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What is the Type Index ?
The Type Index is not yet another font archive where unscrupulous
people redistribute fonts regardless of quality or author's copyrights.
It is offered by non-profit organisation based in France, which objective
is to help both font authors and font users : Point Central.
It is an Index of possibly all existing fonts in the world.
This database is named the International Type Index (I.T.I.),
and includes freeware, shareware and commercial fonts.
It is a free website named Typeindex.org through which anyone can have access to this International Type Index, whether for consulting it or for registering new typefaces to it.
The site is also accessible through its former identity, Point-central.com, pointcentral.fr, and through internationaltypeindex.org for those who like typing!
It is a community-based project : any font lover, user or author,
can include fonts or foundries.
It is also an exclusive search engine
that allows you to browse throught all these fonts using 13 user-oriented criteria. You can
see each face, compare it with others, and get all infos about it, including where
to actually get it.
Why this project ?
TO HELP USERS : There are hundred of foundries in the world, providing millions
of fonts, not to mentions generous individuals creating some brilliant
ones for free, and less generous ones providing or selling illegal
and mostly unusable ones.
So, paradoxically in an age of unprecedented typographic richness,
using fonts for a project has become increasingly difficult :
are you doomed to use the few ones you have when modern typography
offers such a vast palette ?
are you going to spend hours searching for foundries, without
even being sure to find the font that really fits your need ?
are you going to spend even more time verifying the versions,
the legal status, and the technical safety of font faces ?
Enters the International Font Index, and its high-end multi
criteria search engine : safe, legal, and incredibly convenient.
It provides you the possibility to search, compare and locate
among all those fonts and foundries using several user-oriented criteria
such as style, mood, age, condition, aspect, use, OS platform
and many others.
You can see these faces, and ultimately you can get them within
few clicks.
And to top it all : it is FREE, and benefits to authors as much
as to you!
TO HELP AUTHORS : All authors from all foundries needs the same things : fame, visitors,
and possibly clients. Because The Type Index is free, and does
not host font files, it provides them to any authors.
From small personnal foundries to famous ones, from freeware authors
to commercial artists, everyone can benefits from this community-based
project : all they have to do is to take some few minutes to add
their faces in the database, and there it is!
FOR TYPOGRAPHY'S SAKE : The Type Index is a good mean to
promote quality Typography and to fight piracy : by hosting
only original fonts, and thus creating a worldwide reference,
open to anyone, legal and non-profit oriented, it really helps the Type community.
How does it works ?
The Type Index is a 100% user-built project. It is not complete
and constantly growing. And you can help!
If you're browsing the site and see something missing, use one
of the "Add Foundry", "Add font", or "Update
Information" links. You can also add your comments and feedback
on any artist, foundry, or font.
Anyone can add fonts. It only requires to be a registered user
(in fact, providing an email adress that can be verified.
Submissions can either be done by users (wanting to built their own
searchable collection, their online "font book"), by
author willing to promote their work, or by foundries willing
to promote their catalogue.
Of course, all submissions are checked before being validated, in order to avoid
mistakes or treachery, as much as possible . Besides, anyone can
submit a correction about any font info.
Users can also add their own comments to any font, rate them,
etc.
(Note that to protect everybody's privacy, all infos about
people submitting fonts will never be communicated to anyone,
not even to font authors or font foundries).
Fonts submitted can be freeware, shareware or commercial, provided
they are original ones. The only requirement is to include all
necessary infos.
We strongly encourages you to provide an image of the font
face (a user-friendly model can be downloaded), as it helps a
lot and is easy to do.
It is free, based on your good will, and it has no downsides : your infos will be kept
secret, and NEVER redistributed to ANYONE.
What does it costs ?
NOTHING. NADA. NIB. It is a free project from a non-profit organisation.
Users and authors ain't charged anything! There is no commission on sellings
generated, no fees, nothing. We mean to help.
Where is the money ?
Once again TypeIndex.org is a free project from a non-profit organisation. So, the only money the association gets is from the subscription fees of its members, and from the few ads featured on some pages of the website.
ALL of the profits made (few bucks in facts!) are spent to pay the hosting of the site. In fact, we had to introduce advertising in order to get the balance out of the red! But, as no one is here for the money, we try to keep it from bothering our users (single column, clearly separated from the editorial content), and we try to feature as much as needed to pay our web hosting bills, and nothing more.
Who is pulling the strings ?
Well, no one pulls any strings behind any curtain, in fact! This is a free project, once again, and no big corporation is behind !
Point central (the association) was created by Guillaume-Ulrich Chifflot in october 1997 to give the project a legal structure. Guillaume is also the guy who do the programming (HTML, PHP, Javascript and few other pains in the ass), the design and most articles.
He is assisted by William Sholyno, for organisation and technical matters, and Eddy Wimerts. some constructive ideas and help have been brought by Kane from Sector One.
The other members of the association are all professionals, either from the graphism or advertising area.
Still have questions ? Let's go deeper!
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