Monday, November 23, 2009

Organize Your Stuff Challenge - Week 27

Happy Monday, scrappers! I know we're all knee-deep in turkey guts and stuffing right now, so this week's Challenge is something you can do anytime - font organization. And depending on the number of fonts you have, it may take quite a while (I know it took me about 4 months, eeek!).

Step One - stop downloading fonts. If you haven't gotten your fix yet, then go get it out of your system. Hit every free font site out there, download until your computer explodes, then proceed to step 2. It will be impossible to organize what you have if you keep adding to the mix.

Step Two - don't install your fonts. If you install every font you have, then your system will bog down. Keep it to the basics that your system needs, and then install/uninstall as you need the others.

Step Three - decide how anal you want to be about your organization. If you only have 50 or so fonts, a font folder is probably enough organization. But if you have into the thousands, then your best bet is to divide up your fonts into families (ie, serif, sans serif, grunge, antique, etc) or go with a font organizing program. There are a lot of free manager programs out there, the most popular being The Font Thing. This program rocks but will not work with Vista - but I've also come across the AMP Font Viewer that's free and Vista compatible, but I can't comment on the ease of use. Regardless of which one you use, now is the time to figure out how you want to organize your fonts, get your folders set up, download and install your free font managers, etc. Start making preparations.

Step Four - start organizing. Unzip any fonts that need it, move all your fonts into one location, make sure all your font files are valid and working. Then start moving them into their new homes.

Once you're done, you can easily see which ones you have using a font manager, or you can print out your fonts and store them in a binder for easy access. Also make a backup of your new system onto a CD - if your system crashes, it will NOT be fun to try to set all that up again!

Your font dilemma has now been solved! Go gorge yourself on pumpkin pie and get Grandpa out of the gravy, and I'll see you next week - we're going to get those cards and card-making supplies tamed!

Stacy

4 comments:

  1. I use the AMP with my Vista and it works great! I've never used any other font manager, so I dont know how it compares to others available.

    Some of my font categories are: Disney, Western, Doodles, Borders/frames, Journal Boxes, Lord of the Rings (for DD), Seasonal, Shapes, etc. I use SCAL on the same computer, so I also have a lot of wingdings and dingbats in there.

    There are so many fonts that are hard for me to describe, I'm not sure how to file them. I'll be watching for other ideas for file names this week.

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  2. I'll check out the AMP program.
    I love the Font Thing it is wonderful. So easy to use. But it's not on my vista system so I need to try out another one.

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