i have found a website.....http://www.ultimatefontdownload.com/ they say that you can get 10,000 fonts for only $20 and there all licensed for commercial use, just wondering if you guys have had any experience with these types of sites, and if you have any other font sites.

 

i think this could be quite good, having 10,000 fonts.

 

you also get a font catalog to print

I have bought around 300 typefaces in about a decade and they're a pain to categorise. Having 10,000 would be like being in taxonomy hell! How would you sort them?

 

I wouldn't recommend paying for the font packages on sites like the one you mentioned. The site gives no indication of what format the typefaces are in. Could be truetype, could be opentype, could be a suitcase etc. This matters because apps that use these typefaces such as Illustrator and InDesign determine their display based on the format. Also opentypes generally have the full range of characters and diacritics that are often missing from cheap collections.

 

Be selective and buy your types from a foundry. Investigate a particular type's history of usage to get an idea of the contexts it's used in. I have only around 10 typefaces that I regularly use!

You'd never use 10,000 fonts or even a tiny fraction of them. I spend more time trying to eliminate unused fonts with font management software than I do in seeking out new fonts.

 

Even for free fonts you're better downloading on an individual basis from sites such as dafont.com, where you have a visual preview of the font and information about whether it's truetype, opentype, etc. Many of those free fonts are available for commercial use as well (and will be specified as such clearly), and for the others you can always request permission from the designer.

 

Don't be afraid of paid fonts either. From time to time it's well worth making the small investment for a top quality font that works perfectly for a particular client, or which you think you might reuse regularly in future.