so you and i both know how important typography is when it comes to graphic design so it kind of
makes sense that we organize our font collection now i did dabble in using font managers quite a
long time ago but that was a long time ago now quite a few years but recently the people over
at fontbase reached out to me to have a look and preview their font manager app and so that's
exactly what i've done in today's video and what i found is pretty interesting and i think it will
appeal to those out there who really are serious about the typography and the fonts fontbase
is jam-packed full of features and some have really surprised me since the previous upgrades
but first one of the most crucial things about any font manager in my opinion
is the user interface and fontbase seems to be pretty neat and pretty intuitive too
so on the left we have our fonts and our folders and then of course
the placeholder text which you can edit there's also a size adjustment slider an option to see a
grid or a list layout and i personally prefer the list layout which is the preset standard
and then also you can change up the colors of the font displays and also the background
so it might be something like it's late at night you've been working all day
and the white background is too intense for your eyes and it's just really easy to change that here
now again everything is pretty straightforward and pretty intuitive as well but moving on to one
of my favorite features the super search feature which can be found here under the lightning bolts
now this essentially gives you four categories to refine your search in real time and so fontbase
has worked out my font collection according to these four categories i can select a portion of my
font library according to the contrast of the font the weight the proportion and also the x height
so as you can see here i've narrowed down my library to the most weighted fonts that exist
but then of course i can flip it over and select some of the smallest weighted fonts that i have
i can then go on to couple that with say a large x height so yeah this super search feature is
well pretty super and it's one of the more recent updates to form base
and yes yes i know the placeholder text has a typo but let's ignore that for a
second and concentrate on something that will save you heaps of time and possible headaches
the fact that fontbase has a feature that also activates missing fonts
when opening adobe documents so now all of the missing fonts in your photoshop illustrator and
indesign documents will be automatically activated and so it's probably a clever idea just to keep
this thing switched on permanently something else i found pretty neat and a nice little time saver
is the fact that fontbase allows you to come into any font and then copy a glyph
simply by clicking onto it so you can grab any gif you want from here just by clicking it
and then you can move into something like adobe software where you can just paste it on like so
but also you could slap a glyph anywhere else pretty much so maybe a dm in twitter
or just whatever you want to use it it's a nice little time saving feature i feel but
here's something that helps when you're trying to find the right font for a specific design
let's say i'm looking for a light weighted font and i can obviously use the super search option
and i like the look of this font here b vietnam now if i click the pin option that font is going
to remain at the very top so as i scroll through my library i can compare other fonts to that one
this of course also helps if you're trying to look for a good font pair as you have
the first one at the top and you can just check to see what pairs up with it nicely
but next to the pin icon is a heart icon that adds your fonts to a favorites list
that's located off to the left now i do remember showing b vietnam font family in an old video
and it is really a good family but we can come into it here and check out all of the fonts that
make up the font family including the glyphs and seeing the typeface in a waterfall presentation
one handy feature is the watch folders so typically when you drag or add fonts to font base
they are copied to the fontbase root folder but not everyone wants to keep their fonts there
so instead watch folders have been created so when you add a watch folder to font base a link to it
is created in the prompt based root they're not copied they're just linked there so this means
you can have multiple people accessing the same fonts but also you can do things like
add your browser downloads to a watch folder so the fonts are automatically indexed onto font base
immediately with font base you need to click the white circle next to a folder font to activate
them however you can right click a folder and enable the auto activate function so now any
font added into this folder is automatically going to be activated and that just means you
won't have to manually go through and you know activate every single font that you want to use
you might also be curious to know how your font works well together on something like say a web
page well if you come into this section here you can play around with your font library in
real time mocking things up on a web page we can make headings subheadings and body text perfectly
allowing us to see what fonts work best in what situation and paired up with what so yeah i
really enjoyed having a look around font base and the upgrades and as well as you know how it can
streamline my font use in graphic design now font base is pretty affordable at three dollars a month
or 29 annually or you can of course just spend 180 dollars for a lifetime subscription but today
front base are offering you guys three months totally for free when you sign up to a monthly
subscription to the app and that is when you use the code satori all in uppercase lettering now i
never post anything on this channel unless it's something i wholeheartedly believe in and think
that you guys will find it useful so you can find fontbase linked down in description box below
some days ago i asked you guys to redesign this nike advert in one of my before and after style
videos there are so many design entries sent to me but i've selected three that were pretty decent
and i thought worked pretty well that's not to say if you don't see your design yours wasn't good
but the first design was made by sahib which i thought made good use of linking colors throughout
his design and also great use of hierarchy too sahib increased the leading on the body text below
the trainer which i do agree with the next design is by frank which i like a lot in terms of color
and also layouts however the leading on the body text is too closely packed together in my opinion
but overall it is a good design and lastly hamza has made very original content here where the
dividing green line flows through the design in the direction of the nike swoosh on the trainer
itself now this is a very clever design and it's really really neat and you can find links to the
portfolios of these three designers down in the description box below there is another competition
running that you can find on my community page on my channel home page and the winners will
be announced next week for that competition and until next time design your future today
peace
you