But if we are willing to spare a little bit more time digging, we can find many amazing things that we might not have known before. If you are a Mac user, you might have noticed that Apple pays special attention to the use of fonts.

And you don’t have to be a typographer to make use of fonts. Here are several things you can do to manage fonts on your Mac to tap their potential.

Summoning The Fonts

The most obvious way to use the fonts is to use them in text. The quickest way to summon the list of fonts is to use “Command + T” or “Format – Font – Show Fonts” menu from any Cocoa-based text editor in your Mac – such as TextEdit and Bean.

The Font panel will open and you can use it to customize the font(s) that you are using in the text, starting from the simple settings like changing the font type and size to the more advanced options like changing the color and applying drop shadow.

If you click the settings button at the bottom of the window, you’ll get more options such as adding the used font setting to favorites, hide/show Preview and Effects toolbars, and Color Panel.

Choosing “Typography” will open the Typography panel where you can further customize the font that you are using. But please note that different fonts have different customization levels. One font might give you more options than aother.

The settings button will also give you access to lots of characters and symbols that you can use in your texts. Just choose “Characters”

And, clicking on “Manage Fonts” will open up the “Font Book” window.

Managing The Fonts

Aside from the Fonts Panel, you can also open the Font Book by navigating to “Applications – Font Book.app” (or by using one of these application launchers). This free font manager allows you to easily add, remove, disable and other kinds of font management.

While it’s very obvious that you can add (or install) new fonts by clicking on the “Plus (+)” button under the “Font” column, Font Book also allows you to group fonts based on your own categories. To do that click the “Plus (+)” button under the “Collection” column.

The yellow alert triangles next to the fonts mean you have duplicates in your collection. You can resolve the problem by right clicking on the duplicates and choose “Resolve Duplicates“.

Right clicking on the font (or group of fonts) will also allow you to disable the fonts that you rarely use. This will free up some system resources – very useful if you have a slow system or if you have too many fonts installed on your system by third-party applications.

The advantage of disabling the font instead of removing it is that you can easily enable the font anytime you need it again.

Printing Type Samples

Another trick that you can perform using Font Book is the ability to print out type samples. Whenever you need hard copy of font samples for reference – what will they look like off the screen – just select the fonts that you want to print and hit “Command + P” (or go to “File – Print” menu).

The only setting that you have to tinker with is the “Report Type” on the printing option page. This setting will determine the face of the print outs.

And here’s the example of a print out page, Repertoire Type.

Do you have your own tricks in managing fonts? You can share them using the comments below. And don’t forget to check out our other articles about fonts.

But maybe once in a while we should take a stroll through the “˜characters’ in each of the font families and see what unique uses we can put the lesser known fonts to.

The Character Map installed on each system is a motley of nice upright fonts, crazy scrawny ones, and of course the symbols and the dingbats. Just take the dingbat fonts (Webdings and Wingdings); they are a rich collection of symbols and small pictograms we can use. From religious symbols to the computer parts (even a ticking bomb), you will find something of use there.

Just to give you an example of using the lesser fonts creatively ““ you can take the “˜scissor’ character from Wingdings and put it next to a dotted line. It illustratively tells you on a printed sheet – cut along the dotted line.

So open up the entire character set and let’s put down some more rapid fire uses of the lesser used fonts instead of making them feel like orphans.

On Windows XP - Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Character Map.

On Windows Vista / 7 – Click Accessories, then System Tools folder to access the Character Map in Windows.

Or alternatively, click Start, then the Run dialog”¦type in charmap.exe; hit OK.

Deck Up Your Text With Fancy Bullets

If any, lesser used fonts can find their most creative use as fancy bullets. For instance, instead of repeatedly using the default ones, the dingbat fonts can be brought up. One of the tricks in 4 Custom Bullet Tips and Tricks for Microsoft Word 2007 referred to their easy handiness as decorative bullets.

Express Yourself With Dingbat Smileys In Yahoo Messenger

The entire Character Map can be your smiley sheet. Open up the Character Map, select the dingbat font of your choice, click on Copy. Type in your text with a regular font and then choose the dingbat font from the dropdown before pasting the character from the clipboard.

As with any text you can adjust the font size and color of the dingbat font. Oh, dingbat fonts do have regular smileys of their own.

Make Them Stand-In As Clipart

Fonts which resemble graphics can be good substitutes for cliparts. Take a look at the screenshot above – the uncomplicated lines of the “˜His’ and “˜Hers’ is as good as any clipart.

That’s from Webdings. Any number of these symbolic fonts can be used to deck up your presentations or publications.

Visual Cues In Your Notes

Nearly every font has characters which resemble symbols. Take Arial for instance. While writing notes in a text editor, these “˜symbol’ characters can be used as visual cues for interpretation. Combining them with characters from Symbol, Webdings, or Wingdings further enhances your text.

