Font Management in Mac

Carl Shank • March 24, 2022

If you are like many users, you will soon be overwhelmed by the wealth and number of fonts in your font system folder. This is where a Font Management tool comes in handy. Such a tool helps you organize, specify and use a limited number of fonts for specific projects. It also helps to identify font conflicts, badly designed or corrupted fonts or fonts that simply do not work anymore.


SUITCASE. A premier font management tool is Suitcase Fusion (www.extensis.com). This tool has served font and design professionals over the years with expert and solid font management. The modern name is "Suitcase Fusion," version 22.x. This tool helps the user to install Adobe fonts directly into the Extensis files, auto-activates fonts in Adobe's Creative Cloud, drag and drop fonts into Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher on the PC. It finds and compares fonts on the list view. The modern iteration works on the newer Macs M1. There is a free trial offered.




Older Mac Systems

As my readers know, I use a number of older Macintosh systems for archived software use. Extensis Suitcase Version 10 is what I use on these systems as well. Suitcase Strip puts font management on the Control Strip of Mac OS 9, and a "Collect for Output" function allows users to send their fonts with the projects to a printer. Suitcase on these older machines requires a PowerPC processor, OS 8.6 or newer and 32MB of RAM. The program also includes LemkeSoft's FontBook, a font preview utility (See below.)


The downside is working with Adobe's Type Manager (ATM). ATM Deluxe does not work in Mac OS 9.2.2 with Suitcase. However, ATM Light 4.6.2 or 4.6.2a is necessary for smooth font previews, since Suitcase has no smoothing option. Adobe Type Manager (ATM) Light is a system software component that automatically generates high-quality screen font bitmaps from the PostScript outlines in Type 1 or OpenType format. ATM Light was discontinued in 2005, but Adobe still makes it available for customers who require it for older operating systems. With ATM Light, you can scale your fonts on legacy systems without the characters appearing jagged, and you can also enable "font smoothing," which further improves the appearance of your fonts onscreen by using your computer monitor's color palette to intelligently improve the rendering of characters. ATM Light also allows you to print PostScript fonts on non-PostScript printers. You may have to hunt and search for ATM Light version 4.6.2, but a good place to start is Macintosh Garden (macintoshgarden.org) and Macintosh Repository (macintosh repository.org). See the examples below.

Successful Layout & Design

Calligraphy & Typography

By Carl Shank • September 29, 2025
Calligraphy & Typography. Calligraphy, the art of beautiful handwriting, has a long and rich history that spans cultures, religions, and centuries. It developed not only as a means of communication but also as a form of artistic expression, religious devotion, and cultural preservation. While typography is not calligraphy, with much of type carefully structured, straight-backed and neatly drawn and focused on lettering for printing readability, both art forms involve visual expression of language. Both focus on the shape, proportion and beauty of letters. Both reflect religious, historical and cultural influences on writing styles. Both are used for artistic and decorative purposes in design, and much of type has been greatly influenced by calligraphic styles. Yet, they differ significantly in their methods, purposes and tools. Calligraphy is the art of hand drawn, beautiful writing, while typography focuses on the design and arrangement of type letters for print or digital use. Calligraphy is created manually with pens, brushes, or quills, while type is created digitally or mechanically using typefaces. Traditional tools used in calligraphy include dip pens, brushes and ink, while type is formed with digital or physical lettering. Calligraphy is highly expressive and free flowing, while type is usually uniform and consistent across all characters. Calligraphy is usually done for decorative and personal use, while typography is often constructed and used for mass communication in books, websites and signage. Mediums for calligraphy include paper, parchment, walls, while typography focuses on print and digital media. Yet, the roots of much of type comes from the wealth of history and styling offered by calligraphy. CARE Typography has been able with Font Lab's tools like Fontographer, to translate fine calligraphy into usable typefaces, even for the modern market tastes. The fine art of calligraphy is highlighted in the background to this post in the 2018 calligraphic rendering of the Scripture, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:25a) by Calligraphy for Christ ( https://www.calligraphyforchrist.com/ ). Such beautiful religious typographic pieces actually begin not with the Gutenberg era in 1450 but with the ancient Chinese.

Early German Typography (Part 2)

By Carl Shank • September 22, 2025
Herbert Hoffmann, Albert Bruckner, Max Hertwig, and Rudolf Koch collaborated on a typographic “atlas” or specimen book titled Hoffmanns Schriftatlas: Das Schriftschaffen der Gegenwart in Alphabeten und Anwendungen (1930) ( Hoffmann’s Type Atlas: Contemporary Type Creation in Alphabets and Applications ) Also distributed in France under the title Alphabets by Herbert Hoffman and other collaborators by Arts et Métiers Graphiques magazine, it is a specimen of alphabets, initials, monograms, logos and other typographic forms from early German typography. The atlas captures typographic modernism in Germany around that time, including influences of the Bauhaus and the modernist movement. It is considered a rich visual record of type and lettering design in that period, showing both experimental and traditional forms. In Part One of this series, we investigated the typography of early Germany through the lens of Rudolf Koch, Louis Oppenheim, E.R. Weiss, Lucian Bernhard, Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, and Bernard Naudin. In this Part Two we revisit the typography of Ernst Deutsch, Friedrich Heinrichsen, Benjamin Krebs Nachfolger, Maria Ballé, Margarete Leins, Anna Simons and take a brief visit to the Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Stuttgart.
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