Here on the newly published Mindsparks Blog, we'd like to present articles that other designers will find interesting and useful in their day to day affairs. These will consist of interviews, tutorials, online sales, giveaways, and other musings to keep you coming back for more.
I'd like to kick things off with a tutorial for a tool that I personally use nearly every day. When working on a new project, I'm always on the lookout for font families that will go well with my subject matter. When a friend recently turned me on to whatfontis.com, I took my searching to a whole new level. The site will basically take any image you throw at it (with a few limitations) and spit the font it contains back at you. It then lists the 100 most similar fonts, both free and paid, for download.
While I have stumped them a few times with some of the more unique fonts out there, their library of over 285,000 fonts rarely misses a beat.
On to it then:
Step 1: Find a single line a text in the font that you are looking for. Take a shot of it and transfer it to your computer. I like to use Dropbox to auto-upload the picture to my computer, as it gets auto-compressed in the process.
Step 2: Upload the image to whatfontis.com and enter the correct settings. You can also choose if you'd like free, commercial, or all of the fonts that come up matching.
Step 3: As the app finds individual letters, input the character next to the corresponding black and white image. Click submit once you've marked down all recognizable characters
Step 4: Search through their huge list of fonts for one that best matches your shot and throw it into your next design project!
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