We all love to get something for free with no catch, well this is exactly that! 40+ Professional Standard fonts for zilch. You don't even need to sign up. Often free fonts are not professionally designed or suitable for professional printing. This isn't the case with these.

Take a look here:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/11/08/40-excellent-freefonts-for-professional-design/

This collection of fonts include:
District Thin
Greyscale Basic
Diavlo
Kontrapunkt

So in my last post I mentioned the film about a font, Helvetica. As promised, here is my opinion.

I was quite pleasantly surprised at how well this film / documentary was produced. After all creating over 80 minutes of documentary about a font must be quite a challenge. It has certainly been professionally done. They films in various parts of the world to talk to various industry experts and designers each explaining what the font means to them etc... There are a few people who have quite a "strange" character and at times felt like some of them where rambling just for the sake of it but on the whole all their opinions are all quite valid and their stories interesting.

It's quite an eye opener and shows just how powerful this font can be. I particular like the all the various scenes shown throughout, showing all the different companies and signs using this font type. It really does seem to be absolutely everywhere and it's still as refreshing as it was 50 years ago.

Overall I would recommend this, but only to people with more than just an interest in fonts / Helvetica.

Checkout http://www.helveticafilm.com/clips.html for some trailers.

It's been some time since we've reviewed which is disappointing and today I'm not actually reviewing anything again. This is more of a mention of something I'll shortly be reviewing once my DVD arrives.

Director's Statement

Why make a film about a typeface, let alone a feature documentary film about Helvetica? Because it's all around us. You've probably already seen Helvetica several times today. It might have told you which subway platform you needed, or tried to sell you investment services or vacation getaways in the ads in your morning paper. Maybe it gave you the latest headlines on television, or let you know whether to 'push' or 'pull' to open your office door.

Read more over at http://www.helveticafilm.com/

 

This article from CodingHorror.com is certainly worth a mention.

 

View the Article, Typography: Where Engineers and Designers Meet

ITC Out of the Fridge is a friendly, lively design that lends itself especially well to display applications. Best of all, it’s free with any Fonts.com purchase in December.

Virtual Font Folder enhances Windows by giving you another directory to install / remove fonts. This is great for designers and developers who may wish to isolate their fonts whilst working on a project.

Check out the full product description over at www.loseyourmind.com. Lose your Mind Development are a software house who specifically write font related tool.

With the festive season creeping up closer, I thought I'd do a nice season review of the font "Almonte Snow". Almonte Snow has been created by Ray Larabie, a well know creator of some quality fonts. 

Use this font with a bit of color and you'll instantly get recogisable feastive text. The only critisism I can make about this font is the fact it doesn't have any lower case letter.

 

Free Download of Almonte Font
Windows: almosnow.zip (30.67 kb)
Mac: almonte_snow.sit (168.07 kb)

In the past I've tried not to post up anything too negative about certain fonts, so what prompted me with the following ramblings? An end-user technical documentation which was dropped on my desk. The entire document was written using comic sans font. What's the harm in that you might be thinking? Well to me it gives me an instant impression of some amateur product written by some secretary who thinks it looks "cool" or "pretty".

In my honest opinion, Comic Sans really shouldn't be used in ANY professional documentation, letter heads or business card.
Obviously there is exception, when it's specifically aimed at very young children for example. Be warned though; don't make the same mistake as I did by uninstalling the font. It appears that some programs depend on it.

In the past I've also seen comic sans being used by a company promoting adult education specifically aimed at those reading difficulties, how patronising! They not dumb or childlike, they just can't read properly.

What's the point of this post? To tell the whole to avoid comic sans unless absolutely necessary!

Funnily enough the top result in Google for Comic Sans is a website called "Ban Comic Sans"

If you love fonts, you've probably had to install and uninstall fonts many many times. Do you find yourself installing random fonts, just to preview them only to discover that the font just didn't fit your design needs? Then read on.

Printer's Apprentice is a font manager, but what makes this special is that you can "try out" a font before installing it. Saving you lots of time and effort having not to revisit the Windows/Font directory.

We at font reviews dot com are greatful to the lose your mind team for developing the only "complete" font manager tool on Windows.

For more information and download visit http://www.loseyourmind.com/

Ever looked at a common brand and thought to yourself, I know the Font Face they used for that design? Examples are ITC Avant Garde Gothic Medium which is used for Adidas or Mata Regular which is the text used in SpiderMan designs. If I were to write "SuperMan" in Mata Regular, you'd instantly recognise that the text should say SpiderMan. You may have even misread it as SpiderMan. This just goes to show that the font is a very powerful tool for remembrance.

Let us know of any other famous fonts you recognise