Core guide · Trust and provenance
How to identify the author of a font
Use internal metadata, official sources and file hashes to trace a font’s author and licence.
Start with the font’s internal name, designer, manufacturer, copyright, licence and URL fields, then compare them with an official source and the exact file version.
Read the metadata
TTF and OTF files can contain family names, designer and manufacturer fields, copyright notices, licence text, version numbers and website addresses. Some files are incomplete or incorrectly edited, so metadata is evidence—not automatic proof.
Compare reliable signals
Match the internal information with the creator’s official website, foundry page or recognised distribution page. Compare filenames, version numbers, glyph coverage and hashes. A conflict should stop automatic publication until it is resolved.
- Font and family names
- Designer or foundry
- Version and copyright
- Licence URL
- File hash and duplicate history
How Font Trust records provenance
The submission system extracts the available fields, searches for an existing source and preserves the file hash and submission time. If no external page exists, an approved catalogue page can become the first recorded public source without inventing missing metadata.
This guide explains general font practice and the permissions displayed by Font Trust. The complete licence attached to a specific font remains the controlling text.