Organizing Fonts

[Cornerstone-NC]

I've stumbled into the world of graphic design and am putting together the pieces slowly. I have ATM Deluxe -- I'm not sure if this is the best way for organizing fonts. If there are better programs, I'd love to hear what others are using.

Here is my main question, though -- what categories are others using to organize your fonts? Serif vs Sans Serif seems a little too simple. Organizing them by the font developer seems too varied. Any ideas on how others have categorized them (maybe just for ATM user, maybe for others)?

[drewbie_wan]

i prefer lynotype font explorer

[Cornerstone-NC]

I hear font explorer is pretty buggy for windows.

Back to the question of categories: Does anybody have fonts organized in categories for easier use? Let's saw you go through a bunch of free fonts on the internet and you like 100 of them. Chances are that you won't remember some of them when you are looking for a particular font. If you keep adding on more and more, I would expect it to be quite a chore to have to scroll through a thousand fonts just to find something that fits what you are working on.

[cre8]

i am verry happy with suitcase

[drewbie_wan]

everything is buggy on windows.. get a mac.

[flick]

Originally Posted by drewbie_wan

everything is buggy on windows.. get a mac.

Hear hear!

[Cornerstone-NC]

Some of us have to stick with windows for economic reasons.

Since nobody has responded to the question of actually how fonts are organized, should I assume that most of you just have a huge grouping of fonts that you can browse through in your font program of choice? Does anybody have groupings of fonts like slab-serifs, retro/vintage fonts, sans-serifs, etc that you actually organize your fonts into. There is a big difference between Eurostile and Avenir, but they would both fit as sans-serif fonts. Am I just nutty to think that fonts should be organized a bit for easier browsing?

Keep in mind that I've used ATM and a couple of other font browsing programs. The font browsing programs are good for looking through what you have, but you still want to be able to activate-deactivate fonts from you system as ATM can do. This leads me back to which categories of fonts, though, would I want to activate-deactivate when working on projects.

[drewbie_wan]

font explorer allows you to activate and deactivate fonts. Ive never organized fonts, as i usually have a good idea of the fonts i have installed.

[jeffross]

Originally Posted by drewbie_wan

font explorer allows you to activate and deactivate fonts. Ive never organized fonts, as i usually have a good idea of the fonts i have installed.

I'm with Drewbie_wan here... You just get a sense of what you have. I've tried to organize them by categories (Modern, Slab, Old Style, etc), but in the end, I just turn off ones I don't use as much and keep the rest active.

[weremoose]

I use linotype too, but I am on a mac. It's pretty nice and I don't think you will need more. I resently installed it and I created some categories so that I can find what I'm looking for faster. I used categories like simple fonts, modern, handwritting, bizzare, greek fonts and all the others to serif and sans serif but I think I really need to reorganize.

P.S.

Originally Posted by Cornerstone-NC

Some of us have to stick with windows for economic reasons.

Well if you ask me that's not such a good excuse. The difference in the price is not that big and there is a GREAT difference regarding the performance. A mac is an investment. Plus a world with no viruses... Think about it...