Typewolf is how you stop using the same three fonts

Every designer has a handful of fonts they fall back on. You know the ones. They're safe, they work, and you've used them on so many projects that you've stopped seeing them. At some point a brief comes along that needs something different, and you realize you don't really know where to start.

Typewolf is a good place to start.

It's run by Jeremiah Shoaf, a designer rather than a type designer, and that's the key to why it works. It isn't about the history of the lowercase g or the finer points of kerning tables. It's about which fonts look good, where they're being used, and what to pair them with. Practical stuff, for people who have to ship something.

It launched in 2013 and has grown into one of the most useful type resources on the web, with over 350,000 people using it every month.

Site of the Day

This is the feature most people know it for. Every day Typewolf picks a website with great typography and shows you exactly which fonts it uses. That's it. No long write-up, just a screenshot and a font list.

It sounds simple, and it is, but it's incredibly useful. Seeing a typeface in a real layout tells you far more than any type specimen ever will. You see how it handles a big headline, how it sits next to body copy, how it works at small sizes in a nav bar. Scroll back through a few months of these and you'll have a much better sense of what's around.

It also answers the eternal question of "what font is that?" at least for the sites that get featured.

The font pages

There are over 1,000 individual font pages, and they're better than you'd expect. Each one has a short description, examples of the font in use, and suggested pairings. The pairings are the bit to pay attention to. Finding a good headline font is easy. Finding the body font that sits well with it is where most people get stuck.

The lists and guides

Typewolf has a lot of lists, and they're genuinely good ones.

The popular fonts lists show what's trending, which is handy for knowing what's everywhere right now (and therefore what you might want to avoid).

The Definitive Guide to Free Fonts is exactly what it sounds like. If your budget doesn't stretch to a foundry license, start here. There's more good free type out there than most people realize.

The Best Typography Books for Designers is a solid reading list if you want to go deeper than the website.

There's also the Flawless Typography Checklist, which is worth running through before you hand anything over. It's the stuff everyone knows they should check and then forgets at 6pm on a Friday.

The newsletter

It goes out on Tuesdays and it's one of the few design newsletters that's actually worth opening. New sites, new fonts, a bit of commentary. Short enough to read in a coffee break.

Heads up

It's focused on the web. If you work mostly in print or packaging, a lot of the examples won't map directly onto your work, though the font recommendations still hold up.

It's also more about what's out there than how to use it well. If you're after type theory or learning the fundamentals properly, you'll want a book (conveniently, there's a list of those).

Who it's for

Web and brand designers picking type for a new project. Anyone stuck in a font rut. Developers who've been handed a design and want to understand why the fonts were chosen. Students who want to build their type knowledge from real examples instead of theory.

Next time you're about to reach for the usual suspects, spend ten minutes on Typewolf first. You'll probably still use one of your favorites. But you might not.

Written by Steve Salgado