Do you load them as you need them Fred? I have thousands of fonts (I've been accused of having a font fetish
)
He or she who dies with the most fonts wins. Yes, I load them as I need them while keeping a core group of about 300 fonts (including system fonts) installed. Once or twice a week I will make a pass through the font folder and delete those that aren't in my core group (using correct procedure for deleting fonts).
and my problem has been remembering what I have and what I don't.
Sounds like a visit to your geriatric physician might be in order. Some of the drugs they have nowadays work wonders. I don't remember every font I have and don't even try to do so. That's what organizing my fonts and using Typograf to view them for both matching and creative selection does for me. And, in doing so, I have also relieved my lovely wife and any employees from having to do so either.
Inevitably the font I need is not loaded and I have to quit and relaunch Illustrator after i load it to use it.
What version of Illustrator and Windows or Mac OS are you running? The latest versions will update themselves without having to quit and relaunch.
Do you have printed samples for your customers?
No ... that's a quagmire and costs far more time than it's worth, as well as often resulting in poor typeface selection. When I have a client who is concerned, I launch Typograf, enter the text in question, switch to the appropriate category and have the client select from a screen display what he or she likes.
If so for all 15,000?
As mentioned, I have culled out the duplicates so I don't have to go thru that many. In addition, by categorizing them into major groups, I further reduce the number. So if I'm looking for just the right script, I switch to my folder containing 617 scripts and look at them 8 at a time.
Currently I'm using the Font Thing to identify and print samples, but if I understand you correctly I can actually handle font management through Typograf.
Yes and I'd be surprised if Font Thing did not have similar capabilities.
Thanks - just curious... font management is becoming an issue... having a specific font available on any machine at any given time would be ideal.
That would be but none of us are running Cray supercomputers. We have to live within reasonable limits imposed by the machines we do use. My response has been to organize and to equip myself with a reasonable solution.