Play the FontFuse Game

Addictive. That’s the best word to describe FontFuse, a new game/community/service from Extensis. It’s a marketing ploy, really, that Extensis created to promote WebINK, the company’s Web fonts service. But I don’t care if I’m being manipulated by marketers, because this thing is FUN!
Here are the basics: You go to the FontFuse website and register. (It’s free.) Click on the phrase “Create a Font Pairing.” Then you look for the best match of headline and body fonts in the WebINK font library. You can use the default text or enter your own. Choose colors for the background and characters or stick with the default black and white. Then you name your font combo and publish it.

The community aspect of FontFuse comes in when you browse the gallery, which has all the font pairings other registered members have published. You can rate the combinations and even make comments.

As an added incentive, there’s a FontFuse contest. If your font pairing earns the most community votes, you and a friend get to attend South by Southwest Interactive event in March. Extensis will buy your tickets, pay your plane fare, and put you up in a swanky hotel. You have until February 25, 2011, to enter.