The Wonderful World of Web Fonts
I recently finished a project for Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity. We are hosting our second annual golf tournament aptly named, The Cal Mu Classic. My first footsteps into the new world of web typography. Web typefaces and the technology to leverage them have change substantially in the last few years. Since the beginning of the internet it has always been the core cross-platform fonts that reign supreme. Arial, Courier New, Times, Verdana, Georgia, Comic Sans. This is a new journey. As with any exploration into the unknown, there will always be questions to ask and answers to seek. It really is an exciting time. There is so much new discussion and dialogue about what’s next. What does web typography mean? How do we make it easier? Why is it so difficult? What are the limitations? There is so much uncertainty and that’s probably the most exciting part. Who knows if what I built today will function years from now. Please do check out www.calmuclassic.com and if you are a golfer or would just like to donate to a great cause, you can do that too!
This was a small project. Limited budget and on a tight timeline – like many other projects with clients. I don’t know why I made life harder on myself. My initial idea was to just make one large JPG with some hotspot links and call it a day. Didn’t need to worry about how text renders, browser-compatibility testing and relearning things I thought I once knew. Even now, the CSS is a mess. But I’ll accept this as a learning experience. So what did I learn?
- I hate coding. I admire those who can build a website with just a text editor. I am too much of a visual person to do that efficiently.
- Fonts are expensive. This is a hard lesson for anyone coming out of school. Helvetica, for all of it’s pervasiveness in design and society, is a whopping $600.00 for the complete family.
- Reminded that I don’t own any fonts. They are licensed to me. I merely have permission to use them. I don’t know any cases in which a foundry has challenged a designer for violating or abusing their license. Interesting, nonetheless.
- Font licensing on the web is messy – I came by a foundry during my research that specialized in web fonts. They charged an annual subscription fee per font. What if they had an annual subscription that gave you access to their whole font collection?! I think that would be ideal.
- This is fun.
Anyway, here are some resources that I was reading, listening, playing with during my project research. Hope it helps you out as you guys dive in and explore web typography!
Free Web Fonts:
Google Web Fonts – http://www.google.com/webfonts
Font Squirrel – http://www.fontsquirrel.com/
Others:
Typekit – http://typekit.com/
Fonts.com – http://webfonts.fonts.com/
Unrecognizable Font Formats :
Embedded OpenType (EOT) – http://www.w3.org/Submission/EOT
Web Open Font Format (WOFF) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Open_Font_Format
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) - http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/fonts.html
Notes, Talks and Lectures:
Where Web Typography Goes Next – http://webtypography.net/talks/sxsw2011/
The Elements of Typography Style Applied to the Web – http://webtypography.net/
Web Fonts At A Crossing – http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fonts-at-the-crossing/