Place A Non-Graphic Checkmark Or A Quick Checkbox

A simple checkmark has its uses in everything from lists to PowerPoint presentations. Head to Wingdings and its last row for the check and the cross non-graphic symbols. Typing one or a few letter C’s in Webdings creates a series of checkboxes which can be symbols for entering numbers like ZIP codes or phone numbers.

Make Your Folder Names Stand Out

Letters, numbers and a few special characters on your keyboard are run of the mill for folder names. But how do you get more creative with it? You use the Character Map to insert meaningful characters to the folder (or file) names. Using the characters in the right sequence also helps to arrange specific folders in an order.

If your default UI system font is Tahoma, then open up its character set and choose a unique character to set off your folder name differently. Of course, if you change the system font to something like Arial then you have a better set of characters to choose from like the character which symbolizes a musical tune or the light and dark shades characters.

For The Microsoft Logo

Just next to it is the last character in Wingdings. The Microsoft logo finds a lot of uses; from illustrating a Windows shortcut to just suggesting that this is a Windows tip.

Design Your Own Logo

You got the Windows logo easily. You can also play with the variety of characters in the Character Map to design your own simple logo. Open up your graphic editor; start off by typing the chosen character as text or copy pasting it from the Character Map.

The text can be rasterized, turned into a path, or a shape. You can go to work on it with all the graphical tools in your program. Two or more such characters can be combined to create creative but simple logos.

Copyright & Trademark Symbols With A Keystroke

Creative commons (even then see the next point) is fine but with the kind of plagiarism going on, you do have to spread your copyright and trademark around. Check out the details on inserting a copyright, registered or trademark symbol in Microsoft Word, Windows applications, or a webpage.

Another instance could be to download the Creative Commons logo and icon in an embeddable TTF and use them from the character map.

Map An Unused Key To A Special Font

This has become especially relevant for me as an Indian. The new Indian currency symbol is not a part of keyboards but it can be downloaded as a font file and mapped to an unused key for use in personal documents on the computer.

There are a thousand and one creative uses of fonts. But away from typography and graphic designing, what simple but creative uses can you come up with by just looking at the Character Map? Maybe it is for special accent symbols or simply putting the degree sign. Do type it in the comments.

Image Credit: FontFont

Did you know that the amount of fonts you have installed on your Windows machine has a direct impact on your boot time?  Well now you know! We have found a font manager application for Windows that will make it much easier to manage windows fonts.

You can download Font Frenzy from here.  If you are looking for a place to download fonts or how to install them without this application you can check out this older MUO post.

There is no registration required and you do not need to give your email address. When you are finished downloading and installing, follow the prompts and then launch the application.

It will look like this on the first run:

There are 5 buttons across the top of the screen that are titled: Defrenzy, FrenzySnap, Refrenzy, FrenzyMan and FrenzyInfo. Lets take a look at what they do. Before pushing any of the buttons make sure you run a FrenzySnap so that you do not lose any fonts.

Defrenzy will remove all user added fonts from your computer. This means it will DELETE all fonts that did not come with your operating system. So anything installed with any other programs or any fonts you added manually will be removed. This is a great way to start over and just load up the fonts that you need. Remember to run the FrenzySnap before running Defrenzy so you will be able to restore your fonts if need be.

To begin, click on the Defrenzy button and then click Defrenzy Now:

After hitting the button you will see a confirmation window asking you to close your other applications:

When you are finished closing your other applications click Yes. You will then see this box asking you for the font directory. Leave it as the default and hit OK.

You will be prompted to take a snapshot and name it before continuing. Please do so. Hit OK and it will save your snapshot and then remove all fonts that did not come installed with your operating system. You can view a log file of what has been removed when it is complete. If you want to reinstall your fonts you can use Refrenzy which we will cover shortly.

FrenzySnap will take a snapshot of all installed fonts on your machine. Think of this like a system restore point for your fonts. If you remove some of them you can revert back to this backup and restore all the fonts you removed. Click the Save Snapshot button to save the snapshot.

Then you will be prompted for a name of the saved set.

Hit OK and it will save your snapshot. When it is complete you will see the snapshot appear in the left pane so that you can see the points that you can restore from:

To restore from this font set we will use the ReFrenzy option which we will walk through next. This process brought me from 198 fonts to 63 fonts. ReFrenzy will allow you to selectively choose to restore fonts from your previous Frenzy Snapshots generated by Frenzy Snap.

Simply highlight the set you want to restore and then hit Restore. You will be told to close any other open applications. It will then ask you for the path to your font folders – again leave them at the default and hit OK. It will restore the fonts from this set now and you will see this when it is complete:

FrenzyMan is the actual font manager that allows you to add and remove fonts easily from your system.

Using the buttons on the left panel and selecting fonts on the right, you can perform any of the actions listed. It is very easy and intuitive.

Finally, FrenzyInfo will simply bring up the application’s information showing you pertinent links to the authors website, help and email support.

Do you have another favorite font manager to manage windows fonts? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

I will show you how it works and how to capture the text for use in your own images using a little bit of a workaround. We have to use that workaround because as of now, PilotHandwriting does not allow you to download your font. If you are looking to be able to download the font for use in your word processing application then check out 2 Free Tools To Make Your Own Text Font.

