fonts

See your fonts with FontViewer

Have you ever wanted to use a special font in a document (or anywhere) but had trouble simply figuring out which fonts you have and what they look like? We sure have, which is why we're always keen to try simple tools like Moo0's FontViewer. This compact freeware displays sample text in all the fonts installed in your system. You can adjust the size in points and display bold and italic characters, too. It doesn't install, modify, or access your fonts; it simply gives you a fast, easy way to see what they look like. But it'… Read more

Android 4's Roboto font: It's for humans, too

Android's move from Droid to Roboto may sound like Google is just replacing one techie typeface to another.

But nerdy names notwithstanding, the font used in the new Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google's mobile operating system is designed to be more human as well as more practical.

"Our new typeface had to be...friendly and approachable to make Android appealing, and a little bit more human," Matias Duarte, who's in charge of Android design work at Google, said yesterday in a Google+ post.

Google clearly is pained by those who would position Android as … Read more

How to change font in Notes app on iOS

At one point, the iOS Notes app had one font, and one font only. There was no option for users to customize the look and feel of the app. This eventually changed, giving users three different fonts to chose from.

Changing the font for the Notes app on iOS is a very simple process.

Open the Settings app on your iOS device. Scroll down until you come across the Notes option, and tap on it. Choose your font.

It doesn't get much easier than that.

One more tip regarding the Notes app: if you had multiple accounts set up … Read more

Errant character to blame for Twitter 'hack'

In the sometimes slippery world of the Web, it can pay to cross your "t"s and dot your "i"s.

Case in point:

A colleague sent me a link to a tweet that at first seemed to show that Applebee's Twitter account had been hacked. The account had tweeted: "Poop is food."

As catchy as that tagline might be, it seems a little weird coming from a major restaurant chain. And on closer inspection I thought the page looked a bit suspicious. Only nine tweets had gone out from the account, and … Read more

How to keep fonts for projects grouped together in Windows 7

When dealing with several hundred items, it's a good idea to have a solid system of organization. This is true if you're a collector of things like cards, work in a system with a lot of tools or clients, or even if you're at home working with different fonts on your computer. Unfortunately in the case of the last example, Windows 7 users get the short end of the stick on native options for font organization. However, using the free tool NexusFont can alleviate this problem.

To begin, download and install NexusFont.

Using Groups

Groups are … Read more

How to create custom symbol substitutions in OS X

OS X has vast unicode font libraries that not only contain alternative alphanumeric characters and symbols, but also numerous fun and unique characters that may be useful when composing documents. There are several approaches to accessing odd characters in OS X, and the other day I covered some options for accessing these, including using Lion's new special characters menu and the keyboard viewer.

In addition to these options, the system has a character viewer that will allow you to browse through all the characters and font possibilities that OS X has to offer, and provide you with an option … Read more

Monotype text engine gets hardware acceleration

Monotype Imaging is bringing its font-rendering software a step into the future with hardware acceleration features it expects will help improve readability, add fancy features such as 3D, and offload work from mobile devices' main processors.

The company, while perhaps best known for creating and licensing typefaces, also has a business selling software that lets printers print the text and devices such as e-book readers display it on screens. It's this last category where the company offers its iType product, and the new version 5.0 announced today adds the new hardware acceleration features.

iType 5.0 draws upon … Read more

Fabulous fonts

While most people are content to use the fonts that come with their operating system, graphic designers and other creative types often like to have a little more font-related freedom. Type Light is an easy-to-use program with which you can edit existing fonts and even create new ones from scratch. The program requires either knowledge about how to work with fonts or the patience to acquire it, but it has plenty of features for those who are willing to explore its capabilities.

In Type Light, you can start with existing fonts in the TTF or OTF format. An inset panel … Read more

See you in the funny papers

Fun fonts can liven up presentations, newsletters, art projects, and all kinds of other documents. Cartoon Font Pack is a set of 22 fonts inspired by cartoons and comic strips. If you like the look of fonts that resemble text written by hand, Cartoon Font Pack is a fun option that's suitable for a variety of applications.

Since Cartoon Font Pack is really just a folder containing the various fonts, it helps to have some knowledge of how to install new fonts in Windows. This isn't a difficult process, however, and we installed the fonts in Cartoon Font … Read more