CENTERVILLE SIGNS
New Member
Where is a good place to download or buy fonts for Flexisign?
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FONTS
- Thread starter CENTERVILLE SIGNS
- Start date
Google Fonts and Font Squirrel are good sources for fonts that are free for commercial use. Most are of pretty good quality too.
I usually buy commercial fonts from the MyFonts web site. They have lots of pricing specials on newly released typefaces as well as deals on not-as-new fonts. Fonts.com and FontShop sometimes have different pricing specials from those at MyFonts.
One of the perks of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is having access to nearly 3000 type families from several dozen companies.
I usually buy commercial fonts from the MyFonts web site. They have lots of pricing specials on newly released typefaces as well as deals on not-as-new fonts. Fonts.com and FontShop sometimes have different pricing specials from those at MyFonts.
One of the perks of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription is having access to nearly 3000 type families from several dozen companies.
IvanVasquez
New Member
Dafont dot com, thousands of free fonts and can preview text
caribmike
Retired with a Side Hustle
In the 20 years that I've owned my commercial print and sign shop, I've never once bought a font. If you look hard enough, you can almost always find the font you need at no cost. There are dozens of free font sites. Additionally, there are ways using proper Google search terms to uncover websites with hundreds of name brand fonts which I bookmark for future needs. At this point, I have well over 10,000 fonts and use Font Expert to manage them. I do recognize that fonts cost money to develop and market. I don't really understand how they became freebies in the software world, but, there they are for anyone to download.
IvanVasquez said:
I have two problems with DaFont web site. One issue is they have a lot of poor quality fonts uploaded there. And many of the ones that are of better quality can be found either at Font Squirrel or Google Fonts.
A bigger problem is many fonts on the DaFont web site are free only for personal use, not commercial use -like in a sign company. That stipulation probably stops hardly anybody from downloading anyway. But it is often spelled out there.
caribmike said:
Good luck finding any font you need for free legally. I have zero problem at all paying for good quality commercial fonts, especially if it's a "work horse" type family I can use a lot. Granted, I try to jump on pricing deals such as introductory discounts when the typeface is first released rather than paying full price.
It takes a hell of a lot of work to create a good quality typeface. And the quality bar for type has been raised so much higher in recent years. The OpenType format made it possible to radically expand character sets in a single font file. The OTF Variable format allows levels of flexibility that greatly surpass the defunct Type 1 Multiple Master format. Those new features demand even more design work, scripting work, etc from type designers.
I'm not doing my job without pay. I don't expect type designers to work for free either.
Evan Gillette
New Member
I agree with Bobby, if you don't like working for free then you should at least have a basic understanding of copyright law and the conditions associated with "free" font sites. There are literally hundreds of font sites and most commercial fonts will work with flexi. One thing to note is that Flexi is very limited in using alternative characters and ligatures found in most modern opentype fonts. There are several free versions of font managers that are good and a few of them will download and install the entire google fonts library (takes up about 10gb iirc) if you desire.
I gave up on using Flexi for design work back in the early 2000's. We have 3 licenses of Flexi in my workplace, but they're all on "production" PCs for driving various devices. Not doing design work. Limitations with handing type, particularly the extended features of OpenType is one of the reasons I took Flexi off my workstation and put the dongle on another machine. Adobe's Creative Suite applications were early adopters of OpenType. It took CorelDRAW until the 2010's to get on board with fully supporting OpenType.
Flexi is not alone out of "CAS" applications with limited type handling. Most sign industry specific design applications have limited support of OpenType features.
Lately most commercial fonts I buy are ones that include OTF Variable Fonts in the package. Variable fonts are pretty cool. The OTF Var format has been around for a few years, but still there is only a limited number of graphics applications that support them. Variable Fonts work in recent versions of Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. Inkscape recently added Variable Font capability. BTW, the Google Fonts web site has a decent number of Variable Fonts.
Flexi is not alone out of "CAS" applications with limited type handling. Most sign industry specific design applications have limited support of OpenType features.
Lately most commercial fonts I buy are ones that include OTF Variable Fonts in the package. Variable fonts are pretty cool. The OTF Var format has been around for a few years, but still there is only a limited number of graphics applications that support them. Variable Fonts work in recent versions of Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. Inkscape recently added Variable Font capability. BTW, the Google Fonts web site has a decent number of Variable Fonts.
