Tip 1: Get a head start with Font Packs.
 

If you’re new to typography, then having access to thousands of Adobe Fonts will be as exciting as it is overwhelming. When I want to find the right type to match my project, I look to our expertly curated groups of fonts, called Font Packs, to give me a head start.

There is a Font Pack ready to meet all sorts of creative needs. Polishing up your résumé? You’ll likely want to choose a Font Pack that conveys sophistication and professionalism. Creating a poster for your band? Start with an edgy Font Pack to promote your band and let your audience know about your next rockin' gig.

Tip 2: Add more character(s).
 

Some fonts contain OpenType features — extra characters that provide visual flair. Swashes and symbols can add sophistication to your work. Special characters can turn a boring cafe into a classier café.

For an at-a-glance view of all of the elements included a font, take a peek at the Glyphs panel in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, or Adobe InDesign. Then, highlight a character in your text to see whether your font offers alternates for that selection. If it does, choose a new glyph to swap it in. Just to play, try activating ITC Avant Garde Gothic or Lust Script and then start thinking about how you’re going to use all those neat letterforms!

Tip 3: Capture fonts in the wild.
 

I notice type everywhere — on handmade sandwich boards around town, the vintage style of mid-century neon signs, and the lettering on well-designed menus. It’s not unusual for me to snap a photo of inspiring examples I encounter to help spark ideas for future design projects.

After you find inspiration from others, use Adobe Capture on your phone to help make it your own. Let Capture find similar Adobe Fonts based on your photo and save them as character styles to Creative Cloud Libraries for later use. I find this to be super helpful when I don’t have the right words to describe the style of type I’m searching for. I just bring an image into Capture and before I know it, I’m on my way to discovering a new favorite font.

Tip 4: Browse by vibe.

When you do have a specific style in mind, Adobe Fonts makes it easy to browse accordingly. Use tags to search on common terms like Geometric, Rounded, or Stencil. If you’re a more seasoned typographer, narrow your search further with Classification types and Properties.

My favorite option is to search by the number of fonts in a font family, which gives me plenty of flexibility when I need to establish complex type hierarchies in a project. Sometimes I need multiple variations of a font — Light, Light Italic, Black, Black Italic, and everything in between.

Tip 5: Find a favorite foundry.

You’ve been warned: At this point, we’re fully inside type nerd territory. One last tip I’d like to share is to browse the group of works by different foundries; foundries are to font designers as record labels are to musicians. You’ve almost certainly seen their work in company brands, political campaigns, urban maps and signage, ads for the arts — and, well, just about everywhere.

When you browse a foundry’s collection, you’ll find visual inspiration by seeing examples of how their fonts are used in the real world. Then you can quickly access fonts from your favorite designers. The best part is that you can often find natural font pairings on foundry pages. That’s by design, of course. My favorite at the moment is Nova Type Foundry, but feel free to explore and find yourself a new design idol (or two, or ten).