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 Trusted Free Fonts 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.
Build a chain of evidence
Start with the font’s name table, copyright, designer, manufacturer, vendor URL, licence URL, version and PostScript name. These fields are useful leads but are not self-proving: copied, renamed or poorly exported files can contain stale or misleading metadata. Calculate a file hash so every later comparison refers to the same bytes.
Compare those signals with the foundry’s official page, a maintained repository and the licence included in the package. Prefer sources controlled by the designer or a repository with visible history over download mirrors. Matching family name alone is weak evidence because unrelated files can share or imitate a name.
Handle conflicts without guessing
If metadata names one designer while the official page names another, keep the record unpublished until the discrepancy is explained. A later foundry may have acquired the family, commissioned an expansion or republished it under a new licence. Preserve dates and versions instead of merging those histories into a confident but unsupported answer.
For an identity report, provide the exact file hash, affected page, competing source and reason the source is authoritative. Corrections should update the public profile while preserving internal provenance and audit records.
- Exact file hash and version
- Internal designer, manufacturer and copyright fields
- Official family page and licence file
- Repository history or documented transfer of rights
This guide explains general font practice and the permissions displayed by Trusted Free Fonts. The complete licence attached to a specific font remains the controlling text.