Sourcing fonts

There are all sorts of places where fonts can be obtained, from commercial foundries and resellers to online collections of shareware and freeware typefaces. Buying fonts from commercial vendors can be done online and via the more traditional method of leafing through printed catalogues and making phone calls. Try visiting www.fontfont.com or www.faces.co.uk for sourcing commercial faces. For a broad selection of free and shareware fonts there are many sites to visit. Some of the best are www.larabiefonts.com, www.fontface.com, www.1001freefonts.com, www.macfonts.com, www.chank.com and www.freemacfonts.com. Don't forget to keep an eye on cover CDs as well; the disc supplied with the 4 April 2003 issue of MacUser held a large collection of hand-picked fonts, and we include carefully-selected fonts on a regular basis.

Prices for commercial fonts vary, but remember that it is usually best in the long run to buy families rather than individual fonts. Buying just part of a set of styles and weights will save money to start with, but it can be frustrating further down the road to have to spend more to get the rest of a font family.

When investigating the world of free fonts be aware that not all will be produced to a particularly high quality. Full kerning tables, the settings which help character pairs sit well together, can be tedious to produce, so this data is often missing from lesser offerings. Hinting settings for getting the best from displays and lower-resolution output devices are also dull and difficult to make well, and you may also find that some of the characters you need aren't available in the font you like. However, don't dismiss non-commercial typeface designs out of hand; many excellent off-the-wall designs will never make it to traditional commercial status but they can still be perfect for some tasks. Finally, remember that it isn't true that all free or shareware fonts are poorly-constructed or finished; some are better than many paid-for faces, so keep an open mind.