Where are Fonts coming from?
- Some fonts are pre-installed on your computer
Preinstalled fonts on Macs
Preinstalled fonts on Windows
- You can buy individual fonts and install on your computer. Examples:
Font Shop
Émigré Fonts
Linotype
- You can download free fonts and install on your computer. Examples:
Google Fonts
Font Squirrel
- You can subscribe to a cloud-based Font library and have access to thousands of fonts. Examples:
Adobe Fonts
Monotype Fonts
Managing Fonts on Your Computer
In Windows 10 or 11:
In Settings > Personalization > Fonts
Or, type Control Panel in the search field and select it from the results. With Control Panel in Icon View, click the Fonts icon. Windows displays all the installed fonts.
On a mac, Open the Font Book app from your Applications folder.
Installing Fonts on Your Computer
Installing fonts is simple and normally just involved downloading the font file, opening the file and clicking “install”.
Font Formats
TrueType (.ttf)
Developed by Apple and eventually was licensed to Microsoft.
TrueType fonts can be unreliable for publishing, so they were used for viewing on-screen, and an additional font type, PostScript, was used for printing.
OpenType (.otf)
OpenType is a newer font format that has replaced TrueType.
It is built on the TrueType format and supports an expanded character set.
OpenType fonts are cross-compatible and work on Mac OS and Windows.
They are ideal for print and screen, offering outline and bitmap data for the font in one file, therefore eliminating the need for a separate font PostScript fonts.
OpenType SVG
An SVG font is a new version of the OpenType format, with SVG standing for Scalable Vector Graphics.
The SVG glyph format allows the characters to be displayed in multiple colors and different transparencies, and some may even be animated. These attributes are not supported by regular OTF and TTF formats. Learn more.
Web open font format (.woff)
Web Open Font Format (WOFF) is a format that is used on web pages.
It is compressed, so content will download quicker.
Currently all browsers support WOFF.
Often font vendors don’t want to license their TrueType or OpenType format fonts for web use, but they’ll license WOFF.
