Note [08/02/04]: Since publication, Adobe is no longer upgrading ATM Deluxe for OS X. Mac OS X 10.3 (Jaguar) has a limited font manager built-in which may be all you need. As of jan. 2004, we cannot recommend Suitcase for Mac 10.2.8 due to incompatibilies with Adobefnt.lst files (basically, if a file is every reported as "missing", Suitcase goes nuts in our experience.) The verdict is thus still out on what to use instead...
Don't forget we've also uploaded a page of our favorite font links! - Trish Meyer
Managing fonts is a task that graphic designers are well versed in, particularly if they come from a print design background. For your average video editor, however, the font library can evolve over time into a jumbled mess - unless you have a plan...
The first thing to do is to acquire a font manager, and stop adding fonts directly to the System folder. You can now store fonts on any drive, and easily open and close fonts without having to quit and restart applications (provided its font menu updates dynamically, as do After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator).
There are a number of font managers on the market, but we've settled on Adobe Type Manager (ATM) Deluxe. (You might know ATM for displaying Postscript fonts cleanly on computer monitors, but that task has now been largely handed over to Adobe's CoolType engine.) The "deluxe" version of this ubiquitous utility includes an easy-to-use font manager: you simply drag folders of fonts to its Sets window, where you can enable or disable individual fonts or sets. Double-click any font for a handy "view sample" feature which you can print out as well as customize with your own words - great for checking what your title will look like in any given typeface (Figure 1). You can also Verify the integrity of the fonts you add to ATM Deluxe; problems are reported as either minor or serious - discard any fonts that look fatally flawed.
Figure 1 – After adding your fonts to ATM Deluxe (a simple drag and drop affair), you can enable/disable fonts, view or print font samples, or type your own text to preview how a particular title might look in a chosen typeface.
Whichever font manager you use, it needs to work closely with the system software, so be sure to check compatibility before upgrading your system. Also, just because you can open fonts easily with a manager, you should keep the number of open fonts to a reasonable limit to ensure optimal system performance.
While many programs (i.e., Photoshop and Illustrator) sort their font menu by grouping font families together, many other programs don't (notably Microsoft Word). This makes finding fonts a real headache, so you might also want to install Adobe Type Reunion (ATR), which comes bundled with ATM Deluxe. It is more prone to incompatibilities though, so monitor it carefully.
Fonts come in a variety of formats, but the two most popular are Type 1 (Postscript) and TrueType. Additionally, you might come across a variation of Type 1 called Multiple Master, which allows you to customize the width and weight of each font style without resorting to horizontal scaling in software. The new kid on the block, OpenType (from Adobe and Microsoft) is worth watching as it promises extended character sets and cross-platform compatibility with Mac and Windows.
Type 1 fonts consist of two parts: The bitmap or "screen" font (known as PFM on Windows) which stores spacing and kerning data, and the outline or "printer" font (PFB on Windows) which describes the shape of the characters.
Screen fonts are stored in a font "suitcase" on Mac, which you can double-click to open; inside may be more than one size of font, such as Helvetica 10 and Helvetica 12. For a typical font family (regular, bold, italic and bold italic), the suitcase will usually store all the weights, in one or more sizes.
The accompanying printer font contains the outline data, which is used to draw an accurate representation on the monitor, and for printing. Each weight in a family will have its own printer font, named using a convention that begins with five characters, followed by sets of three characters, as in "HelveBolObl" for Helvetica Bold Oblique. Don't be tempted to rename printer fonts so that they make more sense (such as "HelvBoldItalics", or the screen font won't be able to find its partner.
Remember that with Type 1 fonts, both the screen and printer fonts need to be stored loose inside the same folder (see Figure 2) - they're useless without each other. If you only have the screen font installed, the font will appear in the font menu. However, using this font will draw as bitmaps (i.e., with big, blocky edges), and you may get an error reporting the outline font as missing.
Figure 2-A typical Type 1 font family folder [in Mac OS 9] with a screen font suitcase for screen fonts and four printer fonts sporting the Adobe icon.
Another problem is that you may have some of the printer fonts, but not all - if the suitcase has eight weights for a font family, but you only have four printer fonts - some of the weights will work and some will bitmap. If you tend to throw all font suitcases and outline fonts loose into one giant folder with hundreds of other fonts, moving font families to another machine will introduce these sorts of problems, as you'll find the suitcase but miss some of the printer fonts. After a few years, these families become quite dysfunctional ...
So, the first job in organizing your font library is to sort Type 1 fonts into font families, checking that you have the right number of printer fonts per suitcase. Put each family in its own folder, such as Helvetica, Gill Sans, Futura, and so on. You can further organize these families depending on style or foundry, as we'll see later.
TrueType fonts use only one file for screen and printer, and on a Mac, font families are often installed inside a font suitcase; open the suitcase and you'll find an icon for each weight (regular, bold, etc.).
