Fonts and Greek Text

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Ok I’ll admit it I’m not a font head. Now I’ve know a few MacHeads in my day who were able to spot a verdana font from and arail font at 60 yards but it’s not a skill that I posses. Quite often when I am designing a website I will need font with a certain feel to it. Maybe I’ll want something scary, techno, blocky, or script like. Sometimes I’m just looking for a plain sans-serif font. Since I cant remember what a font looks like let alone it’s name I was in need of font preview tool. I was turned on to the great tool called fontlister. It allows you to preview all of the fonts on your PC. Now if you’re one of those slick Madison Ave print people, it evens allows you to print out all of the fonts into a font book. If you’re in need of some font try FontFreak.com or FreeFonts.com.

Another thing you need when building a website is dummy text. Those old school Madison Avenue types call it Greek text. Why is it called Greek text? Ok cliff notes version …

In 45 BC Cicero wrote a work called “The Extremes of Good and Evil”. The work was translated into Latin as many works of the day were. Sometime around 1500 AD an unknown printer used it to test typesetting in a printing press

Why do you need Greek text. Simply put it simulates the spacing and characteristics of regular words and sentences. If you were to write gibberish it would look like this

jkhsdh kjhdshjkjsdfjk jkhdskhsjkhd jkhsdfh dsjfhkjdfkhsd kjfdkjh kjhfdjhewiouksd sdjk
hjkhfkhk kjhdfgh kjfdgkjhiowekfd kjhdsjh s kjsdhhkjhds lksdlkjlkeoiklsjdfk klsjdlkj sdklj

If you use Greek text it looks like this

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Pellentesque leo. Suspendisse hendrerit enim non libero. Vivamus venenatis, sapien id consectetuer feugiat, felis ipsum convallis dui, a sollicitudin metus metus quis urna. Vivamus sit amet sapien. Vestibulum egestas laoreet sapien.

See how it looks like regular text? Print designers and more recently web designers use it as a place holder for real text to simulate how something will look when the final version hasn’t been written. Sometimes you will also hear this called Lorem Ipsum text because of the first words of the passage. If you need Greek text in various formats try the Lorem Ipsum Generator

If you’re an artist, a font head or someone who really appreciates craftmanship check out Bembo’s Zoo. Bembo’s Zoo was originally a children’s book that works better as a website. It lists all of the letters of the alphabet and displays an animal that starts with that letter. For example for the letter “W” they show the word “wolf”. The letters in the word wolf then morph in a wolf shape. Ok my explanation doesn’t do it justice but it is really cool I promise you’ll like it so really go visit Bembo’s Zoo

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