4 Free Ways(Websites) to Identify a Font Easily

[somanyholes]

My interest some of you.

http://www.techhail.com/internet/4-free-wayswebsites-to-identify-a-font-easily/2608

[Simon]

It will be of interest to the person in the post below.  

[Rik]

Nice sites, So. I was able to fool most of them though, but they'd be good enough for everyday use.

[Rik]

How right, Simon.

[somanyholes]

I was able to fool most of them though,

Can you explain, I must be having one of many dumb moments

[Rik]

There are subtleties in variants of faces which it isn't able to cope with, eg Garamond, Adobe Garamond etc. It doesn't have a big enough 'dictionary' to be able to separate them.

[somanyholes]

ahah, Cheers. Oracle as ever

[Rik]

Typographer as ever.

[Technical Ben]

Didn't know you were a typographer Rik.
There is a job going locally for that kind of thing. But I resined myself as never being able to get a job in graphic design ages ago.
Wouldn't a font dictionary be the professionals choice? Those sites are cheating.
Oh, and it's great fun "borrowing" other peoples fonts and ideas on the job! 

[Rik]

Retired, but yes, Ben. It never leaves you, though, Noreen and I consider letter forms to be works of art.

We don't tend to use dictionaries so much as sample books, aka type catalogues. While any two fonts may look similar, eg Univers and Helvetica (the former is the better font, but Adobe making the latter a standard Postscript font assured its popularity), studying certain lower-case letters, in particular a, s and t will generally help identify it. Otherwise, we define its characteristics, then narrow the hunt.

Some fonts, eg Optima, are flared - they have no serifs but make you believe they have. A serif font will scan better than a sans. OTOH, Gill Sans, popular for TV titles, is one sans that you could set a book in and have no problems. Gill was a genius, and even without serifs, he made the font scan.