Ten Tonne Baby » typography

FontShop are now selling webfonts directly

Oli — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:34:47 +0000

Just noticed this announcement today from FontShop – they are now selling font files in EOT / WOFF format directly along with a suitable licensing model. FontShop have been very progressive in supporting TypeKit to date, but this will provide a direct route for purchasing fonts from a foundry for use on the web.

TypeKit will still provide you access to a wide range of fonts for a low subscription fee, and will also go a long way to serving up the most appropriate format to different user agents.

Nice to see things moving forward and the industry starting to address the massive market that has been pretty much ignored to date.

Supporting native browser rendering of custom fonts

Oli — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:33:59 +0000

I’ve just been reading an article from Jeff Veen on a font-embedding technology coming up shortly. We’re going to be in a situation soon where every major browser is about to support the ability to link to a font hosted on a web server, which is downloaded and used by the browser to render text. Although the technology is almost there, legal and copyright issues will take a lot longer to catch up. It looks like this could provide an interim solution, definately worth keeping an eye on.

Typography: don’t think, feel

Oli — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 14:13:13 +0000

I saw a really interesting presentation at @Media last week, where the panel included Jon Hicks. Jon was responsible for the design of the Firefox and Thunderbird logos. Unfortunately I picked that day to wear a Firefox t-shirt, so ended up feeling like a bit of a groupie, or whatever the equivalent is in geeky circles.

Although this is probably a lifelong undertaking, I’m starting to learn about typography. I find it fascinating how very subtle changes in the structure and shape of a typeface will result in a completely different message being conveyed with the design.

This was demonstrated rather nicely by Jon by putting up the original Sex Pistols poster using a different typeface. The result is very amusing, and makes it very obvious how the correct use of typography in a design will have a massive impact on the impression that people come away with.