Suitcase / Garamond & Frutiger

[Smileyguy]

I suppose I should start by saying that know little / nothing about fonts. I have a couple of questions though that I need answered fairly urgently and would appreciate any help offered.

I need to get hold of the Garamond & Fruitger families of fonts. What's the simplest and quickest way of doing this, and how much (approximatley) will I be paying.

Secondly, could someone give a brief outline of what Extensis Suitcase is? What I'm unsure of is whether it's simply font management software or whether it actually includes fonts with it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Blue Velvet]

There are a number of different cuts of Garamond, the Adobe one is one of my faves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garamond

e.g. You could download ITC Garamond and Adobe Garamonds from here
http://www.linotype.com/664/itcgaramond-family.html
http://www.linotype.com/20/adobegaramond-family.html

If you need an entire family with all its variants (italic, bold, book etc) it can end up being quite expensive with each variant being about US$20 so even a basic set can end up costing $80

The same goes for Frutiger although it doesn't have as many cuts.
http://www.linotype.com/469/frutiger-family.html

Suitcase is a font management program, much like a far better and more complex version of FontBook which you have already on your OSX Mac. You don't need it to install these fonts or use them. It comes in very useful for those designers who may use many fonts in a day or week and doesn't want them all loading up when the Mac starts up. Much like FontBook, you organise the fonts by sets and activate/deactivate them when necessary. It also contains some handy font diagnostic tools...

However, if this for occasional work than you don't need it, as desirable as the app is.

Edit: Off-hand, it may have come with some fonts but I haven't installed any of them myself preferiing to use my library instead.
http://www.noisia.com/Main/Sites/extensis/suitcase/suitcase11.htm

 

[Smileyguy]

Thanks BV, out of curiosity, why is it necessary to buy bold/italisc etc. versions of each font, is basic formatting not good enough? I've used this before for various publishing tasks and the quality has always been fine.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Apple Garamond you can get as a free TrueType font here.
http://www.fryfonts.com/free-font/124

 

[Blue Velvet]

Thanks BV, out of curiosity, why is it necessary to buy bold/italisc etc. versions of each font, is basic formatting not good enough? I've used this before for various publishing tasks and the quality has always been fine.

Without the bold and italic versions, your Mac may and depending on the app will try to generate what's known as a faux-italic or faux-bold if it can. These are poor substitutes for the correct variants and the difference can easily be spotted.

But pro software will not let you do this (Quark, Indesign).
No font = Courier.

 

[Smileyguy]

Thanks for the link BV. Do you know of any other good sites for free fonts?

 

[Blue Velvet]

Thanks for the link BV. Do you know of any other good sites for free fonts?

No, not really. If I need a font for work, I buy it.

Many of the Larabie fonts are free but are mostly display fonts.
http://www.myfonts.com/browse/foundry/larabie/

I suggest you spend some time Googling although it's far more difficult to find free Mac PostScript fonts rather than PC TrueType fonts... OSX can use PC TrueType but if you're sending a job out to print then most printers will not like it.