Just How Good Is MyFonts.com?

The answer: very, very good.

The web site myfonts.com has this cool feature where you can upload a type sample and it will in theory identify what the typeface is. Awesome when it works. We were skeptical: Would it work all the time, most of the time, or so infrequently to be a big old waste of time.

We are happy to admit that it works fantastically well in most instances.

We randomly selected 40 fonts from previous client projects we produced over the past ten years. Myfonts.com's WhatTheType system correctly identified nearly 70% of them. And when we omit the ones it readily admits it won't be able to identify — namely outline faces, type samples where individual letters touch each other and fonts whose letterforms are not contiguous — the tool was able to identify over 80% of the faces we threw at it.

The fact that the site lets you know up front when it probably won't work is a refreshing example of a site setting honest expectations in a web filled with hype. Highly recommended!

For a list of the "nailed it" vs. the "not so much," see below!