Fonts & Your Computer
How do I download and install Chank Fonts?
Mac and PC users will find information about how to download and install Chank Fonts here.

I just bought a font and somehow lost the screen before I had a chance to download it. Can I view past orders somewhere? How can I retrieve it?
Easy! Go to our Order History page. Type in your email and password and it should pull up your order history right away. There will be links to download your fonts. If you continue to have problems, please contact us at friendlyfolks@chank.com.

Will you be sending me a disc of my fonts?
No. Most all of our fonts and fontpaks are instant-download only, with the exception of the complete library.

What is this OpenType thing you keep talking about?
OpenType is an exciting new font format, developed as a joint venture between Microsoft and Adobe. OpenType (aka OT) fonts work native to Mac OSX and Windows XP, and are likely to become the new industry standard font format. Get the full story here.

I'm having problems with too many fonts on my computer.
The best solution is trash the stuff you don't use or don't like. You can also try some sort of type manager. There's a good selection available at download.com.

Do Chank Fonts have European signs such as grave, accute and circumflex accents on e, a, o, i and u?
We've got all the special characters you need for use with a Roman alphabet. Check out the complete Chank character set. All of these characters are included in every font that we offer for sale. We also offer an extended Central European character set on many of our newer font releases.

Postscript fonts don't print or look good on my computer! They print up all boxy and pixelly instead of smooth and stuff like TrueType fonts. How can I make them normal?
Try getting Adobe Type Manager.

About Chank Free Fonts
Can I use Chank FREE Fonts in commercial design work?
To use a Chank Free Font for commercial purposes, you must pay a $99 license fee. Click here to purchase a Chank Free Font Commercial Use License.

But I'm only using your free font for a friend's small biz logo and maybe a few shirts we'll be selling at cafepress. We don't expect to make much money. Can you give me a better deal?
Sure! Check out the Chank Free Font Blanket License for Small Biz. As a small business designer, you can purchase this particular license to use any and all of our Chankstore Freefonts for your small-biz commercial use purposes PLUS you get a one-year subscription to the Chank Font of the Month Club. You get access to a diverse and lively assortment of freefonts to use in your projects and comps, and you don't have to worry about using fonts that you haven't actually paid for.
If that's still too expensive for you, maybe you should consider using lower-quality fonts from a different foundry.

You've got ads on your freefont pages now. What's up with that?
Like everybody else, we're trying to make a little money from our web traffic to help offset the costs of developing and distributing our high-grade freefonts. The easiest way to do this is by featuring Google's AdWords on our website. You can do it at your website, too:

Font Usage & Licensing
Can I use Chank Fonts in commercial design work?
If you paid for them, absolutely yes. If you didn't buy them, then we need to have a talk.

What kind of license comes with Chank Fonts?
Each Chank Font comes with a license for 5 users connected to one printer. Here is our standard End User License Agreement. If your needs exceed 5 users, contact us (friendlyfolks@chank.com or toll-free at 1-877-GO-CHANK) to arrange for the appropriate license. Commercial Use licenses for multi-user workgroups are also available from our distributor MyFonts.com.

Can I use your fonts in my scrapbooking projects?
No problem for personal scrapbooking projects. For use in commercial scrapbooking products, like if you want to make rubber stamps or something, we allow our fonts to be used for pieces that contain words, but not individual letters.

I work for a large company and need to use your fonts on many computers. How do I acquire the appropriate license?
You need a multi-cpu site license. Contact us (friendlyfolks@chank.com or toll-free at 1-877-GO-CHANK) to inquire about rates and set up the right license for your company.

I recently downloaded some of your free fonts and was wondering if I could put them on my homepage for others to download at my site. Is this okay or not?
NOT! If you look in the Read Me file or PDF License that accompanies every Chank Font it says you can't distribute Chank Fonts from your site. Only authorized distributors can do that.

