As the Spring 2019 semester is coming to a close, I am starting to purge my laptop of all unnecessary files, and organizing them. My goal is to have a completely clean desktop, meaning not a single folder in site. This is a ritual I follow at the end of every semester, and this time I want to tackle an even bigger goal… clean out my font folder. With websites like Da Font where you are able to download so many fonts for free it is easy to forget the value of a nice font. My aunt who is a professional graphic designer in New York was telling me about how they had to buy any font they wanted to use, which was very expensive. With the high price tag of a nice font for commercial use of course people would want a solution where they can get any type of font but not have to pay a high price tag… and that’s where sites like da font come into play.

I remember back in my first typography class we had to make our own fonts, all the time and energy put into creating the personalized piece of art. Da font is amazing because there are MILLIONS of fonts at your fingertips, all you need to do is search the type of font you need and click download. However, da font can also be your worst nightmare… many of the fonts are free for personal use only meaning that if you were creating something for a client, those fonts would be useless. You do not want to put yourself, or the client in the position if you used a font that was not completely free. 

In my opinion, type can make or break a design, it can also make an okay design better. My goal is to clean out any font that is not 100% free. It will take me awhile to go through four years worth of fonts, but in the end it would be worth it. I challenge any designer reading this to clean out your font folder.