Design book reviews

Taking Control of fonts in Mac OS X, Tiger

Organizing, installing and managing fonts with ease in Mac OS X!

Using fonts on a Mac used to be easy. Under OS 9, or older, you either just dragged them into the System Folder, or used a font management utility like Suitcase.

But with Mac OS X, Apple seemed to have lost the plot as regards fonts. Not only were there several different folder for storing fonts, but corruption, duplication and conflicts have increased tenfold.

On top of this, Macs running OS X are able to utilize far more different font formats, including Windows fonts and Unicode fonts. All of this leads to more hassles for Macintosh-based graphic designers and typographers, who have far better things to do with their time.

A new book by Sharon Zardetto Aker, called Take Control of Fonts in Mac OS X: Tiger Edition, may well help solve some of Mac OS X's font mysteries.

The book is available from Take Control eBooks, in both digital and print versions and costs US$20.

Other font related topics on Design : Talkboard

• Font management software – reviews of professional font managers.
• Font definitions – Dictionary of font terminology.
• Typography links – Font and typographic resources.

And on the design forums

• Suitcase V MasterJuggler – Two font management tools compared.
• Windows font management.
• Discussions about font management tools and organizing fonts on a Mac.