Picture of an Italian Renaissance scribe using a feather quill to write a manuscript by candlelight

Old Style Fonts Are New Again

Old Style fonts revive early Renaissance typefaces used by Italian scribes and printers to spread knowledge and enlightenment across the western world.
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Type point-size gauge measuring the font size of an uppercase A

Digital Font Size: What’s the Point?

When the prepress world moved from metal to digital type, processes changed but terminology didn't. So what does point size actually mean in the world of digital fonts?
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Black type sample depicting the letters U, v, w, x, y and z, and the words x-height x-factors, on a blue and green abstract background

Selecting Fonts: X-Height X-Factors

Font selection is full of x-factors, qualities that appeal to the eye or to the needs of a specific design. One of those x-factors is x-height. So what is x-height and how does it affect the way we interact with type?
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Image of Charlemagne statue with a lowercase g floating over the Aachen palace.

Lowercase g: The Story of Stories

Ever wonder why lowercase glyphs for the letters g and a vary in appearance? The answer involves kings, scribes, religion, power, culture and literacy. Grab some popcorn and settle into your seat because this story begins twelve hundred years ago.
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Image of several different kinds of donuts overlaid with the text Time to Choose

Installing the Right Font Formats

Tempted to install all your fonts on your Mac or PC? Not so fast. By selecting the right font formats ahead of time, you can avoid a lot of pain later. Learn which formats are best for you.
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Image of frustrated woman against a background of too many fonts

When Do You Have Too Many Fonts?

Many FontAgent® users have tens of thousands of fonts, and some have more than 100,000 fonts. So how many fonts is too many? And what should you do when you have so many fonts?
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Old leather suitcase with the words Small Caps on it overlaid on old movable wooden type

The Case for Small Cap Fonts

Small cap fonts are uppercase glyphs reduced to the size of lowercase letters and modified to work at smaller sizes. Here are some ideas and rules for using small caps effectively in your designs and documents.
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Graphical image of a cityscape overlaid with regular and italic letters sporting colorful hats

Stylin’ Italics and Obliques

Most people use the terms italic, oblique and slanted interchangeably to refer to font styles that lean to the right. But they're not the same. In fact, italics have a style all their own.
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Font sample sheets against a jumble of colored font shapes

Font Sample Sheets in Seconds

It's easy to create hardcopy and PDF font sample and specimen sheets in FontAgent® so you can share your font selections with others, compare text in various fonts, and create catalogs of your font collection.
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Metallic type against a red background overlaid with the words "Digital Fonts"

Type, Fonts, Faces and Cases

Many digital typography terms of today — including type, typeface, font and uppercase — trace back to the creation of metal type in Europe five hundred years ago.
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Graphical image of an extended character set supported by OpenType font file format

The Benefits of OpenType

OpenType is a modern font file format whose benefits include cross-platform support, simple file management, advanced typography, expanded glyph sets, and compatibility through open standards.
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Image of a happy family stone sculpture overlaid on stylized background of fonts

Organizing Your Fonts by Family

Organizing fonts into families is one of the many functions of a professional font manager. Learn how to use FontAgent® to organize your font families the way you want.
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Image of a red a icon floating over an old picture of a laptop and an hourglass depicting how time is running out for old PostScript Type 1 fonts

Time is Running Out for Type 1 Fonts

The days of the venerated PostScript Type 1 font format are unfortunately drawing to a close. What can you do to update your Type 1 font collection so it works moving forward? FontAgent® can help.
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A stylized letter A floating over the image of a person on a stand-up paddleboard on a mountain lake

Explore Your Fonts with FontAgent

FontAgent® reveals a treasure trove of font metadata, metrics and descriptive details that you can search, sort and explore as you select fonts and make Smart Sets — on both Mac and Windows platforms.
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Blue and white name tag with the words Hello my name is Dusty Bold, begging the question What's in a Font Name?

What’s in a Font Name?

Font names can be cool, cute and even comical. But what does a font’s name actually say about it? In almost all cases, font names start with their family names and include style and metric terms to differentiate them from their siblings.
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