Font organising

[Samm]

Just picking brains here...organising fonts:

I, undoubtedly like everyone else, have a gazzilion fonts and no idea where to start actually organising them.

Of course all of my Signfonts have a home, but that is where it starts and ends.

Is grouping them into folders based on their style an idea?

Any thoughts appreciated!

Sam

 

[iSign]

I have a large stash organized into 26 alphabetically labeled folders, so if I'm looking for a specific font, windows won't have to spend as much time to "populate" the list before I can choose the one I need to install.

 

[jc1cell]

Mine are organized in alphabetic order and by foundary.....(ie. free fonts in a folder alphabetically, FontFolio in another folder alphabetically, etc.)

I then use Font Hit to load them. It gives you the option to view the fonts by typestyle.

jc

 

[Samm]

I have a large stash organized into 26 alphabetically labeled folders, so if I'm looking for a specific font, windows won't have to spend as much time to "populate" the list before I can choose the one I need to install.

How's about when it comes to Flexi etc? Do you just keep them all in the fonts folder or are they specially organised?

 

[JR's]

We have a big can that we put all are fonts in and we label the can Alphabet soup.
just kidding, we have a program called font navigator.
it is really cool organizes the fonts that is on the com. and we can view them in many ways.

 

[Fred Weiss]

I have my fonts on a network drive for easy access. They are duplicated into three separate groups:

• Alphabetical
• By Foundry
• By Style

The By Style group is divided into five groups:

• Headline & Display
• Manuscript (blackletter, lombardic, chancery, etc.)
• Sans Serif
• Script
• Serif

The By Style group was created by visually sorting the fonts and copying to new folders using a font manager named Typograf. Bitstream Font Navigator and other font managers have the same or similar capabilities. One of these days I may do some additional sorting to create sub-groups as an aid to font matching using Typograf.

 

[Gino]

Fred.... would you say you have it set up similar to the old 'Lettreset' type books from years ago ??

They had a system that was downright great.

 

[digitalgraffiti]

I use Suitcase and keep all fonts not required by the system or Software specific fonts out of the Fonts folder on a separate drive partition. They are organized on this partition by foundry or Misc.

In Suitcase they are organized by type of font usage: Headline, Script, Serif, Sans Serif...
With suitcase I can also organize them by client. Suitcase also auto-activates the fonts if using Illustrator CS2+ or InDesign CS2+. I've heard a lot of people not like suitcase but I have never had a problem with it on either Mac or PC.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Fred.... would you say you have it set up similar to the old 'Lettreset' type books from years ago ??

They had a system that was downright great.

If my setup is similar to the old Letraset books, it is a coincidence. My usage of the three groups is to satisfy three separate needs.

By Foundry is pretty much just archival.
Alphabetical is for quickly locating a font by name.
By Style is for locating a font by need (creative selection) and for font matching.

 

[resqfiremedic]

Wow, that reminds me I need to organize all my zillions of fonts! I have just been testing a new font management software Printer's Apprentice. It does a really good job and prints some really cool sample sheets. Its not free but just rewritten in Net 2.0 so its also compatible with Vista.

 

[Carl Crabtree]

You can make your own folders for ttf in Signlab. I have several for some of my favorite fonts. I takes a little time, but is well worth it.

 

[GK]

I have used Extensis products forever and their addition of Suitcase Fusion to their product lineup was like everything else they have made in the past, excellent. Then they released Suitcase for Windows which solved running 2 separate font managers on our computers. Suitcase server resides on one of our file servers so we could centralize everything and have a very efficient solution to a mess of fonts.

 

[high impact]

Are these folders just for viewing purposes of the different styles?

I wouldn't want to reboot flexi every time I decided to use a normally unused font.

 

[SirSlarty]

Speaking of organization, is there a way to combine fonts?

What I mean is I'm sick of seeing a list like this in Flexi, Photoshop or Word:

Helvetica NeueLT Pro 37 Th
Helvetica NeueLT Pro 37 ThCn
Helvetica NeueLT Pro 37 ThEx
Helvetica NeueLT Pro 65 Roman
Helvetica NeueLT Pro 65 MdCn
Helvetica NeueLT Pro 65 Md
Helvetica NeueLT Pro 65 MdEx
Helvetica NeueLT Pro 65 Md It

etc! and it's a list of 40 fonts for that family. I'm sick of having to scroll through them all.

 

[Samm]

Thanks for all the input. I guess Fred's answer was what was on my mind, when he mentions a font during a search, it appears that he has a way of classifying.

Thanks everyone!