With the abundance of fonts available online nowadays, designers have a large selection to choose. Their decision process is influenced by multiple factors, and it can be difficult to find the exact font they need. The focus of this thesis was to research how designers understand and select fonts, and how an interactive agent could potentially assist in that step.
In order to define the problem area more precisely, expert interviews were conducted with 7 graphic designers. The major pain points and habits were extracted from the interview transcripts with a thematic analysis approach.
The system requirements and technical aspects for the design were set based on the analysis results. The gathered data showed that all of the participants evaluated their font selection within their context. Most of the font catalogs and library offer a selection of fonts without the possibility to compare the fonts in question with alternatives or in context. The presented Typoplex system focused on offering this possibility. In addition to that, exploring based on attributes was included in an attempt to deviate from standard font lists.
The prototype was evaluated with 8 designers, focusing on the attributes and the context. Qualitative data was gathered from interviews and quantitative date from questionnaires.
The results present that including the context into the font source strongly supported the designers’ workflow. The representation of fonts in a network and sorting according to attributes benefited designers to a certain extent, however, more personalization and support in terms of personalization is needed. Overall, Typoplex enhanced the process by combining different stages of font exploration and selection into one environment, providing a seamless experience.
