92,300

[hyphenate]

That's how many fonts I have. And yes, a) I know that's a lot; b) I've been consciously collecting them for a long time; c) It's one collection that doesn't take up a lot of space, either in RL or on the computer (only 6GB in all); and 4) I'd have had more, but lost many when my hard drive crashed a year and a half ago. I had managed to put many of them on disks or my external HD before the crash.

I thought I only had about 60,000, but tonight I went straight to do a file search, including inside archives, to find a fairly accurate count.

I don't need to be congratulated, only not to be thought insane. I am part of several mailing lists dealing solely with font collections, and I know there are some people who have almost 300,000 of them. I doubt if I will ever use them all--that's part of what the collecting is all about; it's more of "just a collection." However, being involved with the graphic arts, it's nice to know I have a choice. :)

[Fleshdancer]

1. what's your favorite?

it would never occur to me to collect fonts. sounds kinda cool.

[hyphenate]

5. It would be hard to just have one favorite

but the favorites I do have often are of something else relating to some other thing.

For instance, Crillee is a font associated with the original Star Trek and the first couple of movies;

Profil is the old, "Man from U.N.C.L.E." title font;

Pioneer and Renfrew are two bold, title fonts I used when I was editing my zones and newsletters;

and

Morpheus is a great, somewhat medieval font which is not calligraphic.

(You can always check what they look like at http://www.myfonts.com)

[DS1]

2. a bit overkill, maybe

after a certain point you're probably spending more time looking through fonts than using them

[hyphenate]

3. too true

but that's what programs like Font Thing and similar ones are for.

Got started many years ago, long before the PC was even in the minds of more than a few, when I ran several newsletters and fanzines, in the age of typing and Letraset. Those rub-on letters left me with a huge yearning to cheat and find a way to do it all without the time spent putting titles on articles, poetry or short stories. Of course, the option was a prohibitively expensive typesetting machine, which I would never have been able to afford. I gave up editing newsletters and fanzines by the time I went to work for a newspaper, but still had some art and photo work to do, so the thought was still there.

Now, any dumbo can edit newsletters and such with little to no experience, and I get to dream of what I can do with all the fonts I could ever hope to use. :)

[rug]

10. Do you remember the VGC PhotoTypositor?

[hyphenate]

16. That might have been

like one of the ones in the typesetting area, but it was so long ago. In one place, they had actual vellum strips that we pasted onto the paper to run through, and in another place, we had a machine with paper ribbon (sort of like an old teletype machine) that went through the computer to make the final page. However, I worked mostly on the supply side as the editor.

[KG]

20. what does dial #12 do? can you turn it up to eleven?

[rug]

21. If I remember correctly, it set the amount of time for the exposure.

No dial on earth goes to 11.

[KG]

22. these go to eleven

[Kutjara]

4. I trust you have a really good font management program.

Letting your system load all those babies all the time would slow your system to a standstill.

[hyphenate]

6. Oh, goodness, yes!

MS says that having even 1000 installed is too much. The easier way is to open a font file and just leave it open when you go into a program when you want to use it. Of course, it's easiest when you have a program like Font Folio where you can load specific fonts in "folios" and use any font in that folio until you close the program or the folio.

I have about 450 fonts actually installed, many of them required fonts, and a few fonts which are general and utilitarian. And, of course, a few of my favorites to work with.

[Kutjara]

7. I've stripped my system down to a handful of frequently-used fonts.

I have about five that I use for wordprocessing and another five or so common Web fonts. The rest I keep in Suitcase. Since I archived all my unused fonts, MS Office programs have become a lot more responsive.

[hyphenate]

15. Exactly the reason MS imposed the limit

to installing fonts. My system has never crashed with font overload, but with many other reasons.

I do intend to get all the fonts transferred to disk in the very near future, but I need to back up some other stuff first. Then I can work on the fonts. :)

[MsKandice01]

8. Wow...

All I ever use is Times New Roman and Arial, even though I've been a daily computer user since 1993. I've never ventured into the Wonderful World of Fonts but I really should. I'm too boring, I guess.

[hyphenate]

14. It turns into an obsession

fairly quicky. Coming from the standpoint in RL I did, fonts meant something to me right from the beginning. Back before the WYSIWYG GUI, you couldn't see the fonts online, only when you printed the page. And back then, they looked fairly bad, no matter what you were doing.

In about 1994, I was doing a project where I was forced to do a lot more graphic design and got CorelDraw, and it was amazing how much maneuvering you can do with it. Still, I needed title fonts, and found Renfrew (aka Revue), Crillee and Serpentine Bold were my favorites.

Recently, I began to look for Harry Potter fonts, because in the last couple of books, there are many occasions where they're used. It took some searching, but my library with them is getting better. :)

[harmonicon]

9. hmm

I went to that website to see if they had the John Cage font - do you have that one? I sort of want it, but I also realize that I'd never use it.... except for occasional jokes or something - do you buy most of these fonts or get them for free? I also looked at bauhaus fonts (why bauhaus isn't a standard font is beyond me - too expensive?). How, for instance, does one decide what bauhaus font to buy?

[hyphenate]

13. I rely heavily on websites

where there are lots of free fonts. But through the mailing lists, can squeeze out some professional fonts when possible.

There are so many font sites out there, and some offer more than 6000 fonts or more. In the end, some might be duplicates, but most are not.

Plus, once upon a time, before there was "myfonts", fonts online were usually free, and downloading them only required a search to find them. As I've been online since 1989, font collecting was relatively easy in the beginning. I have bought some collections along the way, too, but between P2P and google, I've gotten quite a few.

[Omphaloskepsis]

11. All you really need is Comic Sans..

[hyphenate]

12. Bah!

I do like Comic Sans, but only for conversational writing. When I do documents, I prefer Bookman instead of Times Roman--clearer and more traditional. I like a general sans serif for reading, though the thought is that serif fonts are supposedly easier to read. But online, I make a lot more headlines or title pieces, so I have gotten familiar with a lot of fonts that are great for titles.

[krispos42]

17. I have 630

Foolish me, I thought that was a lot!

[hyphenate]

18. Not even close!

:)

1001fonts.com
acidfonts.com
webpagepublicity.com
goldenweb.it
moorstation.org

These are some of my "trusted" sites. I don't dare try to download all the fonts 1 at a time, but use a spider program (Teleport Pro) to do it for me.

[krispos42]

19. wow

:wow:

I had no idea...

Thanks!