fontsHaving had to recently undertake a project to redesign some corporate literature and align new marketing materials with concept designs, I found that I’d inherited some design work from a predecessor but only had the flat image files, so had no way of knowing what fonts were used in the designs. I was sure I’d know if it was a standard font, but as these weren’t… I didn’t know quite how to start. Obviously, this led to a trip to Google and the result was me finding a handful of very helpful web sites that I want to note down here so that a) I don’t forget them, and b) other people can perhaps benefit from them too. All these services I used are completely free online.

So, the first step was to visit http://wordmark.it/ to check all the existing fonts that I had on my local machine, on the off chance it was an obscure font that I had installed but had never come across before. This web site allows you to enter a word which in turn will be displayed on the web page in every different font format you have on your machine. A quick scan through and I could see that the ‘e’ used in the design I was trying to match wasn’t the same as any on the screen, so I knew the font was one I didn’t have and needed to track down.

The second stage was to go here http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ and use the service provided there. To get the most from this service, I decided to go back in to Photoshop and trim the image I had so as to only focus on the font I was trying to match. Then going back to the web site, I was able to upload the image and it carried out an online scan, returning a match in matter of seconds. The font, as it turned out, was called “Dax” and if anyone’s interested, can be downloaded HERE.

The third stage was to go here http://www.fontyukle.net/en/ and search for it. A quick search identified the font, after which I downloaded it to my local machine (for free), installed it, restarted Photoshop and was then able to use it in my reworking of the corporate literature.

It was as simple as that!