Upon arriving at their website, you will be greeted by a little flash animation which surprisingly is not over the top and compliments the site.

You will then be shown a YouTube video about how it works. When it is complete, you will see a printable chart for you to fill in. That chart is shown below:

Go ahead and hit the Print button, print out the chart and then hit the right arrow on the screen to continue on to the next step. You will then fill in each letter or number in their respective spaces on the chart. Then when you are finished, you will have a few options to get the template back to the website. You can use a webcam, a scanner or a digital camera (cell phones work fine).

Hit the button for the option you want to use and get ready to upload. If you are using the scanner or camera options, you will need to upload your image in JPG form. I chose to snap the picture with my camera phone and upload that JPG.

Here is what my template looked like when I finished it:

Note that where I was not centered or wrote over the black lines, those letters were not recognized. So like they taught you in pre-school ““ stay in the lines, kiddies! Then get ready to upload your image:

Follow the on screen instructions for your particular method of upload and continue on. The web application will suck in your template and you will see each letter flash across the screen as it is processed like this:

When it is complete, you will see something that looks like this:

Hmm looks like some of my letters were not recognized. The best thing to do is rewrite the template and re-upload. But they do give you options to fix them onscreen. The problematic letters are marked with pictures of a pencil.

Then when you are complete, they will hit you up to log in. If you do not have an account, you can create one here:

When you are finished you will be taken to a text editor where you can compose your message like this:

Type away and when you are finished, use a screen capture application to copy the text as an image and you will be able to paste it anywhere you want using your favorite graphic application like GIMP or Photoshop. When you are finished, you can also email the picture above to any email recipient by filling in the following form:

Hit that check box and they will give you a snarky message telling you to send snail mail. Does anyone really use a paper and pen anymore?

Then the message will come through with the image in the body. It will also come through with a link to view the image on their website if it did not come through properly.

Personally, I think this is great and hopefully this tool to create a font will remain free and they will add an option to download your font. Any chance of getting that application updated, PilotHandwriting guys?

Karl recently showed you WhatFontIs which could help you but I’m going to show you another way to discover the font you want, and perhaps even get a copy of it, using WhatTheFont.

There’s a problem using unusual fonts ““ as fonts – on webpages. Simply put, if the webpage uses a font that you don’t have, then you won’t be able to see the page as it is intended. The simplest solution to this problem is the one that is used most. Don’t actually use the font.

Instead, use a graphic image that looks identical. As webpages get more and more complex, this solution is more and more important. MakeUseOf uses this method all the time. Many of our screenshots represent fonts that you almost certainly don’t have installed on your system.

But now and then you need something more. You really like the font you see on a page, and you would like to to make use of it yourself to create the perfect webpage, or to use offline somewhere. To do that, you need to find out what font was used.

WhatTheFont lets you upload or link to the image containing the font, asks you some questions, and presents you with some candidate fonts for comparison.

So how effective is this? Depends. I’d say it’s a great tool to find a similar font. To be sure you have an identical font requires a better eye than I have.

Example 1 ““ The MakeUseOf logo

Let’s see what we can do with our own dogfood. First, make sure you have access to the image you want to use. Either the URL, or a local copy in a web format, such as .jpg or .png.

Visit the site then provide the address of the image:

Click the Continue button.

WhatTheFont needs to do some work now. If you’ve ever used any OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software you’ll be familiar with the idea. The images is composed of a set of small pixels. Fonts are instead sets of geometric models. Translation between these is the part that requires some effort.

The next page that appears is where you can help. WhatTheFont has made some guesses as to what some of the characters are that make up the logo.

In some cases, the guesses are not correct. For instance, se is tagged as being the letter m. You can easily fix these by changing the values in the boxes.

Some guesses are a little more complex though. The website cannot correctly recognise that this is one letter e, rather than two unknown characters.

These are also easy to fix though. Drag one of these images over the other and drop it. The page will be redrawn, and you can correctly tag the character.

When you have completed as many of these characters as you can, click Continue again.

WhatTheFont uses all of the supplied information and presents you with a set of fonts that best fit.

In this case, Futura SB-Bold Con seems a very close match. If you click on the font name you are forwarded to a more central part of the MyFonts site, and presented with information and samples specifically about that one font.

From here, the choices are yours. Look up more details, buy the font. Find free options. you can spend a lot of time in here.

Example 2 ““ Signage

Let’s try something a little harder from the real world.

You know how it works now, so let’s just hit the high points. First off”¦ it didn’t work. That is, until I cropped it down to just the text.

After that, things went more normally.

Turns out that there are some good matches.

Anyway, that should give you enough to get started. Enjoy yourself. If you need any more help with fonts, first give the rest of MyFonts a try. if that doesn’t do it for you, Identifont can help you out when the automatic options don’t work. And if you want to learn to identify fonts yourself, find out some more at FontTrainer.

How did it go for you? Let me know in the comments.