But I saw someone else giving away Chank Fonts on their site!
If you find Chank Fonts distributed on other sites, please contact us immediately with that web site address. El Mack loves cop callers, so she will give you a gold star.

Who are authorized distributors of Chank Fonts?
My Fonts

Monotype Imaging

THE [T-26] FONT COMPANY

Font Brothers

Ascender Corp

Getting the Most Fonts for Your Money
I want to buy a lot of your fonts. Can you give me a good deal?
We recommend you check out our Fontpaks. You get about a dozen fonts for one low price. Our current Fontpak collections include: American Propaganda Fontpak, BLINCtype Letterpress Fontpak, Chank's Old School Retro Fontpak, and the Go Font Yourself Handwriting Fontpak.

I'm a poor college student. Can you give me a price break?
Browse through our Cool Fonts section. Even when we're not having a big blow-out sale, we often feature select fonts at special prices. Sometimes you'll come across a new release for 10 bucks and once in a while you'll find deals as low as 99 cents!

Chank the Man, Not the Company
Are you related to the Charles Anderson of CSA Archive?
Nope.

Where do you get a name like Chank?
Legend has it that in his younger years, Chank was a soccer boy. In honor of his soccer hero Pele, Chank insisted the neighbor kids call him Chele. They laughed at him and called him Chanky after Spanky from the Little Rascals. As he grew into his manhood, he became Chank.

What is your favorite letter?
"g". All the vowels are pretty cool, too.

I'd like to see Chank's speech. How do I find out where he's appearing?
Check out the Chank Tour schedule.

Font Design
Can you turn my handwriting into a font?
Sure can! Read more about our Go Font Yourself service. All you do is fill in a form and mail it to Chank.

I want to make my own fonts. Can you tell me how?
Check out the tutorial Chank wrote way back when Bill Clinton was president. Technology has changed a bit since then and there's new font-making software out there, but Chank's old school methods still work. If you use a Mac, that is.

How can I get into the Chank Army?
The Chank Army is no longer on active duty. Maybe someday we'll have a draft for a third generation of font soldiers. You'll just have to wait and see. The Chank Army veterans are up to all kinds of cool stuff. Check out links to them here.

I made a font to submit to the Chank Free Font Archive. Where do I send it?
Send a gif file that displays the font in action, like the way we display free fonts on the site. Include an explanation of why you made the font and what inspired your work. If we really really like it, we will contact you. Please keep your image size small; attachments larger than 50K will automatically be destroyed. If your font is chosen as a Chankstore Freefont we will link to your website and add you to our list of friends on your choice of LinkedIn or MySpace.

I have a question about Fontographer.
Then go right to the source. FontLab is the company that currently distributes the old Fontographer application, as well as the newer FontLab app.

I'm having trouble copying my letters from Illustrator into Fontographer.
Yeah, it can be tricky. Good luck figuring that out. I can't help.

I'm having trouble creating fonts that will print bold. I use Fontographer, and if I use the bold attribute in Word (for instance) they look bold on screen but print like regular weight. What's up with that?
It's kind of a zen bug they put into Fontographer -- just cuz you call something bold, doesn't mean it is. Look at the characters. You must make them bold yourself. Behold them. Bold them. The computer cannot do it for you.

I can't seem to move the baseline of my font. The available space for my descenders is just not enough when coupled with the space needed for my ascenders.
Go to "Font Info." There'll you'll see something like "ascend=800/descend=200." Change it. Try to make the numbers add up to 1,000. Maybe 500 each would help?

When I open the Metrics Window in the "Window" menubar and try to view some combinations of letters, I can't see anything. I've found that when I scroll down to "Selection Info..." under the "Elements" menubar and change some things around (Fill Tint to 100% and deselect Stroke), I can *see* the characters, but their counters are filled in. I could leave everything alone, but the "Selection Info..." warns me that the typeface won't show up correctly or something.
Try "Correct Path Direction."

If your question was not answered here in our FAQ, please contact us at friendlyfolks@chank.com or 1-877-GO-CHANK!