Why You Need a Font Manager

While you can reap many important benefits from using a font manager, the single most important reason is that a good font manager elevates the performance of you and your computer.

This article explains how Insider Software’s FontAgent® makes both of you better at what you do.

Build a Clean, Centralized Font Library

One of the core functions of a font manager is to centralize your fonts. As you drag files and folders into FontAgent, it automatically:

• Builds a centralized library of font files
• Verifies the integrity of each font
• Stores all font metadata in your FontAgent database
• Identifies duplicate fonts to eliminate collisions and confusion
• Helps you decide among OpenType, TrueType and Type 1 formats

Ensure the Integrity of Your Fonts

The best font managers verify the integrity of your fonts. FontAgent has led the industry for more than 20 years in font validation and quality testing. As you import and use fonts, FontAgent automatically:

• Runs scores of tests that verify each font’s internal structure and metadata to make sure it complies with industry standards
• Rejects corrupt, incomplete and non-standard fonts so they can’t impact the stability of your computer and software apps

So by using FontAgent, you know that your fonts will open, render, rip and print faithfully and efficiently.

Organize Your Fonts for Fast Access

A quality font manager lets you associate fonts to streamline and support your design and business workflows. FontAgent provides many simple ways for you to organize the fonts in your library.

• Sets are named groups that you can use associate fonts by project, company, style, use, foundry, family—any way you want
• Smart Sets automatically find fonts that match metadata criteria that you specify
• System Sets are Smart Sets that FontAgent auto-updates for your use
• Import History creates sets that provide a chronological log of your imported fonts
• Group by Family associates and previews fonts in the same font family
• Group by Foundry associates and previews fonts from the same font foundry
• Rating lets you specify five-star ratings to indicate your favorite fonts

Explore Your Fonts and Their Metadata

Font managers let you view your fonts, and good ones let you explore their detailed traits and metadata. FontAgent’s unique viewers transform plodding through a massive font collection to find the right font into a fast and enjoyable process.

• Preview fonts in WYSIWYG font outlines
• Compare fonts in custom text and colors
• Play custom text through slide shows of fonts
• View font waterfalls, alphabets, paragraphs and lorem ipsum samples
• Use tables to quickly and easily explore, sort and compare font metadata
• See selected fonts together to see how they complement each other
• View complete glyph sets that display the characters and symbols for each font
• Inspect detailed metadata including font traits, versions, sizes, copyrights, activation status and other details

… all without having to activate the fonts

Activate Just the Fonts You Need

Font managers should allow you to activate, auto-activate, and deactivate fonts. By allowing you to activate just the fonts you need, FontAgent:

• Conserves system resources
• Preserves OS and application performance
• Minimizes troublesome font cache issues
• Keeps font menus compact and manageable

… and keeps you and your system running lean and fast.

FontAgent lets you activate and deactivate fonts and sets with a click. It can also auto-activate fonts as you open documents in Adobe Creative Cloud and Creative Suite, QuarkXPress, Microsoft Office and a world of other popular applications.

Find the Right Fonts Fast

Beyond simple font previewing, a good font manager lets you search for fonts based on their names, families, traits and other metadata. FontAgent provides a variety of powerful search facilities to help you find the right fonts quickly and easily.

• Enter a search term and instantly find fonts whose names, properties, metadata or comments match it
• Use Smart Search to perform complex searches in seconds, and save them as Smart Sets that auto-update as you add fonts to your collection
• Use the Table View to sort and explore any set, smart set or your entire library on criteria you select
• Use the Information Inspector to do a deep dive on font formats, styles, metrics, filenames, locations, activation, ratings, comments and other details
• Add searchable comments to fonts so you can find them later quickly

Manage System and Subscription Fonts

High-end font managers handle special-case type such as system and subscription fonts. FontAgent maintains compatibility with OS-supplied system fonts and subscription fonts provided by major font vendors. For example, FontAgent automatically:

• Identifies OS-supplied fonts and keeps them activated as the operating system requires
• Enables you to preview system fonts and add them to sets
• Allows you to use Creative Cloud tools to manage your Adobe subscription fonts
• Displays Monotype SkyFonts automatically and lets you add them to sets, just like all your other fonts.

With FontAgent’s open architecture, all your fonts are at your fingertips.

Print and Export Your Fonts

Good font managers make it easy to share fonts with others. FontAgent includes a variety of ways to print and export your fonts for sharing with clients, co-workers and service bureaus:

• Create hardcopy and PDF font samples in waterfalls, paragraphs, logotype, character sets—whatever you want
• Locate original font files with a click in the Information Inspector
• Export fonts into organized folder hierarchies for archiving or sending to service bureaus

Work Faster and More Accurately

Font managers make you work smarter, faster and with fewer errors. FontAgent raises personal productivity, accuracy and effectiveness by enabling you to:

• Streamline the design process
• Make design systems run faster and more reliably
• Reduce the cost of document creation by streamlining the font selection and approval process
• Export fonts accurately and easily
• Use the right fonts in your final documents
• Ensure you’re sending quality, production-ready fonts to service bureaus and printers

By using FontAgent, you work faster, make the most of your digital font assets and reduce production errors.

Establish Font Control and Consistency

Professional font managers offers solutions for managing fonts across the enterprise. FontAgent is available in a variety of configurations that serve the detailed needs of user and IT organizations at the same time.

FontAgent has a Sync edition that lets you share and sync fonts through the cloud. It’s a great solution for:

• Individuals seeking to sync fonts across multiple computers
• Workgroups who want to share and sync fonts across users
• Groups looking for a server solution that eliminates server hardware, software and administrative costs

FontAgent is also available in server editions that you can deploy on-premise or in the cloud. The font servers give you the ability to manage font licenses, integrate with enterprise directories, control the distribution of fonts across the enterprise, and deliver consistency and control to user desktops.