#FONTAGENT PRO 4 FOR MAC OS#
Now, years after Suitcase started the ball rolling on System 6, we're lucky enough to have some very mature font management tools for Mac OS X. The result is a need to handle and navigate the abundant libraries available while not stifling that creative process. Nowadays clients are wiser and choosier, fonts are cheaper (not making them out of steel helps), and everyone and their dog is making fonts (the dog fonts are terrible you really don't want to use those). In simpler times, you pulled open a drawer, chose between the three sets of steel blocks, said "I don't care who you are, you're getting Garamond," and that was that. For designers that juggle a range of clients and projects, working with fonts is more a nebulous creative ritual of feeling a brand, and it demands a tool worthy of the task. To prepress houses and service bureaus, it is the pit stop: you turn it on, hit Print, and go deal with the real work-the more time you have to spend dealing with the font management/activation process, the less money you are making. To people outside of design and typography, I'm sure that the words "font manager" sound like something taking itself way too seriously-like some sort of gilded spice rack-but for those that need to work with fonts on a daily basis, the font manager is serious business. Giving a lot of time to these programs in a production setting is crucial to seeing how they perform on a daily basis, and I am confident I've thrown enough varied scenarios at each to find out where they succeed and fail. I've also succeeded in not completely losing my mind while the developers updated the apps, nullifying half my criticisms in the process.
Well, it was a long time coming, but I've been through the trenches and come up, sucking chest wound and all, with the Ars review of font management programs.
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