Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I’m back with another “How To” guide for you guys! I love that my “How to start a WordPress blog” guide has helped a lot of you out already, so I thought I’d do another one that I think should be really helpful too. So here’s my newest simple step by step guide…
How to: Download and Install a Font in Two Minutes.
Go to a free or paid font website, look for a font that you love and want to download or purchase
There are a lot of free font websites you can go to, to find free fonts that you can use for (usually) personal use only. If you’re really in love with a font and end up wanting to use it commercially, you can typically find that same font available to purchase commercial rights. A lot of the time, if you purchase a font it can be used commercially, but double check before committing to the purchase so you’re not disappointed to find out you cannot use it commercially! If you’re looking strictly for personal use though, I suggest DaFont.com, Font Squirrel, and 1001 Free Fonts.
If you’re looking for commercial use or just some awesome fonts, check out Creative Market, My Fonts, and The Hungry JPEG. I love all of these websites and have personally used them plenty of times.
My main suggestion would be to just be careful with anything you’re downloading onto your computer. I don’t trust all font websites of course, some are just plain sketchy, so keep an eye open. If something seems off, don’t download it.
Download the font, add it to your font book
For this step I’ll walk you through it with pictures. I’m on DaFont’s website, and found a cool font called “Trendsetter”. I click download, and now it’s saved to my desktop (Make sure you know where your downloads go to, it could be your desktop or downloads folder. Check your settings if you’re unsure).
Unzip the font file by double clicking it. It will either open a folder containing the font(s) or in my case, just the one file of the actual font .ttf
I use a Mac, so these are the steps for Mac users, Windows steps are in parenthesis under Mac steps…
Font Installation
On your desktop screen, go to the search button in the top right corner of the screen. When the search box pops up, type in ‘font book’, hit enter. Your font book will open.
(Windows users, from the ‘Start’ menu select ‘Control Panel’. Then select ‘Appearance and Personalization’. Then click on ‘Fonts’)
Once your font book is open, drag your font from your desktop into the font book. It will say “Validating Fonts”, and once that little pop up disappears, your font has been installed! Hooray! Now open Photoshop or whatever photo editing program you use and search for your font. It should appear for you – now start using it!
(Windows users, after opening ‘Fonts’, click ‘File’, and then click ‘Install New Font.’ Select font(s) you want installed, and click ok. You should be good to go!)
And that’s all there is to it! Once you’ve done this a couple of times you’ll know it like the back of your hand and it will take you seconds to download and install your fonts. I really hope this was helpful for you! Let me know if you have any suggestions for my next “How To” guides.