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ADRIENNE LAFRANCE JUL 31 2014, 3:14 PM ET

A Tool That Answers 'What's That Typeface?'

Flickr/Marie Buyens
The Internet is, from its very core to its most distant peripheries, a vast universe of text.
I was reminded of this fact just this morning as I read the transcript of a conversation between my
editor Alexis and Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp.
"Its the way the Internet was architected," Sharp said. "HTML is the architecture of the web and
it is about the presentation of text. Its Hyper Text Markup Langauge ... thats what the code on
the Internet does. It marks up text."
Remember: this is from a founder of Pinterest, a supremely visual site. And so for all the GIFs and
videos and photographs that are inextricably woven into the culture of the Internet, the

experience of being onlinehow we get from one place to another, what we're doing when we're
thereis largely shaped by textual structures. Text is invisibly coded into our interactions with
websites andlayered on top of thatit is everywhere in plain sight. But even the text we see, the
words you're reading right now, is usually obscured by meaning. Context trumps aesthetic most
of the time. For instance, maybe you weren't fixated on the fact that these letters you're scanning
are in the typeface Georgia at 16 points. (They are, that is, if you're on a regular old laptop or
desktop.) Or that the headline atop this article is in Georgia bold, 34 points.
Which is part of why it's so addicting to be able to mouse over and identify any font you see
online. That's what the browser plug-in FontFace Ninja allows. There's even a button that lets you
hide everything on the page except for the text. So you can bask in the familiar curves of The New
York Times's Cheltenham bold headlines. Or marvel at the confluence of sans serifs on the
American Apparel websiteHelvetica Neue, Verdana, Arial bold. Or compare uses of Helvetica
Neue and Gotham Narrow over at Twitter.
(One limitation: FontFace Ninja only works for text, so an image of textlike a logowon't
register a response. In those cases, sites like WhatTheFont will accept screenshots and identify
mystery designs for you.)
Today I learned Vox's chunky sans serif headlines appear in Balto bold. (It also uses a serif called
Harriet.) Here's an example of Balto from Vox's website:
Vox screenshot
The Verge uses both Adelle Regular and some crazy all-caps typeface called FF DIN Web for its
headlines. Mashable goes with Museo Slab Regular, which reminds me of a distant cousin of
Courier New. Go to The Atlantic homepage and you'll find a mix: Times New Roman bold,
Helvetica Neue, and Arial. (And then there's The Atlantic logo, which, in fact, we modified slightly
last year. It's a custom font based on a condensed, italic Bauer Bodoni.) The other cool thing
about FontFace Ninja is it not only tells you what font you're seeing but lets you test out whatever
you encounter. Activate the plug-in, put your cursor over a font that interests you, and click:
There, at the top of your browser window, is an area where you can type whatever you want in
that same style.
It's a fun tool because it reveals some of the nuances of a typeface that don't typically stand out.
By using FontFace Ninja to type my name in BuzzFeed's go-to Proxima Nova Semibold, I could
appreciate how abruptly the arc of a lowercase "r" ends compared with the more bulbous body of
Georgia bold, which we use for article headlines at The Atlantic.

And note how NPR's lowercase "r" differs in the font it uses for headlines (Gotham SSm bold)
compared with the network's iconic logo (Trebuchet bold).
(Oh, and for what it's worth, FontFace Ninja uses the Futura-esque Brandon Grotesque bold on
its own site.)
When you start thinking about the way words look, and how the shape of each one influences the
way you feel about what you're reading, it's hard to stop. Pause for a minute and look around.
Letters are everywhere, which means we're surrounded by typographical choices almost all the
time.
"All of us, I would suggest, are prompted in subliminal ways," British design writer Rick
Poynor says in the 2007 documentary, Helvetica. Helvetica is so popular, some graphic designers
theorize, because it represents the culmination of a long-developing line of design reasoning.
"Maybe the feeling you have when you see particular typographic choices used on a piece of
packaging is just, 'I like the look of that. That feels good. That's my kind of product,'" Poynor said.
"But that's the type casting its secret spell."
And that's the thing about design. We don't always see it, even when we're staring directly at it.
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ADRIENNE LAFRANCE
Adrienne LaFrance is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic. Previously she worked as an investigative
reporter for Honolulu Civil Beat, Nieman Journalism Lab, and WBUR. MORE
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! Reply !
99Luftballons ! a day ago
The article interestingly states:
Which is part of why it's so addicting to be able to mouse over and identify any font you
see online.
Would 0.1% nd it "so addicting"?

1
! Reply !
99Luftballons ! a day ago
"Can't see the forest for the trees[fonts]" -- big time!
An interesting use of "type casting."
So Marshall McLuhan was wrong, it is actually "the [font] is the message," not the "medium."

1
! Reply !
Harry Caray ! a day ago
Comic Sans walks into a bar. Bartender says 'we don't serve your type'.

11
! Reply !
ShortAttentionSp ! a day ago Harry Caray
My favorite Bob Marley tune is "I Shot the Serif"

4
! Reply !
UncleStu ! 18 hours ago Harry Caray
I wouldn't serve Comic Sans either.

1
! Reply !
xigan ! 17 hours ago
I'm sure this is all terribly fascinating for somebody who just found out that HTML is text and
that the names of the typefaces used are "hidden" in that text (or the accompanying CSS),
but for the rest of us an article like this is clickbait of the most o"ensive kind.

3
JQ ! 15 hours ago xigan
1) You nd this the article banal/obvious/boring/whatever. Fine. But clickbait?The
article's title is an almost-literal description of its contents. What was the bait?
2) The author is clearly not talking about code. As the quote from Evan Sharp makes
clear, the article's 'text' is HyperText, i.e. the product of rendering HTML.
3) It's one thing to know that there are font-family properties buried somewhere in
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! Reply !
3) It's one thing to know that there are font-family properties buried somewhere in
every page you look at, and quite another to actually think about those fonts as you're
looking at those pages. I usually don't, and I work with CSS every day.

3
! Reply !
xigan ! 12 hours ago
see more
JQ
The headline made me believe there would be a tool that through advanced AI
wizardry - fuelled by advanced typographical knowledge - was able to nd out
what typeface a text was set in. What I got was a "tool" that reads the names of
fonts out of a web page's source. A task so simple that it involves neither
intelligence nor typographical knowledge. A task so simple I can perform it
myself - with the on-board tools of both Firefox and Chrome - in under 10
seconds - faster if I use Firebug. Anybody can learn how to do this. And please
believe when I say: Everybody who knows anything about web design already
does know how to do this. So is this article clickbait? Hell, yes! And you're a
tool for defending it!

1
! Reply !
Nick ! 9 hours ago xigan
I'm sorry that I wasted a few moments of your time and presented you
with information that you consider to be beneath you. It's the rst
instance of this ever happened, and I'll strive to ensure that it is also the
last.
Sincerely,
The Internet

2
! Reply !
xigan ! 15 minutes ago Nick
Who died and made you the Internet, sir?


Charles Wingate ! 11 hours ago
Any Episcopalian recognizes Sabon in a heartbeat, even if they don't know it by name, but
none of these programs has ever seen it before.
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! Reply !
none of these programs has ever seen it before.


! Reply !
Buckland ! 6 hours ago
Where was this when Dan Rather and Mary Mapes needed it?


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