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Best Source of fonts?

ColorFast

New Member
Just wondering what you all think is the best place for a business starting fresh to get a collection of the most standard fonts (no more than 500 or so) that are best for signmaking. Current employer has always just used the fonts shipped with Omega Composer and I'm looking for some Illustrator-Friendly fonts. Any suggestions? Where have you all stockpiled your fonts from? How can I avoid choosing fonts out of a grand list of 2,000 or so? Thanks!
 

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
First off, if you check your Omega CD's, you will find that there are over 2000 commercial quality fonts from URW in TrueType format that have been provided to you with Omega.

The next best bargain for commercial quality fonts is to pick up a licensed copy of CorelDRAW ... even an older version. It comes bundled with about 1000 fonts in both Type 1 and TTF format.

From there I would recommend our own Steve C's SignFonts for lots of styles that you can use to provide a hand painted look and unusual flair.
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
I think you have to actively collect and then "cherry pick" good typefaces from larger collections.

CorelDRAW is probably the best starting point for adding something alonside your dedicated sign making program, even if you don't use Corel. The 1000 fonts bundled are high quality and from vendors like Bitstream, ITC and a few others.

Adobe's Creative Suite 2 Premium and Production Studio packages don't have nearly as many fonts as Corel. But the 200 or so OpenType fonts bundled are top quality. Some of these fonts, such as Garamond Premiere Pro, have some additional capabilities that are unlocked in IllustratorCS2 and InDesignCS2.

Outside of that, you have to look for good fonts where you can. Some of them you'll have to buy outright, but incorporate into the cost of the job (not too hard to do if you're working on a larger permanent sign project). You'll find others in books about fonts, graphics magazines like Computer Arts, etc.

Speaking of OpenType, some of the fonts sold at Letterhead fonts are now including special OpenType ligatures. House Industries also has some excellent quality OpenType fonts. Their $169 Ed Benguiat collect includes a display face called "Ed Interlock" that has an exhaustive number of special ligatures which can be activated in Illustrator.
 
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