Online Typography Resources

A directory of contemporary type design, with a focus on active, independent type designers and foundries who distribute their fonts through a dedicated web presence and/or though a small selection of reputable networks, with information revised and consolidated on an ongoing basis.

“The Renaissance Typography Database brings together information relating to the history of printing materials (typefaces, engraved blocks) used in Europe from the 15th to the 17th century. It is based on over twenty years’ work by the team of the Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes, in close partnership with the Computer Science Laboratory at the University of Tours. […] The database enables the description and indexing of materials appearing in numerous digital libraries.”

The website offers several tools and games to help familiarising with some aspects of typography and type design.

The website wants to be a resource for designers and typographers. It has started as a list of type foundries, but aims to provide more typographic resources.

“Test your local or remote fonts with the proofing tool developed by a type designer, for type designers. Check out kerning, OpenType features, and language coverage. Explore and animate variation axes in variable fonts.”

“Type-manufacturers employed women as part of departments that were variously known as ‘drawing studios’, ‘type drawing offices’, or ‘departments of typographic development’. These women worked daily on developing and producing typefaces that were, eventually, almost always attributed to male designers. They merit attention as key contributors to the design process of many renowned typefaces that emerged throughout the twentieth century. ‘Women in Type’ is a research project highlighting th

A comprehensive overview of OpenType features with filters, descriptions, code samples and live demos. 

A curated index of type foundries by Matthew Smith of Morning Type.

An online tool that allows you to draw any shape and tries to match it with the most similar Unicode character it can find.

A multilingual (English, German) tool to help teach typeface classification to design students, in the form of a mobile-only website.

A list of books and articles for the study of public lettering.

A web tool to preview and compare the appearance of languages, also using local fonts, before you start typesetting them.

“The goal of this site is to show you how variable fonts tick. Discover how they can benefit user interface (UI) design, accessibility, and long-form reading, and how they push the boundaries of skillful typographic expression on the web.”

A list of digitalised books concerning typography (specimens, manuals, and some connected books) organised by author and century.    

A companion website for the “Better Web Typography for a Better Web” course and book by Matej Latin, Senior UX Designer at GitLab, it offers updates and in-depth articles on the topic.

This website presents one glyph for each of the world’s writing systems. It is the first step of the Missing Scripts Project, a long-term initiative that aims to identify writing systems which are not yet encoded in the Unicode standard. As of today, there are still 146 scripts not yet encoded in Unicode. Concept: Johannes Bergerhausen, Hochschule Mainz, Germany Research: Dr. Deborah Anderson, Department of Linguistics, UC Berkeley, USA Type Design: Font »BlockDock« by J. Bergerha

“When a typeface is illegible the reader will always notice; when a typeface is legible no one gives it any thought. We strive to produce new knowledge that can provide the tools to create the most legible typography or pictogram.”

The Reserve of Punches brings together several thousands hand-cut punches from the 18th, 19th and 20th century, while the Archive of Styles includes the complete range of engraver's and founder's tools.

Early Printed Books focuses on what was unique about books printed during the hand-press period—those features particular to works printed between 1450, when the printing press began to be developed, and 1800, when the machine press began to take its place. On this site you’ll find images showing details like title pages, woodcuts, signature marks, volvelles, and more. And if you’re looking for pedagogical exercises to use in teaching with old books, or resources for further study, those tools a

… a playground with samples for the most common OpenType features available out in web typography. You can have fun toggling each feature individually to see its effect in action.

This book/website will help type designers understand Vietnamese’s unique typographic features so they can design their typefaces to support the Vietnamese language. It will also guide web and graphic designers in using correct Vietnamese typography in a project. The book was made available for free online, but the project can also be supported through the purchase of the paperback or PDF version. 

Typographica is a review site for typefaces and type books, with occasional commentary on fonts and typographic design. Edited by Stephen Coles and designed by Chris Hamamoto. Founded in 2002 by Joshua Lurie-Terrell. Relaunched in 2009 by Coles and Hamamoto.

A designer friendly introduction to understanding and developing OpenType features.

Typedia was a shared encyclopaedia of typefaces, a resource to classify, categorize, and connect typefaces.

“An educational aid for students, educators and professionals who are seeking information about the history, design, manufacture and use of typefaces.”  A project by Mark Jamra (TypeCulture Foundry)

A selection of dissertations from students at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. 

Matthew Butterick is a writer, ty­pog­ra­pher, and lawyer in Los Angeles. His Practical Typography website works like an ebook and presents beginner’s knowledge about typography.  Chapters: typography in ten minutes summary of key rules foreword by Erik Spiekermann introduction why typography matters type composition text formatting font recommendations page layout sample documents appendix

Luc Devroye was born in Tienen, Belgium. He is working at the McGill University in Montreal, Cananda.  He maintains a large online encyclopedia about type design, typefaces and fonts. 

