Typeface Name Check

Michiel Drost

How do I check if the name I want to give to a new typeface is not used yet?

George Thomas

Try Google, as in "[your font name] font". Also, be aware of anything trademarked for another product that may not turn up through that search.

Michiel Drost

Cheers.

Benedikt Bramböck

The name checker by Identifont is a good starting point too.

Michiel Drost

Thanks.

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Jacques Le Bailly

@James But that wouldn't cover Europe, Asia etc., would it ?

Ray Larabie

If you add tilde to ~font in Google searches, it'll include more results for words that are similar to fonts, such as fonts, typeface and lettering.

Craig Eliason

@ray That may not be true anymore. I think nowadays Google defaults to a synonym-enabled search, unless you put your terms within quotation marks.

Ray Larabie

Thank you, Craig. One less tilde I need type.

Michiel Drost

Your suggestions have all been very helpful!

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Stephen Coles

There is no single comprehensive database (though Identifont is as close as they come because it includes the most typefaces from multiple retail and “free” sources). If you really want to avoid replicating an existing name, trademark or no, I recommend checking all the following, as each has entries that are unique to its database:

Independent Resources
• Identifont
• Luc Devroye
• Fonts In Use
• Typophile
• US Patent and Trademark Office
• one day: Type Record
Retailers
• MyFonts
• FontShop
• Fonts.com
• Fontspring
• You Work For Them
Free
• Dafont
• Google Fonts

Florian Hardwig

If you want to expand your search to historic typefaces that are not offered in digital form yet (or anymore), you could search the typeface designer/foundry pdfs compiled by Hans Reichardt for the Klingspor-Museum. This archive is pretty extensive, but of course it isn’t comprehensive either.
https://www.google.com/webhp?q=site:www.klingspor-museum.de+Reina

Lars Schwarz

I'm currently working on something like this .... based on font names from MyFonts, TypeKit, Google Fonts and other sources (like the "Seemann"). Should be available tomorrow, will post a link

Michiel Drost

Thank you all most kindly.

Lars Schwarz

Far from perfect, but a starting point:

http://namecheck.fontdata.com/

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Lars Schwarz

James, could you post the links to USPTO please? I'll investigate and probably I'm able to add those (and others registered at USPTO, too)

George Thomas

Lars, have you considering asking font designers to register their names with you?

Lars Schwarz

Basic support for USPTO added (basic = trademarks by Monotype, Heidelberger, Fontshop and Terminal Design)

Lars Schwarz

George, I believe that's too much effort for most foundries, but I'm happy to add anything that's currently missing

Stephen Coles

James, yours is one of the very rare active foundries not included in the resources I listed, but you’re right that USPTO should be added (MVB fonts are there too, but not Identifont). Done.

Lars Schwarz

Your wish is my command: MVB USPTO trademarks are added now

Ermin Međedović

Lars, this is just great. Thank you!

Lars Schwarz

Some people suggested to exclude the foundry name from the typeface name. Even this makes sense for fonts like FF Tisa or Linotype Didot, there are a few examples where the name becomes too common like PT Sans would become just Sans.

What are your opinions? Is FF Tisa known as Tisa or FF Tisa? Since the tool is about looking up just names not complete typeface information I would go for remove them all without exception.

Everything Goudy (Lanston and Monotype Corp.) proably is a special case

George Thomas

It won't hurt anything to leave them in and in some cases might even be helpful.

Ray Larabie

This conversation is starting to make me feel like I should spend more than 2 minutes naming my fonts.

Florian Hardwig

While the primary purpose of Fonts In Use is to show use examples, it also has a vast and growing database of typefaces, including pre-digital ones and such that have no uses attached to them yet. I add this here because many people don’t know about that yet.

We plan to add more meta data like type designer and release year, so that one could search for uses of typefaces by a certain designer, or uses of typefaces designed in the 1930s, for example. This is currently in beta.

Dave Crossland

I asked a python developer I work with to build the engine for something like Lars' site. Lars, would you be interested in publishing your site's source code on Github? I expect many designers/foundries would like to be added and making the software libre on Github will help with that

https://github.com/googlefonts/fontbakery/tree/master/bakery_cli/scrapes/familynames/familynames/spiders