I have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of fonts.
I confess. I am a fontaholic. I love them.
At this point, I do not actually know how many I have.
Counting is not the point.
I never find that looking for a font for a job to be boring.
I will be spend hours looking through sites and listings.
I drool over beautiful fonts that are unaforardable and impractical.
Worse, I am easily distracted by the beautiful ones when I am looking for an industrial face.
Time just slips away.
I am a great admireer of type designers who have the infinate patience and perfectionist tendencies needed to create things of beauty that will not make them rich.
I have been collecting, using and admireing fonts since before desktop publishing was new in the mid 1980's.
I have fonts in many formats, postscript type 1 (Adobe), postscript type 3 (3rd party), multiple master, truetype and opentype.
I do not have svg (color) fonts or variable width fonts. I do not have the software capability to use them.
I once spent a fortune buying a Gold Edition cd of Linotype fonts.
The latest trend in open-source, free-for-commercial-use is a delight. Many large organizations commission and offer free open source fonts for public use. They do so to avoid paying licensing fees to private font foundries. Evan the U.S. government has come out with a font, Public Sans. The most notable library is, of course, Google fonts.
There are also many sites offering free fonts. Most have tricky navigation in the download procedure. You will probably end up with a spyware PDF reader or Flash player before finding the tiny font download button. They also feature many dubious quality fonts. Some look like they got a failing grade in a font design class and are being given away for cause.
My fonts were all well organized, once. Not so much in recent years. I know them well enough.
People ask me what my favorite font is. I find that I am in love with the one that I am working with at the moment. I could not give a honest answer any more than I could select a favorite color or favorite child. I tend to see the virtue intended in each one.
My work tends to show my age. Others have criticised my work as stale. And so it may be, as old flames still burn.
I am not in love with the many new handwritten informal script fonts. Laura Worthington may be an exception.
Many people are proud of the number of fonts in their library. Not so much in may case. It is more evidence of an addiction, some might say, an affliction of fonts.
thanks
