I Love Typography Launches Font Store

Ben Moss.
June 30, 2021

There is no shortage of places to buy fonts online, but the quality of what is on offer is variable, and the way of searching catalogs has remained largely unchanged since the first stores appeared decades ago.

I Love Typography Launches Font Store.

I Love Typography — a popular source of news about typography and type design since 2007 — has stepped into the marketplace, starting by inviting some of the world’s top designers to contribute to its new store, resulting in 40 foundries joining the project and 15 new type families available at launch.

ILT’s boldest move is to step away from the traditionally shallow type categories and attempt to devise a system that drills down into the nuances of type design, all to aid discovery.

The approach is named CEDARS+, which is a method of describing the formal characteristics of a (mainly Latin) typeface based on the characteristics of the marks if made by a writing tool such as a pen or chisel.

CEDARS+ can be broken down as follows:

  • Contrast: the difference between the thickest and the thinnest strokes in a character. Permissible values range from none’ through medium’ to extreme.’
  • Energy: the visual energy in the letterform. Values range from calm’ to lively’ and very high.’
  • Details: with several sub-categories, details is a catch-all category that covers aspects such as how strokes end and intersect.
  • Axis: the angle at which the tool would be held to create the form. Axis uses degrees, with 90 degrees being a vertical axis.
  • Rhythm: covers both the tightness or looseness of letters varying from very tight’ to very loose, and the difference in width between the narrow and wide letters varying from highly regular’ to highly irregular.’
  • Structure: another catch-all category that covers the structure of loops with values such as triangular’ and oval,’ and the general construction, which can be formal,’ cursive,’ organic,’ layered,’ stencil,’ or modular.’
  • +: the plus covers several characteristics that don’t fit neatly into an acronym, including the shape of crossbars, and single or double storey a’s and g’s.

With a way to browse font families that is based on the feel of the design, rather than popularity (or alphabetical order!) ILT hopes to expose lesser-known designs and designers, and to encourage more creative typography on the web.

Ben Moss

Ben Moss is Senior Editor at WebdesignerDepot. He’s designed and coded work for award-winning startups, and global names including IBM, UBS, and the FBI. One of these days he’ll run a sub-4hr marathon. Say hi on Twitter.

Read Next

Are Simple Websites Better For Business?

As web design technologies raise the bar on what it is possible to achieve on a realistic budget, there’s a rising deba…

Apple Opts for AR over VR at WWDC

An Apple VR headset has been one of the most widely-rumored devices of the last few years, and it was finally settled a…

Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2023

We’re halfway through 2023 already, and the number of incredible apps, tools, and resources for designers is mounting.

3 Essential Design Trends, June 2023

This month we are focusing on three trends within a bigger website design trend – different navigation menu styles and …

15 Best New Fonts, May 2023

The choices you make when selecting a typeface have more impact on your design than almost any other decision, so it’s …

10+ Best Tools & Resources for Web Designers and Agencies (2023 updated)

Having the ability to envision a tastefully designed website (i.e., the role creativity plays) is important. But being …

20 Best New Websites, May 2023

This month, there are tons of great new agency websites to get excited about. 3D animated prisms are a popular theme, a…

How to Find the Right White Label Website Builder for Your Agency

Web design agencies face a lot of obstacles in closing the deal with new clients. One of the most common ones is the ar…

Exciting New Tools For Designers, May 2023

There are hundreds of new tools for designers and developers released each month. We sift through them all to bring you…

3 Essential Design Trends, May 2023

All three of the website design trends here mimic something bigger going on in the tech space, from a desire to have mo…

10 Best AI Tools for Web Designers (2023)

It’s time to stop worrying if AI is going to take your job and instead start using AI to expand the services you can of…

10 Best Marketing Agency Websites (Examples, Inspo, and Templates!)

Marketers are skilled in developing strategies, producing visual assets, writing text with high impact, and optimizing …