Hand-lettered fonts are popping up everywhere. They are being used in some of the biggest brand campaigns in the world. You can buy some of the most beautiful hand lettered fonts at Creative Market (where I sell mine!). So, let’s say you’ve purchased a font but now your stuck. You have no idea how to install a font on your mac. Don’t worry! That’s why I’m here to help you.

Let’s get started.

1. Download your font

Make sure you know what folder on your computer the file is downloading to. If you don’t you’ll have a hard time finding where the files even went. A quick way to search for a file is to just go to the Finder and search your fonts name in the search bar at the top right.

2. Unzip your file

Right click and hit unzip. This will allow you to open the file. I can’t tell you how many people forget to unzip there file and think there is something wrong with it. So, if you can’t get your font folder to open as a rule of thumb just double check and make sure it isn’t accidentally still zipped.

3. Right click on either the OTF or TTF file

If you want to utilize all of the ligatures, contextual alternates, and special characters the font has to offer use the OTF version. If you are on an older computer and need to just use a bare minimum basic font format with no fancy functions then just use the TTF.

4. Open With Font Book

Once you right click on the file ending in .otf OR .ttf, a menu will pop up. In the menu click “Open With” and then hit “Font Book”. This will automatically open the Font Book software in your dock. Go to the dock and click the software.

5. Click Install Font (don’t stop here, you’re not done!)

Font Book will already have your font file queued up and ready. Just click “Install Font”. This will automatically install the font on every software that allows font options on your computer (i.e. adobe suite, ms suite, etc.)

6. Check the box to Validate

After you click to install the font a dialog box will automatically pop up for you to Validate the font. Check the box and click “Install Checked”.

7. Pull up any Adobe software

Now you can exit out of Font Book and pull up any software you want to test the font. If your font has fun bonus OTF features like most do now a days, you can access them in the Glyphs file.

PRO TIP: If your script font letters are just not connecting and just look messed up, make sure to go to the Character panel and make sure your Tracking between each letter is set to 0. Sometimes if you adjust the tracking on a project it keeps those settings until you completely close the software (weird I know!).

That’s it! You’re done.