For the past 20 years, FontShop has been providing the world with beautiful typefaces. Their selection of more than 100,000 fonts derives from dozens of foundries, including their own brand: FontFont. Among the font download services we reviewed, this one rated well with our criteria.
FontShop’s selection of 100,000+ fonts are more than one note. You can find different styles ranging from stencil to modern to sans serif with a simple search. By far the coolest product FontShop has to offer is FontBook. Sometimes called “the big yellow book” the FontBook is a compilation of typefaces from multiple designers and foundries presented in a systematic way. Basically it’s a font reference guide containing historical information, print samples and more for every typeface that is digitally available.
If you have time to kill and want to be inspired by talented typeface designers, visit FontShop’s website—especially their blog.
- Blog: updated daily with new fonts, inspiration and ideas. Each new font written about comes with a PDF document with pages and pages of glyph coverage and rousing print examples.
- HandFont: send in a sample of your handwriting and receive a digital font of your personal scrawl.
- Browsing History: don’t you hate it when you browse through a list of something and then forget to go back to the product you did like? FontShop eliminates that problem by keeping your browsing history and storing your favorites to be reviewed again.
- Custom Preview: a sample sentence is shown in the font of your choice with the option of changing size and color
- TypeNavigator: find the perfect font by choosing different characteristics in this visual font search system. Have a section with good comments
- Newsletter: twice a month FontShop sends their subscribers a newsletter with industry tips and free fonts.
Navigating through FontShop’s inventory is pretty simple. They have all the standard searches of their competitors like searching by keywords, categories or by popularity. But FontShop has two different tools that help their users find what they are looking for, even if the user isn’t quite sure what that is. A random search function is located on the left-hand navigation bar. By clicking on this link, random fonts are presented to you with a rating system attached. If you are logged in, the next time you click the random search, FontShop will remember which fonts they showed you last time. The TypeNavigator is another great option FontShop provides. This tool guides you through a series of questions that ultimately leads to an end font.
Many of the online font downloading stores are nameless and faceless, but with FontShop, they personally introduce themselves from the beginning. An entire page on their website is filled with bios on each person on their payroll. With such a close connection to their customers, their support matches suit. They claim “in most cases, your call is answered right away, by a human. No phone trees. Instant help.” They also have an extensive FAQs page if you’d prefer to figure things out on your own.
FontShop is an easy to navigate website with personal service and a fabulous selection of fonts. If you buy fonts often, it is in your best interest to review their selection and sign up for their free newsletter.
