Fonts

[WOFDCAP]

does anyone know where i can get the font FUTURA BOLD for free?

[Nocashvalue]

Google.
But it may be illegal, so I do not condone this ¬_¬

[NinjaPenguin]

Google.
But it may be illegal, so I do not condone this ¬_¬

I would go with that, but Id wait for my replies before launching into that descion.

[WOFDCAP]

there's gotsta be someone on her thats gots the font fo' free! all the sites on google i gotsta pay. i aint payin' for dat shit neegro. i just want a cool font no doubt. thats all. can't i just get that?

[eleanor]

You could look around on 1001 Free Fonts (http://www.1001freefonts.com) for a similar one.

[TX_101]

1. Type properly, please.

2. Visit beginners,

3. look around at http://dafont.com/en/ for a similar font, as Futura Bold is not free.

Thankyou,

[Perks]

How much are fonts like Futura and Helvetica? I ended up finding Helvetica on a website, but I'm assuming it was a naughty illegial copy.

[budrick]

It's actually slightly more complex than "buying the Helvetica font". For instance Linotype, the foundry that markets the font, offers either individual weights (Helvetica Light, Light Oblique, Black, Black Oblique, Black Condensed and combinations of same) for about £15 each, and all 36 variants on Helvetica for the combined price of roughly £250.

I think Futura is roughly the same. It's another Linotype (http://www.linotype.com/) font.

[Perks]

Oh yes, there's lots and lots of variants isn't there? I wonder why typography is so expensive sometimes? Are the ones you pay better for print resolution (in magazines and such?)

I am a typographical perfectionist, by the way, which basically means I don't like any website on earth that uses Times New Roman.

[budrick]

Typography's expensive in the same way that corporate branding is expensive. Font design isn't just a case of throwing together a few basic lines into characters, it's very exact. You have to ensure that characters work together in combination, at different point sizes and so on.

This is slightly mitigated by the fact that we have very powerful computers today, which can automate some of these tasks to a degree - configurable automatic hinting, kerning and leading can turn a very basic font into something more useful (i.e. change the letter layout at differnt sizes, change the slant and change the letter spacing and weight from a single basic shape description), but the results can be less than stellar when used in areas where quality is paramount - like you say, print and corporate branding.

Not to mention that with increased adoption of Unicode there are a whole ton of extra alphabets to contend with if you want to market an international font. Kanji alone is composed of roughly 50000 characters, and the Unicode standard includes ranges for "dead" alphabets, such as Runic script and Ogham. In fact one of my pipe dreams is to create a set of 3 fonts - one serif, one sans-serif and one monospaced - that covers the entire Unicode 4.0 specification AND looks good at small point sizes.

[Perks]

I did not know that. Thanks! And of course there are many companies where the fonts they use show a lot about the company or product using it, whether it's using range of fonts from the same family (sans-serif et al) or having your own fonts created (like Channel 4 whose fonts are created by Fontsmith (http://www.fontsmith.com/home.php)).