I’ve been supporting print designers using Macs since the days of System 8, well over 10 years, and font management has always been the most frequent problem I’ve been asked to resolve. For years we’ve fought the battles of missing fonts, corruption, truetype failures, and just plain too many fonts on the system. Load too many fonts (some 2,000 postscript fonts here at Creative Services), and your system will begin to drag. Even worse, when you tried to find a font in Quark or InDesign, you had to scroll through the hundreds of fonts in your list. So we have always used the best font management tools available so that we could easily load and unload our thousands of fonts.

Back in the day of OS 8, Adobe Type Manager was required, and it was and remained a dog. We loaded and unloaded fonts manually, that is, we put them in the system font folder, rebooted, and then reversed the process once done using them. It was easy to miss something, and often designers would just keep activating fonts without ever removing any, and this would clog their system performance.

When Apple moved to OS X, the problems multiplied, as there were now 4 different font folders, and Murphy’s Law set in. Font Book, which comes with OS X, works, sort of, but it is not a professional level tool. Font management programs have several advantages, including previews of your font collection, folder organization and activation, automatic loading and unloading of fonts, and resolution of duplicates.

We used two of the leading products, Suitcase and FontAgent Pro, but when it came time to upgrade a couple of years ago, I looked around once again, and to my surprise found the best of the lot was the new Font Explorer X from Linotype, and it was free! When I first opened it, I thought I had opened ITunes by mistake; the interface is very similar, including a Linotype store where you can buy and download fonts.

Linotype is one of the oldest European font houses, with many famous font designers including Hermann Zapf, Adrian Frutiger, and Akira Kobayashi. I could understand that they could make such a great product and give it away (Suitcase/FontAgent are $100), as they were able to get you to their store. The prices are the same as Adobe, but much easier to preview and buy. Besides, many of the fonts we use are Linotype originals, and licensed by Adobe for sale.

Font Explorer X is still the best tool, IMHO, and there are two commercial versions available, workstation and server. However Linotype still offer Version 1.2.3 which is a free download available at http://www.fontexplorerx.com/download/, and at that price, it’s the best deal out there. Snow Leopard is said to improve font management within the OS, with unlimited fonts allowed (without system degradation) and auto-activation, two major steps in the right direction. In fact, if things go right, we may not have to buy any font management software in the future, Font Explorer X Version 1.2.3 will bridge our needs till after upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Here is a link to a review of font management tools written last fall, (I think it is still valid):
Font Manager Review

Today I feel like a pesky intern. I have been wandering around looking for work to do, but no one seems to have any for me. During my search I even wandered into an important meeting which I was promptly thrown out of. Incidentally, I have also been thrown out of my own office because my office mate is conducting a phone interview.

So I gave up on the search for work, got some orange chicken from Panda Express, and I have settled into a co-worker’s office for a nice, long blog post about life, love, the meaning of the universe, editing, and the summer. (But mostly the last two.)

I’ve noticed something since I started working here as a writer and editor. Even when I’m not at work, I now have the urge to edit everything. I am officially the person who everyone hates because I am always pointing out mistakes on signs and brochures and being really snotty and condescending about it (despite the fact that I, myself, absolutely depend on Microsoft Word’s automatic spell check). But I come across about 50 things each day I want to edit. From Facebook statuses to restaurant menus to the student newspaper (which got my last name and major wrong in my last of 60 columns) to the fortune cookie I got the other day telling me “it is time to moving forward.” I just want to fix the world’s mistakes.

And speaking of moving forward, this is totally unrelated but I am excited to continue working here as we move on into summer. Summertime in Bloomington is wonderful with most of the students gone, and it will be nice to have a reason to be in town every day. I am also excited for summer because I just opened my fortune cookie from my lunch and it says “You will have full contentment by summers end.” So achieving full contentment is definitely something to be excited about.

(Although there should really be an apostrophe before the “s” in “summers.”)