How to identify unknown fonts

Posted on July 13, 2008 at 5:16 am

It happened to me yesterday. I was browsing the Internet normally, and then I saw it. The most beautiful font I’d ever seen. But it was on a picture! How was I ever going to figure out the font type?

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of different fonts in existence, which makes it nearly impossible to identify an unknown font by just looking at it. It seemed like a hopeless task, but I had to try. There was no way I was going to let this spectacular font slip from out of my grasp.

Of course, if it was the font to a famous Hollywood movie, or to an album, it would be easy enough to search on Google for which font was used, but this was just your typical run-of-the-mill banner font. So after much frantic searching, I found two rather good methods on tracking down fonts, which I thought I’d share with you all.

Method 1: Identifont

Identifont is 100% free, and it’s a service which helps you identify fonts (you may have guessed from the title), and this is done by asking you multiple questions about the font in question.

Here is a typical Identifont question:

By asking you several questions about the font, Identifont can eventually narrow down the number of choices, and if the font is not in the massive database of Identifont, will at least give you a font which is very similar.

Normally, each font-questionnaire is only 15 questions long, which is fairly quick, especially for the results produced. Much faster than Googling the night away to identify the font, anyway.

Here’s the link to the web site:

http://www.identifont.com/identify.html

Method 2: What The Font

What The Font uses a completely different method to identify fonts than Identifont. Instead of asking questions about the font, you upload a picture of the font, and it will use a special font-recognition technology to find the closest match. So far, I’ve used it four times, and all four times it’s either identified the font or something so close that there was virtually no difference.

What’s even better is the fact that the pictures uploaded don’t even have to be high-quality, or a certain color, which makes everything oh so convenient. I mean, the picture can even be taken on a sub-standard digital camera, and the recognition would probably work. Although, the better the quality, the more accurate the results will be.

If What The Font doesn’t give you EXACTLY the font you’re looking for, it will at least give you a very similar font to use instead. Alternatively, you can ask the guys at the What The Font forum to help you, as those guys really know what they’re talking about.

Here’s the link to the web site:

http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

So far, I think What The Font has given me more accurate results than Identifont, but I think it’s probably better if you use both, and see which one gives you a font that’s closer to the font you’re looking for.

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