Like most designers, I have a substantial collection of typefaces, and this summer I wanted to finally get around to organizing them and selecting a font manager. I had been fumbling through Apple’s native Font Book for years, but it just wasn’t cutting it, so I decided to bring in the big guns.

Why I Need a Font Manager

Font managers allow you to, well, manage your fonts. I can scroll through all the typefaces installed on my computer and preview text, group them into categories, and activate or deactivate them. This last feature is very useful if, like me, you have over 1,000 typefaces that you’ve installed over the years and your computer is starting to lag when you try to load the list in an application. With a font manager, I can have the couple typefaces I’m using for a specific client or project grouped together and can deactivate everything except those. That way, the only typefaces to choose from are the relevant ones to the project.

The Difference Between a Font and a Typeface

A Typeface is what people normally think of as fonts, things like Times New Roman or Helvetica. A font is a specific application of a typeface, such as Times New Roman 12pt or Helvetica 14pt bold.

These features are available in Font Book to an extent, but they aren’t nearly as robust as they are in most third-party font managers. For example, in order to disable or deactivate a typeface in Font Book, I have to right click (or control-click when I’m using a trackpad) on a typeface and click disable. In most font managers, you can do that simply by unchecking a box next to the typeface. The preview options in Font Book are also pretty minimal. I can either view the alphabet, every single glyph, or a custom word or phrase. There’s no option for dummy text, and forget about previewing a paragraph.

Choosing a Font Manager

Font managers are expensive (upwards of $80), so I wanted to select mine carefully. I looked at Reddit, read reviews, and settled on FontExplorer X Pro. There was a free trial, which I always love, and it made me trust the product even more because there was no commitment.

The best way for me to describe it is iTunes for your typefaces. It’s basically the same structure: songs (typefaces), and playlists (sets). There’s a checkbox next to each typeface or family (I have it set so everything is grouped into families) allowing you to toggle the activation, and the preview features are robust. So far, I’m quite happy with it, and I intend to purchase a license once my trial period expires.

Organizing My Typefaces

It’s generally best to organize typefaces based on certain characteristics, like whether or not it has serifs. I have yet to take a typography class (coming up this fall!) so my type classification skills definitely leave something to be desired. Basically, I know the difference between serif, sans serif, script, and slab serif, but I have trouble differentiating an oldstyle serif from a transitional serif.

Sorting my fonts was a typographic exercise in and of itself. I read up on type classifications and went to town. I created sets for each classification:

  • Blackletter
  • Decorative
  • Monospaced
  • Sans Serif - Geometric
  • Sans Serif - Grotesque
  • Sans Serif - Humanistic
  • Sans Serif - Squared
  • Script - Calligraphic
  • Script - Casual
  • Script - Formal
  • Serif - Glyphic
  • Serif - Neoclassical (aka: Modern)
  • Serif - Oldstyle
  • Serif - Transitional
  • Slab Serif

I also created a couple sets I knew would be useful even though they are not classifications:

  • Display: for type that works best in large headlines
  • Favorites: the 20-ish typefaces I use most often
  • Licensed Commercial: for free fonts I’ve downloaded that I can use commercially
  • Licensed Personal: for free fonts that are only licensed for personal use
  • Ornaments
  • Small Caps
  • One set for each source from which I’ve downloaded fonts (Google Fonts, Font Squirrel, etc.)
  • One set for each client, containing the typefaces in their identity (this list will grow)
  • Superfamilies (like Alegreya or Roboto, which have serif and sans serif families)

I think keeping track of the sources my downloaded fonts come from is a good idea because I can always find them again that way. I also like categorizing based on license because I can look at the license once and dump it into the correct set and never worry about it again.

It took me about half a day to go through and categorize all my typefaces, and I definitely think it was time well spent. Now whenever I download a new typeface (which isn’t that often anymore), I’ll categorize it immediately so I don’t have a backlog.