Unraveling the Mystery of Fonts

Just about every week we receive an email from a reader wondering why no one can see the fancy font they just installed and are now using in all their emails. And this past week we received two such emails. We’ve covered this topic before but apparently we weren’t (SURPRISE!) making ourselves clear, so we’ve decided to try to clear up the great font mystery once and for all.

There are a lot of free font sites out there – some are good and some are bad. Most of you who like fonts have found one or two free font sites you like and have probably downloaded a few dozen or more fonts and installed them.

Before we clear up the great font mystery, here are a few things you should know:

1. Installing a huge number of fonts on your computer is a great way to slow your computer down. We’re not talking about installing a few dozen or even 80 or 90 or 100 fonts. But some people go berserk with fonts, well, because they really like them. TC is one such person. Installing 500 or 600 fonts on your computer pretty much ensures a long Windows boot time (unless you have a lot of extra RAM) because Windows had to load all the fonts you’ve installed at start up. So don’t go crazy installing fonts on your computer. Install the ones you really like but keep your wits about you. You may not be able to use those fonts as much as you were planning to use them … read on.

2. Every Windows computer from Windows 95 through Windows 8 has certain core fonts – like Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, etc. These are Web-safe fonts. If you’re building a Web site you can use Windows core font and be pretty sure your visitors will see the font you intended to see. Unless, of course, they’re using an Apple computer which has Geneva, Helvetica, and other core fonts. Which brings us to the point of this article:

Generally, if someone does not have the font you’re using installed on their computer they won’t see the font the way you intended. This is true of emails, Web pages, and blogs. There is something called “font embedding” but we’re not aware of anyone who uses it – and it’s very old technology.

So here’s what happens when you download those fonts you love and you sent emails to all your friends to show them your new fancy fonts. They’ll get your email and they will be able to read it, but unless they have the exact font you used installed, they won’t see your fancy font – they’ll see your email in their default font – usually Arial or Times New Roman.

Since this is a someone arcane subject, the best way to explain it is to show you.

Here is a portion of an email we just composed:

The only reason you’re seeing those fonts is because that’s a picture. If I sent that as text in an email you’d see it like this:

Dear EB,

This is a really cool new font I have
Installed. It’s called Flakes.
This one is called Jokerman.
This one is called EASTERFUNBYTOM.
And this one is called
Edwardian Script.

Your buddy,
TC

Now that would drive your recipient crazy because they would see it as Arial or Verdana or Calibri or whatever their default font is — unless they had any of those fonts installed — which is not likely.

Got it?