Typography helps you engage your audience and establish a distinct, unique personality on your website. Knowing how to use fonts to build character in your design is a powerful skill, and exploring the history and use of typefaces, as well as typographic theory, can help.
See also: 47 Top Typography Tools and Resources
But it doesn't have to be boring. This selection of online and mobile font games will help test and expand both your knowledge and identification skills.
The "rather difficult font game" from I Love Typography tests your general knowledge of fonts by displaying 34 samples. Each answer is multiple choice — you click one of four answers, and then move on to the next question.
You can also download the Font Game iOS app to play on the go.
Type Connection is a fun "type dating" game that helps you learn how to pair typefaces. You start by choosing a typeface to pair, such as Univers or Archer, each having its own unique personality. Then you look for a match by developing a strategy, exploring typographic terminology and learning type history.
Image: Kern Type
Kern Type is a game in which you try to achieve pleasant and readable text by distributing the space between letters, called "kerning" by typographers. You can move the letters by dragging them from left to right, and your score depends on how close you are to a typographer's solution.
Typewar is a typographical skill game that tests your knowledge and awareness of individual fonts. It presents you with a letter and two choices — you can choose to answer or skip to the next question. New to the site are quests, which test your knowledge of a particular subset of typefaces.
A Typewar iOS app is also available, which allows you to track your progress as you level up.
Available online or as a free iOS app, I Shot The Serif is an arcade puzzle game for budding designers. All you have to do is shoot the the Serif fonts within the time limit to move to the next stage.
You can choose a designer level from Junior to Senior, but you have to complete all stages at the Director level to beat the game.
Helvetica has become one of the most recognizable typefaces in history since its development in the 1950s. However since Microsoft distributed a similar typeface, called Arial, with its desktop PCs, Arial has now overtaken Helvetica as the standard font in practically everything.
This game lets you take the role of Helvetica to conquer Arial, by moving your mouse and using the mouse button to jump and stomp your way to victory.
Image: Shape Type
Shape Type is an addictive letter shaping game, with the aim of shaping individual letters into their correct proportions. To get started, just drag the pink dots to your desired location to create a perfectly aligned character.
You have 10 characters to correct, all from different typefaces, with a short history of each typeface.
What Type Are You? is a unique game from Pentagram that matches your personality to a selected typeface, using a series of questions about your traits. The questions range from choosing between traditional or progressive to relaxed or disciplined.
Once you've answered all the questions, you are presented with your typeface, and given a short history on its creation and development.
This quiz from Mental Floss tests how well you know your typefaces, with a series of 10 questions prompting you to choose which typeface is either pictured or referred to.
Questions include "What is the fallback font is for lazy marketers?" and "Which typeface was used on the plaque left on the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts?" This quiz will test your all-around typographic knowledge.
Fontagious puts your knowledge of everyday, famous fonts to the test with a game for iOS, challenging your speed at recognizing famous bands, movies, TV shows and brands.
You receive two clues to help you guess as many fonts as you can within two minutes. Integration with Game Center allows you to compare your scores with friends and the rest of the world.
FontFox is a stylish iOS font flash game featuring more than 100 fonts, letting you test your typography knowledge and skills. You can see your test results, compete with friends on Game Center and earn fun achievements. You also have the option to share scores on social media via Facebook, Twitter and email.
Image: Rag Time
Rag Time combines typography and ragtime music, challenging you to fix bad examples of ragged text (not aligned along a margin) and make them perfect.
You're up against the clock, and you play using the arrow keys to place your cursor where you want to fix the rag, using the Return and Delete keys to drop down and move up a line. When you're satisfied with your paragraph, hit "Finish."
Comic Sans is every designer's worst nightmare, not to mention the most inappropriately used typeface of all time. And Agency Fusion wants it dead.
The Utah-based ad agency created a game to kill Comic Sans, where you take aim as the typeface pops up randomly on the screen. Just enter your name and fire, trying to achieve as high a score as possible in one minute.
Font Quiz is an iOS app to test your recognition of famous fonts from movies, brands, games, TV shows and bands. There are more than 200 different fonts to identify, and it's easy to play — just tap on a font and type in the name.
If you get stuck, tap "Show hint" to reveal a clue, or use the social networking buttons to ask your Twitter or Facebook friends.
Can you name the fonts? is a quiz hosted on Sporcle, home to a variety of trivia, quizzes and brain games. It's a simple premise: You have five minutes to guess 16 different typefaces correctly.
Once you click start, the clock begins to count down, so type your guesses as quickly as you can.
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog is an attractive typographic memory game that includes 25 variations of the letter "A." Players attempt to find the matching As in the same letter type, and the player with the highest number of matching letters wins the game.
The game includes typographic information about the letter on each card, along with a separate folder on the history of typography.
Typography* Star is a memory card game for the iPad, based on famous typographers and typefaces. It challenges you to match Helvetica, Frutiger, Bodoni or Clarendon characters, and you can even try to do it without the name.
You can pick between four skill levels, from Scholar to Art Director, and you can share your score via social media, including Facebook and Twitter.
Image: Fontspotting
Fontspotting is a free, downloadable flash card game for typeface recognition, helping to expand your knowledge and visual vocabulary. You can download the onscreen version or the print-ready version, which you can print and use to properly test yourself.
Before you start playing, you can read a brief type anatomy and some recognizable type characteristics.
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Image: Flickr, Tarale
It took 1,000 eggs, 10 pans and a bottle of oil to cook up this tasty font.
Perfect for polka-dot lovers.
This is possibly the most fur-ocious font you'll ever encounter.
Inviting people to your cat's birthday party? These webdings will get the message across.
If you're more of a dog person, you'll "aww" all over these puppy webdings.
No mess required for this fingerprint font.
This font has a homemade, cut from paper feel.
Take a bite out of this chocolate-y font.
For the astronomy enthusiast in us all.
Caviar makes even the most basic font-style seem fancy.
This font is a throwback to the doodles on your junior high planner.
This balloon font is perfect for invitations.
It took six hours to doodle this ballpoint pen font.
Add just a touch of 8-bit geekiness to your otherwise-fancy invites with this pixelated script.
Classic red Lego letters ... need we say more?