A new font discovery site I just found out about, for clout.
So there I was, minding my own business, when the daily BetaPage newsletter arrived in my inbox.
I almost never open the BetaPage newsletter. I only signed up years ago in the hopes of promoting Looxie (my Android-exclusive photo request app) through it and then never unsubscribed. This is how they get to you.
Today, though, I saw something from the corner of my eye. Was I really seeing the word ‘fonts’ in there?
It turns out that, yes, I was. The newsletter was promoting a website called “Fonts.do”, claiming that it was the largest database of premium fonts.
I cannot guarantee the validity of that claim but there are a lot of typefaces on the site.
Here are some good things I have to say about the site
They have a search function!
You can filter by new fonts or top fonts.
As I’ve already mentioned, there’s a boatload of fonts to browse on the site.
Here are some not-so-flattering thing I’ve noticed about it
The search function only brings up text results. It’d be great if we could also get an image of the font in use next to the name of the font in the search results.
Most of the thumbnails are relatively low-res and blurry, which I can only assume is the case because the site is image-heavy and they don’t want it to take ages to load. However, it looks bad and — let’s face it — the people going through the site are studying or practicing something in the field of visual arts and the blurry rendering makes the fonts being presented look quite unappealing.
The site isn’t clear about its intent. I’m not saying that there’s anything nefarious going on. What I mean is that, after visiting the site, I had to scroll down to its footer to find Fonts.do is the largest database of premium fonts, with more than 143,000 items written in light grey on a beige background.
The thing that mainly grinds my gears is that the website uses affiliate links to guide you to the fonts it links to but makes no mention of that fact anywhere I could find. If I’m wrong and they do mention it somewhere, please correct me.
And that’s it. Will I be visiting Fonts.do again? Probably. I mean, it doesn’t look good and it’s quite unpolished but maybe it’ll be a new source for discovering new fonts to review in the future. But for now, maybe you should pay it a visit, if you don’t mind dealing with the shortcomings I just mentioned.
