Have you ever spotted a piece of text online and immediately wanted to know its typeface? Whole forums exist solely for font recognition, dedicated to hunting down that elusive lettering and finding free alternatives if any exist. Automated tools are becoming more robust all the time, and among the best is WhatTheFont!, a service from MyFonts.com that only needs a good-resolution image to start the identification.
This is a common situation during any browsing session. Millions of ads and memes pass before our eyes, and more than once a typeface catches our attention. The problem is that no one thinks to put the font’s name in tiny print, so the hunt begins. Reddit has a channel packed with thousands of users devoted to identifying strange fonts, and across the Web you’ll find portals with an enormous number of fonts ready to be downloaded.
We should emphasize “enormous.” A font can have dozens of variants under its umbrella, each spawning new versions, and it’s very easy to get lost in the effort. That’s where automatic tools come in, and WhatTheFont! is one of the best.
How to identify a font
Available on the MyFonts.com portal, WhatTheFont! asks you to upload an image of the typeface, ideally at least 100 pixels tall, although that’s not a mandatory requirement. If the letters are clear, well separated, and have well-defined edges, the service has enough material to compare your sample against its database.
The intermediate step is very important, because the service asks for a visual verification of its detection for each letter. If the system made a mistake, you must correct it and indicate the right letter before continuing. If everything checks out, WhatTheFont! will present a list of suggestions very close to the original typeface.
Of course, WhatTheFont! is not a perfect system, and in many situations you’ll have to settle for the closest match. Another drawback is that there may be no free and/or open-source version of the font, which can mean paying hundreds of dollars to use it without crossing into piracy territory. Even so, once the font is identified, you can move forward in a different way, and that’s the real value of WhatTheFont!: putting a name where no name existed before.
