This week it's the 70th birthday of the Guinness Book of Records, that gloriously bonkers compendium of human achievement that celebrates the people who can stuff the most marshmallows in their mouth, balance the most spoons on their body, and hula hoop underwater for the longest time.
It features everything from standard athletic victories to "most high fives in 30 seconds" and "fastest time to make a pasta necklace." And to my mind, there's something delightfully democratic about it all. While most of us will never run a four-minute mile, we might just have what it takes to become the world's fastest at typing the alphabet backwards.
And here's where it gets most interesting for design nerds: there's a Guinness World Record for font identification. And frankly, it's begging to be beaten. So, brush up on your knowledge of the most popular free fonts first, and then move onto more obscure font families.
Current record
Meet L.B. Lakshmi Aadhyanth from India, who currently holds the record for identifying the most fonts in one minute. In December 2021, he correctly named 79 different typefaces in 60 seconds. That's roughly 1.3 fonts per second, which is of course, hugely impressive. But here's what's been eating at me since I discovered this record: I think some of us could edge this.
I'm imagining a graphic designer reading this, who's spent countless hours scrolling through font menus, cursing Adobe's organisational system, and developing an almost supernatural ability to spot Helvetica at 50 paces.
Or perhaps you're a web developer who's memorised the subtle differences between system fonts and can identify Georgia from Times New Roman faster than you can say "font-stack."
Let's face it: even if you're just someone who gets irrationally annoyed when people use Comic Sans for wedding invites, you might have more font-spotting talent than you realise. (However, you should read how some designers have been defending Comic Sans.)
If you doubt me, take a look at these 10 sentences and see if you can match them to the following fonts: Papyrus, Monaco, Bradley Hand Bold, Times, Roboto Black, American Typewriter, Big Caslon, Arial, League Gothic, Microsoft Sans Serif (answers at the bottom of the article).
How did you do? If you found it a cinch, congratulations. But even if you got none right, then the only way is up. Because the beauty of this Guinness World Record record is, it's easily trainable.
Unlike the record for most ice cream scoops balanced on a cone (which requires both engineering skills and a stomach of steel), font identification is purely about pattern recognition and memory. It's the kind of skill that responds beautifully to deliberate practice. And the internet has provided us with a wealth of font identification tools to train you.
There's Font Game, which throws random typefaces at you with increasing difficulty. There are random quizzes on websites such as Buzzfeed. Then there's the unlikely Owen Wilson Font Quiz, where you identify fonts to, er, impress the actor Owen Wilson. (What more motivation do you need?). Of course, you could also try our own typography quiz for some extra knowledge.
Have a go
I'd suggest you start with the classics: master your Helvetica variants, nail down your serif families (Times, Georgia, Garamond, Baskerville), and get comfortable with the display fonts that show up everywhere (Impact, Cooper Black, Bebas Neue). Then move into the designer favourites; those fonts every designer has burned into their retinas through years of use and overuse.
Should you get good enough to make a record attempt, imagine the bragging rights. "Oh, this old thing? I hold the Guinness World Record for font identification." It's the kind of achievement that would make you insufferable at design conferences and absolutely legendary at trivia nights.
So, could you beat this record? Well, why not? This one feels tailor-made for anyone who’s ever agonised over kerning or lost an afternoon down a dafont.com rabbit hole. So go on: set a stopwatch, fire up your fonts folder, and see how close you can get.
For more type trivia, see our typography glossary, and go one step further with these perfect font pairings.
Answers: 1. Arial, 2. Big Caslon, 3. League Gothic, 4. Microsoft Sans Serif, 5. Monaco, 6. Papyrus, 7. Roboto Black, 8. Times, 9. American Typewriter, 10 Bradley Hand Bold.
