Font Choice : How to know if the fonts that you use are high quality or questionable?

I love fonts! I still have that CD with 1,000 fonts in it (I don’t think I’ve gotten around to using 1% of it though.) But through my years I’ve accumulated a good number of fonts (some legal) — some more questionable.

I’ve since reformed my ways.

Quantity doesn’t equate to quality as you may now have already known. I’ve since eliminated 90% of my ‘font collection’ and have only stuck with a few.

How did I know what typefaces to stick by and leave behind?

Here are a few tips for you to distinguish good fonts from bad font design:

1. Check out the kerning — Kerning is the spacing between letters. Well made typefaces, sweat out these tiny details, Type out a few words, does the spacing seem wonky? If it looks wonky, that’s a bad font.
2. Poorly Drawn Letters — Blow up your letters to above 72pts. If you see small indentations and inconsistencies then it’s more probable that it’s not a good font.
3. Pricing — Not the best metric more probable. Good Fonts take time, hence have a price tag. free fonts downloaded from dafont or similar websites would most probably deliver not-so-great typefaces, if it’s free, there’s a 80% chance that it’s not as good.

That being said, every kind of font, good or bad, in the hands of a capable designer would be able to make the most out of anything. While you can’t polish a turd, you can sure as hell make it look nice.

This post was created with Typeshare