Paul Shaw is a designer and a design historian. He has a BA in American Studies from Reed College and both an MA and an MPhil in American History from Columbia University. For three decades he has researched and written about the history of graphic design with a focus on typography, lettering and calligraphy. Among his areas of interest have been W.A. Dwiggins, George Salter, Morris Fuller Benton, Bartolomeo Sanvito, Andrea Bregno, blackletter and the signage of the New York City subway system. 

An illustrated and interactive tool to explore the basics of typographic terminology. 

Simple animated and interactive illustration of how a parametric Bézier curve is constructed.

The Diacritics Project is a website which helps type designers to understand and design diacritics. The project was set up by Filip Blažek, but anyone can add content to it. 

Context of Diacritics is an analysis of diacritics made to help type designers with refining the character sets of their fonts. It was made by Ondrej Jób, who runs his type foundry Urtd in Slovakia. The main goal of this project is to list diacritical combinations that exist in real life. Because of the methods used, all other data (absolute and relative frequency, position within words) is not and cannot be 100% accurate. Two main operations were performed during the analysis: The first ope

Size Calculator is a project by Nick Sherman and Chris Lewis. It can be used to input two of the three values for viewing distance, physical size and perceived size and then the website will calculate the third value.  

Letterpress Commons is an online knowledge base around letterpress printing. It was set up by Boxcar Press, but content can be added and edited by other letterpress printers as well. The site offers information about presses and equipment, a map of letterpress print shops and museums and many articles around the topic of letterpress printing. 

The Font Review Journal is home to reviews and analysis of typeface designs both new and old. This site is aimed at designers who want to discover new typefaces to add to their arsenal, or those who want to learn to appreciate old favorites on a deeper level.

Lars Schwarz provides a typeface name check on his fontdata.com site. It uses information from various sources to validate if a given typeface name is already taken. The sources include typeface names from digital sources like MyFonts, Typekit, Google Fonts and foundry websites, but also non-digital sources like the so called »Seemann« (»Handbuch der Schriftarten« published 1926 incl. 6 supplements between 1927 and 1939), The Encyclopaedia of Type Faces (Jaspert, Berry & Johnson), Monotype C

The “school” is a section of the website of the Hill Museum & Manuscript library. It teaches about scripts and manuscripts, introducing learners to the sciences of paleography and codicology. Under the Scripts and Manuscripts headings, one can choose a manuscript culture and follow the development of scripts through the centuries. Lessons include simple exercises to help one grasp important concepts. Lessons on Latin Scripts do not necessarily require a knowledge of Latin. Transcri

Typophile.com was an internet forum dedicated to the discussion of type and typography and the associated software, tools and design practices. The forum was created by Jared Benson in 2000 and was operated by San Francisco design studio, Punchcut, a firm Benson co-founded in 2002.

Typedrawers.com is an internet forum around the field of typography and type design. The forum was started in 2012 by type designer James Puckett, who ran it until 2014. The site was deliberately set up to work differently than the long-running Typophile.com. Typedrawers requires accounts with real names to “encourages thoughtful, mature discourse” and doesn’t accept Font ID requests. The categories on Typedrawers are Type Design, Lettering & Calligraphy, and Typography, but the major

Typography.Guru is an online community around the field of typography. In contrast to Typedrawers and Typophile, the site doesn’t just revolve around a forum, but is meant to also collection information and knowledge around the field in dedicated categories like Journal (typography articles), Directory, Videos, Quotes and so on.  The site is published by Ralf Herrmann and went online in February 2015. It was largely modelled after Herrmann’s German typography site Typografie.info, which is runn

A succinct overview of web typography, in form of a book, with emphasis on demo code for study and practice, authored by Donny Truong.

Open Educational Resources for Typography (OERT) is a project aimed at everyone who wishes to broaden their knowledge of typography: students, teachers, or individuals interested in the subject. This project is built upon the course material prepared by Cátedra Cosgaya (FADU / UBA), a set of booklets began to be produced in 1994, and it is currently organized into three sections: theoretical, historical, and practical. The project aims at expanding, updating, and editing the current material in

A public archive of typography indexed by typeface, format, and industry. It documents and examines graphic design with the goal of improving typographic literacy and appreciation.

A blog, sporting the tagline “The secret life of punctuation”, which gathers the unusual stories behind some well-known — and some rather more obscure — marks of punctuation. In 2013, a companion book has been published.

A website aimed at helping web designers choose typefaces and typeface combinations showcasing and analysing actual use in selected websites. 

Cyrillicsly is a blog by Maria Doreuli & Krista Radoeva presenting historical and contemporary material on Cyrillic type design. 

Alphabettes is a showcase for work, commentary, and research on lettering, typography, and type design. The site is set up as a loose network of (currently more than) 70 members from around the world.