Evan Gillette
New Member
Yeah SAi has really fallen behind on any real functionality upgrades for flexi, which is writing on the wall to me. I run flexi adobe and affinity for design depending on what it is and flexi, enroute, vcarve, onyx, and fusion360 for outputs. I haven't gotten into the habit of using variable fonts yet but I should. Bobby do you use a font organizing software? I use nexusfont pointed at a shared network drive folder that contains our font collection and it works well. One of my biggest gripes about adobe CC and the included adobe fonts library is the super glitchy loading and syncing, it seems to never fail to load/activate the fonts I need.
I use Corel's Font Manager application to "see" some font collection folders I organized, but that's mainly for design tasks I do in CorelDRAW. Otherwise I just install fonts directly into the OS via Windows' Fonts folder.
The Adobe Fonts service is pretty handy. I haven't had many headaches with it, other than occasionally having to make sure I'm signed into my account. Usually I can sync new fonts or remove them without having re-launch CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator.
The main font glitches I've been seeing for some time involve CorelDRAW. There's a number of type families from Google Fonts that just don't work; when I try to apply one of them to a text object it turns into default Arial. Sometimes the fonts preview looking like Arial in the font menu. The same fonts work just fine in rival applications. Then there's a few type families where all styles either appear as all-italic or all-upright. I've seen some commercially purchased type families do this as well as some type families synced via Adobe Fonts. The same typefaces work fine in other applications. I use Adobe Illustrator for certain kinds of design tasks, but when I want or need to use certain typefaces the various type bugs in CorelDRAW force me to use Illustrator for the entire project. Corel's developers really need to get their s*** together (or the higher ups need to be willing to pay for more developers). The sheer lack of updates for CorelDRAW in recent years makes it feel as if they're doing things on the cheap.
Another aggravation: I can't have Illustrator and CorelDRAW open at the same time. If I do, certain styles of some type families will disappear from the font menu in Illustrator. Weird.
I have copies of Affinity Designer for my desktop PC and my iPad Pro. It's a decent application, but it is missing some features I often use in CorelDRAW and/or Illustrator. Plus Affinity Designer still doesn't support OTF Variable Fonts. It's not clear when or if they plan on adding that capability.
I think SAi needs to do some restructuring or something otherwise they risk Flexi (and the Vinyl Express LXi app they also sell via Sign Warehouse) becoming completely irrelevant. If we didn't already own our multiple licenses of Flexi we wouldn't be looking to buy any new copies. We're able to do print/cut operations from Onyx Thrive. Me and my co-workers who do design work do the bulk of our design work in CorelDRAW and/or Illustrator. One of our guys used Vinyl Express LXi for years at another shop, but he shifted more of his workflow into CorelDRAW. "CAS" applications that just do basic design work and vinyl cutting are really going to have a hard time justifying their existence in the future.
The Adobe Fonts service is pretty handy. I haven't had many headaches with it, other than occasionally having to make sure I'm signed into my account. Usually I can sync new fonts or remove them without having re-launch CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator.
The main font glitches I've been seeing for some time involve CorelDRAW. There's a number of type families from Google Fonts that just don't work; when I try to apply one of them to a text object it turns into default Arial. Sometimes the fonts preview looking like Arial in the font menu. The same fonts work just fine in rival applications. Then there's a few type families where all styles either appear as all-italic or all-upright. I've seen some commercially purchased type families do this as well as some type families synced via Adobe Fonts. The same typefaces work fine in other applications. I use Adobe Illustrator for certain kinds of design tasks, but when I want or need to use certain typefaces the various type bugs in CorelDRAW force me to use Illustrator for the entire project. Corel's developers really need to get their s*** together (or the higher ups need to be willing to pay for more developers). The sheer lack of updates for CorelDRAW in recent years makes it feel as if they're doing things on the cheap.
Another aggravation: I can't have Illustrator and CorelDRAW open at the same time. If I do, certain styles of some type families will disappear from the font menu in Illustrator. Weird.
I have copies of Affinity Designer for my desktop PC and my iPad Pro. It's a decent application, but it is missing some features I often use in CorelDRAW and/or Illustrator. Plus Affinity Designer still doesn't support OTF Variable Fonts. It's not clear when or if they plan on adding that capability.
I think SAi needs to do some restructuring or something otherwise they risk Flexi (and the Vinyl Express LXi app they also sell via Sign Warehouse) becoming completely irrelevant. If we didn't already own our multiple licenses of Flexi we wouldn't be looking to buy any new copies. We're able to do print/cut operations from Onyx Thrive. Me and my co-workers who do design work do the bulk of our design work in CorelDRAW and/or Illustrator. One of our guys used Vinyl Express LXi for years at another shop, but he shifted more of his workflow into CorelDRAW. "CAS" applications that just do basic design work and vinyl cutting are really going to have a hard time justifying their existence in the future.
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