We’ve all had the experience of trying to choose a font — especially when setting up a logo, for example — and typing out a word, then laboriously changing the font, working your way through from Arial to Zapf Dingbats until they all look the same.
Well, here’s a better way: Wordmark.it. Type in whatever word you want, and the web-app will display it, in the fonts that you have installed on your computer.
As noted in FastCo Design, it is such a simple process, the fact that it isn’t offered as part of standard applications is min-bogglingly frustrating:
You can enter your own text at the top, so you can see how the fonts actually look before choosing one.
You can flip the contrast with one click, to see if the font looks better in light or dark.
You can choose a few options and isolate them to compare next to each other.
Wow, a font choosing interface that isn’t an ophthalmological nightmare.
Here, for example, is a slice of “Absurd Intellectual” choices:
I am indebted to Brian at StateoftheCity for tweeting about this.
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4 comments
No ping yet
Brian says:
4 January 2011 at 7:58 pm (UTC -5)
I like your site name in Hobo Standard…
Grant Hamilton says:
5 January 2011 at 8:54 am (UTC -5)
By the time I get to the Hs when choosing a logotype, my eyes have glazed over. I’d bet that 60% of all logotypes are in the A-E section of the font list, with an additional 30% in the T-Z section, for people who start at the bottom every now and then.
cgnoto says:
4 January 2011 at 11:03 pm (UTC -5)
Depending on your software suite, they do this automatically, but not this layout, which is quite nice actually.
Super cool site, but unfortunately because I have to keep clicking to show more fonts, its faster for me to preview them in InDesign while i’m picking my font.
Although that may mean I should turn off some fonts
Grant Hamilton says:
5 January 2011 at 8:55 am (UTC -5)
I suspect this is best if you were narrowing down between 50 or so fonts, rather than the thousands I suspect you have installed?
What software suite does something like this?