This one thing that has been on my mind for at least a decade. At times I need a font for a specific purpose, but there is no designer around to guide me. I go to sites that offer fonts and locate one that I think is suitable. There seems to be no common categorisation however, that offers criteria to search on. Fonts usually have names that the creator has given it, but does not otherwise help to indicate its suitability. I have wondered why this is the case.
So one could have categorisation by periods, such as Modern > Urban > Tattoo to give all styles of fonts commonly associated with tattoos. Perhaps the categorisation can never be fully objective? We have done it for images (see stock photo sites), but not for fonts, why is that?
I don't think this is how font designers or the majority of font users think of fonts. They classify fonts in terms of font attributes. For example, look at the Font Factory catagories.
Hi.
I have a vague recollection (from my Mac font-collecting days, or daze) that the names are the critical part of protection -- they can be copyrighted, but apparently not the font. Perhaps that has changed, perhaps some fonts now have some builtin data that can be copyrighted.
The page at Font - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia has some basic categorization items. I think I had a list that included some of those, and also noted in what context the typeface was most useful ... cheers, drl
Thanks for your responses. Classification is a lot better in only the last 2 years or so, but still most companies have their own scheme.
It'd be nice if they were clearly labeled for fixed pitch, at least!
I have been on a Verdana kick since an IEEE article said they measured it as the best performing, of many tried, for getting teams to fulfill tasks with substantial printed communications. However, back to Courier New for fixed pitch, a UNIX text tool specialty.
I wonder how many support glyphs outside the Unicode set?
That's probably this article:
IEEE Spectrum: The Technology of Text
which incidentally makes for an absorbing read.