Take a break from your Friday procrastiworking to join me as I lament the loss of my entire custom font library!

Last week my work computer was reformatted, updated to Yosemite OS, and endowed with the entire Adobe Creative Suite (thank you, Jon in IT). Like any good librarian, I backed up all of my documents and photos, thinking I was all set. Today, as I sat down to work on a new design project I realized (with horror) that I had NOT backed up my font library. All of the unique, snazzy type I’d downloaded over the past four years was gone, and I was left with the standard *shudder* Mac font library.

Let this be a lesson to you all–or a laughable moment for those of you who know better–rebuilding font libraries is no fun. I can’t remember half of what I had, but thankfully, I still have several excellent font/typography resources bookmarked (because apparently Chrome saves that stuff). Here are the sites I’ll be visiting today in my quest to up my typography game:

  1. The League of Moveable Type: This open-source type movement is a must-visit for librarian-designers (and over hyphenators like myself). Quality fonts in a variety of weights all for free! This was my first stop on the road to recovery.

    ostrich-sans-1junction-1

  2. Typewolf’s A Curated Collection of the 30 Best Google Fonts: Each font listed comes with desktop file downloads to add to your font library.

    alegreya-sans-font-sample

  3. Fonts in Use: This independent archive of typography showcases some of the best font combos on the web. It’s a handy way to remind yourself of which fonts to later download from DaFont or FontSquirrel.

I hope you’ll find these websites as helpful as I’ve found them!

–Veronica

Advertisement