Launched this week
Fontalog
The world's biggest font database
6 followers
The world's biggest font database
6 followers
Fontalog is a searchable, super-fast, free database of fonts, created by FontBase, built on Redis and Cloudflare workers. You can search fonts by visual characteristics like proportion, contrast, weight and xHeight. On every font page there are multiple similar fonts displayed along with foundry info and exact parameter numbers, which you can use to search even more fonts.
FontBase
Today we are announcing Fontalog - the world's biggest font database!
What is it? Fontalog is a searchable, super-fast, free database of fonts, created by FontBase. You can search fonts by visual characteristics, the same way you can do in our SuperSearch: proportion, contrast, weight and xHeight. On every font page there are multiple similar fonts displayed along with foundry info and exact parameter numbers, which you can use to search even more fonts.
How did we do this? No AI was used to create this. We analyze each font added to FontBase locally using the opentype.js library. We render the text off-canvas and measure key characteristics: stroke width; difference between bold and thin strokes; the relation of "x" letter height to capital letters; width of the letters compared to height; "i" size compared to "w" size. From these calculated numbers, we then build weight, proportion, xHeight and contrast. We also analyze the font's naming table to retrieve the basic info like font name, foundry and style names. No fonts are uploaded to our servers in the process.
Fontalog is constantly expanding as there are new fonts released and added to the database. We will monitor the website for performance and add new features moving forward. And as always we are open to feedback on how we can improve it!
the measured-not-guessed approach is what makes this actually useful over a tagged/keyword font search - proportion and contrast as real numbers instead of someone's subjective "modern" or "elegant" label. question on the similar-fonts suggestions though - do they account for licensing at all, or just visual parameters? I could see someone falling in love with a free font, then the "similar fonts" panel surfaces a paid one with near-identical numbers and no indication it's a different license/cost tier until they click through. is that distinction visible on the font page itself?