“Font management” is a phrase that strikes terror into the hearts of even the most experienced print designers. We all know that when a sticky font conflict arises, it can eat up valuable production time.

 

The voice of experience inside each one of us says that we should be using a reliable font management utility in addition to performing regular maintenance on our font libraries and computers. Maintenance is especially critical for publications that use a lot of 'native-file' ads in their layouts, due to the greatly increased font load inherent in this type of workflow.

Whatever your workflow or work style, performing regular maintenance procedures on your font collection will keep things running smoothly and help you avoid surprises on press. Clean-up procedures, such as detecting/removing corrupt or duplicate fonts and deactivating outdated/obsolete fonts, are handled differently by various font management utilities, so consult the support documentation that came with your application. There are many online resources as well. We recommend referencing Better Font Management, where you will find information on both font management and related software options.

 

Also, here are two of our favorite font utilities, both of which are available in Mac and Windows flavors:

Linotype's FontExplorer

Extensis' Suitcase