Identifont Blog

Identifont July 2011

11th July 2011

Today we release a new version of Identifont. In addition to many design improvements it incorporates the following major new features:

Your Fontset

Identifont now allows you to create a personal Fontset of fonts you are interested in. This could be a shopping list of fonts you want to buy, or a list of close matches to a font you are searching for.

This feature is analogous to the "lightbox" feature provided on stock photo websites or the "wishlist" on retail websites.

The Fontset is stored in a cookie on your computer so you can access it whenever you use Identifont.

To create a Fontset, or add a font to your Fontset, just click the Add to Fontset button on the right side of any font page.

To display your Fontset at any time just click the Fontset link in the menu bar. You can also share your Fontset with a friend or colleague by clicking the Email Fontset link.

Identify filter

You can now filter the questions you're asked during an identification based on the characters you have available in your sample, and the date of the sample.

To set a filter click the Filter link in the Questions answered column.

Limited set of letters? allows you to specify the characters in your sample. You will only be asked questions that can be answered from these characters.
Know the year of your sample? allows you to enter a year. Fonts released after this year will be excluded from the Identify results. (Note that fonts with an unknown date will always be included).

You can change the filter at any time during an identification.

Popular matches

During the identification Identifont now includes a list of up to five Popular matches that show popular fonts that are among the current list of candidates.

When you are searching for popular fonts this will often give you a short-cut to the font you are looking for.

Close matches

Trying to identify a font from a small sample of letters often resulted in fonts that appeared to ignore some of the answers to questions during the identification. This is because the filter excluded questions that would usually eliminate obscure fonts.

To overcome this problem the Identify results list is now divided into Close matches and All matches. Close matches includes only fonts that match all the answered questions. All matches includes possible additional fonts that have not been eliminated by an answer.

The results list initially shows only Close matches, but you can show the full list by clicking the Show all matches link.

An additional benefit of this change is that it usually shortens the sequence of questions.

Additional Identify improvements

The Identify procedure incorporates the following additional improvements:

You can start identifying a font by answering the first question on the home page.
The "Not sure" option for each question is now a button.
The layout of the identification questions has been changed so the positions of the buttons remain consistent between questions. They used to jump up and down.
When clicking back in the "Questions answered" list, the "n possible fonts" and "Approximately n questions remaining" messages stay unchanged. They used to show larger values, equivalent to what you would have seen at that point in the identification.
Editing a question in the "Questions answered" list allows you to continue the identification with all your other answers intact. It used to discard your subsequent answers and restart the identification from that point. This way you can go back and make a change to a single question.
If clicking one of the identification options results in "No font found", the "Questions answered" list is now left in place so you can check and amend your answers.

Fonts by Similarity

To find fonts similar to a specific font click the Fonts by Similarity tab on the Home page.

Alternatively each font page shows up to five similar fonts, and you can click the Show more similar fonts link to see more fonts similar to that font.