Comments on: Must we give up good typography in the name of convenience?

By: TrauppyJoyday

TrauppyJoyday — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:29:04 +0000

I really enjoyed reading this blogpost, keep up posting such interesting articles.

By: Ernie Bello

Ernie Bello — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:18:35 +0000

A List Apart has just published a new article detailing the art of choosing a font now that technology is allowing broader use of typography on the web.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/on-web-typography/

By: Travis

Travis — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:45:14 +0000

Larry & Nicole: not to mention the use of images for text makes translation into multiple languages that much harder.

As far as typekit’s font support goes, I don’t think we’ll ever see the popular fonts like Futura, Univers, Interstate, etc. However they do have some great alternatives that look much better than the standard & overused Arial & Verdana.

By: Larry Roth

Larry Roth — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:22:27 +0000

Travis-typekit looks like a promising solution and a very interesting implementation. I think it will be a great option once their font library contains the more common, popular fonts.

By: Larry Roth

Larry Roth — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:13:29 +0000

Nicole-While you are correct that bandwidth has improved, there are other reasons to not use imagery for displaying text. When text is buried in an image it affects the semantics of the page. It also makes it more difficult to maintain the page across multiple output devices such as mobile phones and other alternative displays. Lastly, we need to be mindful of people with disabilities and make sure they don’t lose out on any content or information that may be buried in images–but ALT tags can help with this.

By: Travis

Travis — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:42:43 +0000

Wynn, I don’t know if you’ve seen this site, but it might be an option for us:

http://typekit.com/

By: Nicole

Nicole — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:56:49 +0000

With higher speed connections, it’s now fine to use headline typography as accent images.

By: Larry Roth

Larry Roth — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:11:59 +0000

Nice post…while I agree that there is certainly room for improvement with the font choices on the Web, I disagree with your central premise that technology can solve this. This will remain a licensing issue for some time. While increased bandwidth and better browsers (as Ernie pointed out) have gotten us part of the way there, we are still faced with the issue of licensing. What will it cost to license a font for “embeded world-wide distribution”? Indeed, some font licenses don’t even let you create PDF’s or JPEGs for use on the Web without paying much more.

While it will be nice to see a greater abundance of fonts available for Web site development, but I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out that it’s equally important that the user is always in control of what font (and font size) they wish to see.

By: Ernie Bello

Ernie Bello — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:15:48 +0000

Great article. I too think that technology will eventually solve the legality issue, but until then I’d like to point out the advances made in the latest modern browsers to support font embedding. The article also lists multiple resources to find open source fonts to use. Of course they won’t be as refined as licensed fonts, but it does provide a variety for designers to choose from instead of the traditional web safe fonts.

http://www.useragentman.com/blog/2009/09/20/font-face-in-depth/

By: Tom Morin

Tom Morin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:10:26 +0000

IKEA was sold a bag of “branding bs” in my estimation. the web environment subtext does not need to match the print, packaging or signage enviroment…being “close” is enough in my estimation. now lets talk about the legibility of those seven fonts.