most intuitive. I opened the program and knew exactly where everything was and it would be easy for less technical members of the staff that wanted to install a font.
My Recommendation
So far, I prefer MainType. It’s really easy to use. You can search through fonts with an easy to use preview window, change the text that you want to preview, zoom, add to favorites list (for frequently used or client specific fonts), and most importantly temporary install fonts from our server.
Some drawbacks: It takes a little long to load fonts from server (over five minutes for 1,100 fonts), and a search bar would be more helpful than drop down menu for finding specific fonts. I’m open for suggestions. More Info...
