If you like typefaces, if you like to play around with your fonts while other kids are off doing piano lessons, if you keep noticing the typefaces on the restaurant menu, you need to know about Identifont.
Identifont is the coolest font site on the web. You might not expect that when you first go there, because it has none of the luscious typography of sites like I Love Typography, Typographica or Typophile. But it’s got something no other typopgraphy site has.
Identifont, the brainchild of David Johnson-Davies was built around Artificial Intelligence (AI) software developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and launched in 2000. The site says it is the largest independent directory of typefaces on the internet. You can see by the updates that new type foundries are being added all the time.
Here’s what you’ll find at Identifont:
- Fonts by appearance—This is the heart and soul of Identifont. Through a series of simple, illustrated questions, the AI behind Identifont will help you figure out exactly what typeface is used on that book cover you really like. It takes an average of 15 questions to come to a conclusion, but I’ve found Identifont to be right most of the time I’ve used it. There’s really nothing else like it. Here’s a typical screen from the identifier, where I’m up to question #4:
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- Fonts by name—Maybe you remember that the font you want has “park” in it, but that’s all you remember. No problem, because Identifont will call up every font it has that gives even a partial match. This is a lifesaver also.
- Fonts by similarity—Another terrific utility. Perhaps you want something like the stylish Park Avenue, but not quite. This is a task that could take time to visit font websites and look through pages of samples. Not with Identifont. In a few seconds I had located this lovely Tiamaria, a typeface I had never heard of. Perfect.
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- Picture fonts—This will amaze you. Try entering anything here, like “dog” or “beach” and see what Identifont comes up with. It has such an enormous database of fonts it’s hard to stump it. Here’s one of the 18 fonts I got with a search on “balloon”:
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- Designers—Want info on a typeface designer, including links to all their fonts? Just enter a full or partial name, and you have it.
- Publishers—A huge collection of type foundries, with links to all their typefaces on Identifont.
There’s also a small collection of free type fonts, with links to download locations, and listings of the most popular fonts on the site in the past week. In addition, there are links to two associated websites:
- Fontifier where you can turn your handwriting into a font
- Fontscape, an independent directory of typefaces organized into unusual and useful categories.
If you like fonts, set a timer before you surf over to Identifont, because it’s easy to spend way too much time running searches through their database and marvelling at the sheer variety of the fonts it will return.
Identifont, a great tool and a heck of a lot of fun for type lovers. Try it.
This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.