Considering that TrueType fonts can come in a suitcase, just like Type 1 screen fonts, how can you tell that they're TrueType? Open the suitcase and check their icon: Type 1 fonts appear with a single "A" icon, while TrueType fonts sport a short "trail" (see Figure 3). Also, if you double-click a Type 1 font, you'll get a sample of just that size, say "Helvetica 12 point". Double-click to a TrueType font and you'll see samples for multiple sizes (for instance, 9, 12 and 18pt).
Problems may arise when mixing and matching TrueType and Type 1 on the same system. Follow an in-house style when there are duplicates, and archive the other version. We use Type 1 over TrueType as it creates fewer problems for After Effects when used in Illustrator imported artwork. But otherwise, having just one file to worry about is a nice advantage of TrueType.
As we mentioned earlier, the first step is to remove any non-System fonts out of the System's Font folder. Keep only those fonts which are used for application menus and web browsers directly in the System.
Decide where you'll keep your main font library, and organize each font family into its own folder, for instance: Avant Garde, Futura, Frutiger, and so on. If you have a modest font library, you might put all these folders loose in one main Font Library folder and let them sort alphabetically.
With larger libraries, you'll want to consider some further organization, depending on how you personally sort fonts in your head. For instance, if you were trying to recall a great font you used on a previous job, would you remember it by its name, by who made it, or by its type? Here are some possible organization methods:
• Alphabetically: organize large libraries alphabetically by grouping them in subfolders, such as A-D, E-H, etc.
• By foundry: create subfolders for Adobe, Emigre, Image Club, Monotype, and so on, reflecting the source of the font.
• By type: if you're a typography fan, you might conjure up the location of a font by its classification, such as Sans Serif, Script, and so on. Over the years, many different types of classification systems have emerged, which you can customize by adding such categories as Grunge or Computer/LCD. Try to use no more than 5 to 12 categories - any less will be easy to sort but not very useful, and any more might be impractical. Categories might include Blackletter, Display, Computer/LCD, Grunge, Sans Serif, Serif, Script/Brush, and Pi/Symbol. If you're familiar with the historical development of type, you could further sort the Serif category to include Serif-OldStyle, -Transitional, -Modern, and -Slab.
Precision Type (www.precisiontype.com) sells fonts from all the major vendors, and their Type Font Reference Guide includes a breakdown of typeface classifications. We've also taken advantage of their font matching service - fax them a font sample used in a magazine ad, for instance, and they'll do their best to tell you what font it is, or recommend a close match.
We organize our font library by foundry, as we're more likely to remember a font by its vendor (as in "what's that cool Emigre font called again?"). Where fonts are sublicensed, our house style is to consider the icon first, so anything with the familiar "striped A" icon will be stored in Adobe's folder, even if its source is Monotype or ITC. We also have a "Client Fonts" folder, which includes fonts that clients supply for particular jobs, or those that we modify in Fontographer (www.macromedia.com) for a particular project.
We make exceptions to the sort-by-foundry rule by using a few category folders: Grunge, Freeware, Scripts and Pi/Symbols. The Grunge and Freeware folders includes fonts from small foundries where creating a new folder for each vendor would be excessive. Meanwhile, collecting all script fonts into one folder makes it easy to find that perfect font when the title calls for a script.
We not only keep fonts outside the System but go so far as to put them on their own partition; a small partition of 100-300 megs will do, depending on the size of your library. The advantage is that running a disk repair utility on the System disk, or rebuilding the desktop on a Mac, is much faster when you can skip the checking of thousands of fonts.
When preparing font samples for clients, avoid disclosing the name of the font - you'll be surprised how much influence the name will have! What client would pick "Akzidenz Grotesk? Or the font "Minneapolis" for show that's set in Seattle? Or "GarageGothic" for a sophisticated ad? Label the samples 1, 2, 3, and so on, and let clients choose fonts based on what they actually look like...
Students in typography are often urged to use only one or two fonts and learn them well, which seems a bit extreme. But the tendency to download everything in sight, or be lured by the "Billions of Fonts for only $99" ads is equally scary. It's easy to fill up an entire hard drive with free and shareware fonts available online, and while you can find some notable freeware gems created by talented individuals, many tend to be overly stylized. At the end of the day, a few well-designed sans serif fonts in a variety of weights will satisfy most of your type requirements. Quality fonts also include numbers from 0-9, and a full set of symbols. Plus commercial vendors add hundreds of custom kerning pairs which reduces the amount of manual kerning you'll need to do.
We don't download any freebies that don't look useful in real work, and we only load onto our workstations a "select" set of all the fonts we have available. An auxiliary computer has a Font Archive hard drive with every font we own (provided ATM Deluxe verified it), and this drive is backed up regularly. A Jaz cartridge holds an ever-changing subset of the main archive, called "Select Fonts", and these are copied to our workstations.
Finally, just like a new plug-in can inspire a whole new look, so can a new font. Considering how easy it is to buy online, and with single fonts selling in the $30 range, try starting a new project design by purchasing the perfect font for the job. For a project with a decent budget, a new font purchase is easily absorbed - and if it inspires you to new design highs, it's a great investment.
© CyberMotion 2000.