• Reported by francois

Months ago I waxed lyrical over the online typeface identifier Identifont, which I use regularly and still wows whomever I show it to.

Its creator, David Johnson-Davies, alerted me this week to the launch of Fontscape,

an independent directory of typefaces organized into categories, and a companion to Identifont, our popular font-identification Web site

Fontscape is designed to provide the complementary service of helping you to select a typeface for a particular application or requirement. It classifies typefaces into a wide range of categories, under headings such as: application, mood, period, appearance, dimensions, and simulation.

Within each category there are samples of the typefaces, with links to the publisher or vendor of each typeface so users can order them.

I've had the opportunity to use the beta for some time, and I think it's just as likely to become indispensable. One of my favourite type books has always been David Gates' Type -- A type reference book for visual communicators [...] arranged by style category -- which is simply a catalogue of large font samples grouped by visual similarity. When looking for a typeface, both for purposes of identification or deciding which to use for a job, you usually have a mental picture roughly of what you have in mind, and a book like this simply helps you to home in on the right one. Most type catalogues sort their specimens alphabetically, by foundry or by very broad classifications, and are useless for this purpose.

Fontscape does the same thing as Type, but with much richer categorisation. Furthermore, it does so with the same unfussiness as Identifont. Both have a remarkable "navigationless" architecture that remove the need for persistent navigation by being optimised for only one or two tasks, and providing only what's necessary at each point.