Is Typekit a Font Manager?

Extensis
May 10, 2017

tkTypekit is a great service that Adobe provides for their Creative Cloud subscribers. It allows you to do two main things:

  • Use a wide variety of fonts in the Typekit collection for text on websites
  • Synchronize some of those fonts from Typekit for use with your desktop apps

Font managers like Suitcase Fusion and Universal Type Server are designed to manage your own collection of licensed fonts. They take your entire valuable collection of fonts and put them into a central location that is easily accessible by you and your team.

Typekit does not manage fonts that you have licensed or downloaded from locations other than Typekit.

 When those Typekit fonts are available on your desktop, Suitcase Fusion and other professional font management tools automatically detect the downloaded fonts and make them available for use.There are spots where you may hear the term “font manager” in relation to Typekit. The Adobe documentation for Typekit does at times refer to the web tool that controls the download of fonts to your desktop as a “font manager.” This web tools only manages fonts in the sense that it pushes fonts from the Typekit database down to your machine, that is all.

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Because the average designer has over 4,000 fonts in her collection, keeping all of those fonts available for use, while not necessarily active on the system is critical for speedy, error-free design work.

If you are an individual designer and are interested in testing out the easiest way to manage your fonts, download a free trial of Suitcase Fusion. If you are interested in learning more about a font management solution for your entire organization, request a demo for Universal Type Server.