Fontello

Fontello provides a streamlined solution for web developers and designers needing to integrate custom icon fonts into their projects. Instead of individually managing multiple icon sets or dealing with complex font generation tools, Fontello offers a user-friendly interface to achieve this efficiently.

The core functionality revolves around selecting desired icons from a curated collection of well-known free icon fonts. Users can browse through various categories and icon styles, adding specific glyphs to their custom collection. Once the selection is complete, Fontello processes these chosen icons and bundles them into a single, optimized web font package. This package includes:

• Optimized font files (TTF, EOT, WOFF, WOFF2) for broad browser compatibility.
• A CSS file with pre-defined classes for easy implementation in HTML.
• A demo HTML file to quickly preview the generated font and its usage.
• Documentation explaining how to integrate the font into your website.

Beyond simply combining icons, Fontello also provides basic customization options. Users can adjust the position of individual icons within the font grid and even create custom ligatures for easier text-based icon insertion. While Fontello is primarily focused on generating icon fonts from its provided sets, it also offers the ability to import your own custom SVG icons, allowing for even greater flexibility and branding consistency. The platform aims to simplify the web font workflow, making it accessible even for those with limited experience in font management or SVG editing.

Fontello Review

Fontello is a highly practical and efficient online tool for generating custom icon fonts for web development. Its primary strength lies in its simplicity and focus on a single, well-executed task: compiling selected icons from various free sets into a single, optimized font file.

The user interface is intuitive and straightforward. Upon landing on the site, users are presented with a large grid of icons from different included sets. Browsing and selecting icons is as simple as clicking on them. The selected icons are added to a collection at the top of the page, providing a clear overview of the planned font. The ability to search for specific icons is also a welcome addition, especially considering the vast number of available glyphs.

Once the desired icons are selected, generating the font is a quick process. Fontello automatically compiles the icons into various necessary web font formats (TTF, EOT, WOFF, WOFF2) ensuring compatibility across modern and older browsers. The generated package includes not only the font files but also a well-structured CSS file with relevant classes for each icon and a demo HTML page. This inclusion significantly simplifies the integration process for developers. Instead of hand-coding CSS or referring back to the Fontello website, everything needed is provided in the downloaded archive. The demo page is particularly useful for quickly testing the font and referencing the correct CSS classes.

A notable feature is the ability to import custom SVG icons. This adds a layer of flexibility, allowing users to include branded icons or glyphs not available in the standard sets. While the SVG editing capabilities within Fontello are limited to basic positioning, the core functionality of including custom designs is highly valuable. The option to create custom ligatures is also a useful, albeit less frequently used, feature for those who prefer text-based icon insertion.

The platform's reliance on free and open-source icon sets is a significant advantage, providing a cost-effective solution for obtaining a wide variety of icons. The curated selection includes many widely recognized and high-quality icon libraries, reducing the need to source individual icons from disparate locations.

However, it's important to note that Fontello is focused specifically on creating icon fonts. It does not offer features related to traditional typography or complex font editing. The customization options for icons are also basic, primarily focused on positioning and ligatures, not on modifying the icon designs themselves (beyond importing custom SVGs). The included icon sets are static; users cannot add entirely new, separate icon libraries that are not already integrated into the Fontello platform.

In conclusion, Fontello excels at its core function. It provides a simple, free, and efficient way to create custom icon fonts for web use. The generated packages are complete and well-organized, making implementation straightforward. While it may lack advanced features for complex font manipulation or extensive customization of individual icons, for the task of combining and generating icon fonts from existing sets, Fontello is an excellent and highly recommended tool for web developers and designers.