How to Thoroughly Find ‘That’ Font
By: Micheal Xing
Tags: Fonts, Design, Typography, Graphic Design, Art

AS A TYPE FIEND, I’ve sometimes gone out of my way to find out the name of a wicked typeface I’ve seen out on the web to satisfy my curiosity. And as evident from the many online communities in which people have asked “What font is this?”, it’s pretty safe to say that I’m not alone in the search of missed type connections.

The years I’ve taken to gather up my (digital) tools and experience have helped me reduce the number of typefaces I’ve unidentified. And all thanks to the many lovely people out there curating and ramping up their type recognition systems, would I then be able to prevent most fonts slipping out of my keen eye. As such, I’m here to share with you what I’ve utilised and learned to use your found typeface as a lead to the font names you’ve wanted. One thing to note however, these tips aren’t 100% foolproof, but it does help you increase your chances to find that exact font.

I’m giving the tips chronologically, in order of the fastest way to get to your font name, to the most desperate approach. These tips come along with questions to ask yourself:

1. Can you select the text with the font on the website you found it?

If you can, then congratulations! All you have to do is to put the Type Sample bookmarklet into your bookmarks bar, click it on the website you are at, and click on the text with the desired font. It’ll immediately give you the name of that typeface. If not, keep on reading.

2. Do you know the brand/company that uses the font?

Additional points if it’s in the company logo itself or they frequently use it in their marketing collateral. Try to Google the term “X logo font,” “X branding guideline,” or “X brand design.” (Replace X with the company name.) You may happen to find the design agency who’ve worked with the company declaring the font they’ve used in their portfolio. Or the agency may reveal it in an interview on a design website. Someone may have also listed the font information of a particular brand/advertisement/poster/etc. in Fonts In Use.

3. Do you have an image with that typeface on it?

You can either save the image from the place you found it or screenshot (/take a picture of it if you’re outside) and send it into Google Images to do a reverse image search. (Consider using Google Lens if you are on your phone.) If fortunate, you may happen to find the brand website with the original image revealing the typeface name.

If not, use the higher-resolution image you’ve got from the search (if there is one) and send it to a font finder website. Examples include WhatTheFont (also available as a phone app), What Font Is, and the Font Squirrel Matcherator. Each of these font finder tools varies in the scope of font libraries they scrub from. The most comprehensive one would be What Font Is, but do take note that their web layout isn’t really the best (and the ads can get a bit annoying). It doesn’t hurt to try each of them out if either one doesn’t show the font you’re looking for.

You are more likely to have found the font from this step, but don’t worry if you haven’t. The typeface might belong to a font foundry that doesn’t offer their fonts anywhere else but their own website. This means that the above font finders might not have it in their font libraries.

4. Are there any fonts you can think of similar to the one you’re eyeing on?

‘Similar Fonts’ sections of font websites. From left to right: Fonts In Use, Typewolf, Identifont, What Font Is

It helps if you know the name of it, or do a little extra Googling if that font name is more easily discovered by you. After you know that font name, search that up in Fonts In Use, Typewolf (the author mentions to “Just Google “typewolf” followed by the name of a font”), Identifont, and/or What Font Is. These websites offer a section that shows similar fonts to the one you’ve just searched. Chances are, the font you’ve originally set your eye on are lurking in these places for you to discover. Sometimes, you may have to click into another similar font from the search to find the desired font hiding in that “similar fonts” section instead. Kind of meta, but it gets the job done.

5. Are you proficient in any vector illustration software?

Example software includes (but not limited to) Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, and Inkscape. Maybe your image was just too low res, or it was behind a colourful background for the font finder to recognise. Now is the time to crack open your illustration app and trace the words out (but I’m not trying to promote plagiarism here)! Tracing it gives you a cleaner and better-quality image to send through to the font finder’s system to recognise the typeface better. It’s definitely easier to do this if the typeface has a simpler contour. If it’s more complex, you can consider how much you really want that font before committing to this method. Try to do at least five alphabets for the system to understand the font better. Do those that have more distinct strokes and characteristics, if possible (so it’s easier to discern later on). I did this method before, and it worked like a charm. If you are not a great tracer, move on to the last step below.

6. Are you still eager to get that font in your hands?

Now you can try asking online communities for help. Places like the WhatTheFont Forum, DaFont Forum, and The TypeHaus Discord are great places to ask. The reason why I put this at the last step is that chances are, the font you are looking for might have already been asked by at least one person on the web. It can come off as redundant if you are asking the same wordmark to be recognized, when you could’ve Googled that and found someone who might be asking about the same thing as you did earlier. Furthermore, as the saying goes, “Teach a person to find fonts, and you feed them typography goodness for a lifetime.” You get what I mean.

It may also happen that the font that you are looking for is a custom-made type that isn’t available for public use. In this case, you will have to search for something else similar, which you may have found one along the way if you followed through the steps I’ve given.

To end this off, may your font-finding journey be a sweet success!