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Font Management in Mac

Carl Shank • March 24, 2022

If you are like many users, you will soon be overwhelmed by the wealth and number of fonts in your font system folder. This is where a Font Management tool comes in handy. Such a tool helps you organize, specify and use a limited number of fonts for specific projects. It also helps to identify font conflicts, badly designed or corrupted fonts or fonts that simply do not work anymore.


SUITCASE. A premier font management tool is Suitcase Fusion (www.extensis.com). This tool has served font and design professionals over the years with expert and solid font management. The modern name is "Suitcase Fusion," version 22.x. This tool helps the user to install Adobe fonts directly into the Extensis files, auto-activates fonts in Adobe's Creative Cloud, drag and drop fonts into Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher on the PC. It finds and compares fonts on the list view. The modern iteration works on the newer Macs M1. There is a free trial offered.




Older Mac Systems

As my readers know, I use a number of older Macintosh systems for archived software use. Extensis Suitcase Version 10 is what I use on these systems as well. Suitcase Strip puts font management on the Control Strip of Mac OS 9, and a "Collect for Output" function allows users to send their fonts with the projects to a printer. Suitcase on these older machines requires a PowerPC processor, OS 8.6 or newer and 32MB of RAM. The program also includes LemkeSoft's FontBook, a font preview utility (See below.)


The downside is working with Adobe's Type Manager (ATM). ATM Deluxe does not work in Mac OS 9.2.2 with Suitcase. However, ATM Light 4.6.2 or 4.6.2a is necessary for smooth font previews, since Suitcase has no smoothing option. Adobe Type Manager (ATM) Light is a system software component that automatically generates high-quality screen font bitmaps from the PostScript outlines in Type 1 or OpenType format. ATM Light was discontinued in 2005, but Adobe still makes it available for customers who require it for older operating systems. With ATM Light, you can scale your fonts on legacy systems without the characters appearing jagged, and you can also enable "font smoothing," which further improves the appearance of your fonts onscreen by using your computer monitor's color palette to intelligently improve the rendering of characters. ATM Light also allows you to print PostScript fonts on non-PostScript printers. You may have to hunt and search for ATM Light version 4.6.2, but a good place to start is Macintosh Garden (macintoshgarden.org) and Macintosh Repository (macintosh repository.org). See the examples below.

Successful Layout & Design

By Carl Shank January 29, 2025
Sketch & Hand Drawn Lettering. The history of font development includes a wealth of calligraphic fonts and artistically crafted hand drawn typefaces. A number of these lettering fonts have been drawn and submitted by smaller type foundries and entrepreneurs seeking to make their mark in the font world. A casual look at ChatGPT gives some idea as to their source and character. Fonts that mimic pencil drawings often have a hand-sketched, textured, or rough-lined appearance. These fonts are great for artistic projects, children's books, casual branding, or creative typography. The sample fonts below are mostly given for personal use only, use on personal invitations and so forth, but some have been made available for commercial use as well. They demonstrate the wide range of hand drawn fonts available for use and purchase.
By Carl Shank January 20, 2025
Four Old Playful Fancy Fonts . CARE Typography is pleased in its historical search for antique inspired fonts to introduce digitized versions of Harper and Mikado, a Gutenberg typeface and Lacrosse. Unlike their modern counterparts, these fonts are display only fanciful fonts of a bygone era in typography. However, they exude a rich history of font development that should not be forgotten in our search for the new, the sleek, the up-to-date in type. They have been developed from the rich typographic heritage of Phillips Old Fashioned Type Book published in 1945 by Frederick Nelson Phillips, Inc, in New York. This volume has caught my historic typographic eye for its plethora of ancient font styles and formulations. The Harper446 font is especially playful, with its curly capitals, its specialized "Q" capital and, of course, its flavorful and playful small case lettering, with the raised c, e and o letters and the odd looking "g." This is obviously not a text font, but can uses in artful decorative work. The Mikado231 font does not at all look like the variations of the typeface called "Mikado" in typography history. As that history notes, "Mikado was apparently inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera of the same name. The show opened in London in March of 1885 and in New York later that same year. According to Nicolete Gray in her classic book on ornamented typefaces, the English foundry of Sir Charles Reed and Son introduced a metal type called “Japanese” also in 1885. She characterized this typeface and other oriental based typefaces as superficial in their foreign influence. Nonetheless it appears that it was later copied by several of the American Wood-type companies. The 1906 Hamilton wood-type specimen catalog shows four versions of this design; one by Hamilton and three by acquired companies. The versions by Wells, and Morgans & Wilcox are called Mikado. The Hamilton and Page versions use model numbers 204 and 156 respectively. It is difficult to determine the specific dates when this particular wood-type was introduced, but the earliest wood-type catalog I could find showing Mikado is the 1888 Page catalog. Our sample “WINTER” is a 15 line unstamped type most similar to the Hamilton version. Incidentally, another English foundry, Miller and Richard introduced a metal typeface in 1887, also named Mikado. That typeface is totally different than the one presented here." (https://www.printmuseum.org/wood-type-mikado). This Mikado adaptation has straight angular E, F, G, K, T and even raised W, X, Y in the capitals. Note the falling stems of C, L, and lower c, e, h, m and n. Again, this playful font can be used sparingly in advertisement copy and flavorful playbills. The Gutenberg700 font is again from the Phillips book samples. Note the dotted C, U, V, small g and zero. The ampersand is also interesting. Curly serifs are used in A, J, L, S. The numerals are classic old school numerals. This Gutenberg rendering is unlike any classic Gutenberg typeface that has been presented. The LacrossePhillips font has a cute left hanging serif on the capitals. It is a bold faced font, both in the upper and lower case. It is a full font offering upper and lower case lettering, numerals and other marks. These fonts are available from CARE Typography at care typography.com at NO COST. They are free to purchase and use.
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