We all want inspiration — especially when it involves typefaces. The new www.MyFonts.com provides plenty of inspiration, from examples of clever uses for fonts, to a newsletter about font designers cleverly named “Creative Characters”.

It also provides an easy way to find fonts by their use (legible, elegant, funny, magazine, retro, etc.), but my favorite improvement is on the type sample pages. If you click on any font, anywhere on the website, you’ll be taken to a page where you can see examples of that font in use, and set your own text in that typeface.

But instead of providing only a few choices for sample text, you can choose among:

• News headlines
• Bible verses
• Shakespeare lines
• Street addresses
• RSS news feeds
• Pangrams in many languages
• Your own text
• Font names
• Letters & numbers
• Ligatures
• Punctuation

While you’re exploring, be sure to roll your mouse over anything you find interesting — the website is packed with pop-up windows that illustrate items on the page.

And if that’s not enough, MyFonts.com is also the home of WhatTheFont, where you can upload a scanned example of a font you want to identify, and the website will identify it for you! And yes, it really does work.

Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet is a contributing editor for Design Tools Monthly, the executive summary of graphic design news. He is also the morning editor and reviews editor for The Mac Observer and iPodObserver.com, and contributing writer for Layers Magazine and Photoshop User. He writes the InBrief column for InDesign Magazine, and is the author of “The Designer’s Guide to Mac OS X,” from Peachpit Press

When Jeff isn’t writing about the graphic design world, he’s talking about it on the Design Tools Weekly podcast with co-host Jay Nelson. He also talks about Apple and the Mac world every week on The Mac Observer’s Apple Weekly Report.

Jeff studies, tests and reviews new software and technologies for the Macintosh community as well as the design and print industries. He is a former Pre-press specialist, and has nearly 25 years experience with computer technology. Jeff trains, lectures and consults on techniques for more efficiently using Mac OS X in creative environments throughout the country.

In the rare moments when he can get away from his MacBook Pro, Jeff spends his time climbing and biking in the Colorado mountains.