How to Find and Install Fonts for Graphic Design

By Lisa Sabin-Wilson from WordPress Web Design For Dummies

On your WordPress website, you're not limited to the types of fonts you can use in graphic design. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fonts are available on the web. After you find the font that you want to use, install it on your computer so it appears in the font list within your preferred graphic design program.

If you’re a fontaholic, you can get lost in the vast number of font libraries that you find on the web while searching for just the right font to suit your tastes. You can pass many hours browsing through and admiring different font galleries looking for, and usually finding, inspiration.

As beautiful and gorgeous as some of the fonts are, they’re not all free for you to use. Some of them cost money (in some cases, a great deal of money), and many have specific licenses attached to them that designate circumstances under which you can use them. Be sure to read the license attached to the font, if there is one (usually a file called license.txt bundled in the download file), to be sure you’re fully licensed to use the font in your web project.

Find the right fonts for your project

Here’s a quick list of free font resources that have some really great fonts available for download and use:

For your web design projects, you may have to bite the bullet and purchase a font or two; or maybe you find a font you absolutely must use in your design but will have to purchase. Some premium font resources include

One last, but extremely helpful, resource for finding the font you need is the What the Font web page on the MyFonts site. Use this resource when you have a font, but don’t know what the name of the font is or how to locate it. This tool is particularly helpful if you see a font and think, “I love the font on that site — I want to use the same one.”

You can either upload an image file that displays the font in question or indicate the URL where the font is located. After you do one of these actions, What the Font generates a listing of possible fonts that match the one you indicated. From there, you can purchase the font (if it’s not free) and then download it to your computer for use in your web design project.

Install fonts to your computer

After you find the font that you want to use, install it on your computer so it appears in the font list within your preferred graphic design program. On the Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems, Microsoft makes it easy to install a font by simply double-clicking on the font file and then clicking install. Additionally, you can select multiple font files and right-click to install in bulk.

Alternatively, you can follow these steps to install a font on the Windows operating system:

Download the font to your computer and save it in a location you’re sure to remember.
Unzip the download file.

Typically, font downloads are packaged within a Zip file, requiring that you use a popular archiving program, such as WinZip, to unzip (or uncompress) the file.
Save the unzipped file to a location on your computer and right-click on the font filename.

Font files have a .ttf (TrueType Font) or .otf (OpenType Font) extension.
Select Copy.
Browse to C:\Windows\Fonts.
Right-click inside the C:\Windows\Fonts directory and select Paste.

This moves the font file from its original location to the Fonts directory (C:\Windows\Fonts) on your computer, and a dialog box opens, indicating that the font is being installed. The dialog box closes when the font installation is complete.