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What the font?

Fount LogoToday I'm sharing two great tools for identifying fonts in images or websites. The first is the What the Font? site. Just upload an image of some text written in the font you want to identify---from a scanned image, a snapshot, a screenshot, whatever---and WTF will try to find a match in its database of fonts. It's not always a perfect match, but if you're new to typography and can't tell an ascender from a terminal, this tool can get you in the ballpark.

Website logos are often embedded into the page as images--for obvious reasons; the designer can't be sure that you have the font she wants to use loaded onto to your machine and the logo might include graphics or unique letterforms. But for text on a website that is actual text (usually styled using CSS), there is a great new tool to figure out what font you're looking at. Fount is a bookmarklet that you can drop into the bookmarks bar of your favorite browser. Once it's installed, just click it and then click on any font you want to identify on a site.  Fount will show you what font you're actually seeing, its size, weight (e.g., bold), and style (e.g., italic).