Typekit

Fonts have been a sore spot for web designers for a long time.

Back in the day, we were limited to the most basic of fonts – Arial, Times, and Helvetica – because we needed to use fonts that most people had on their machines. Then came the time of JavaScript- and Flash-based plug-ins. They let us use a wider range of fonts … but things still weren’t great. Often the fonts didn’t load quickly or smoothly. Strange things happened when you used special fonts for links or wrapping text. And of course, Apple has decided not to support Flash in the iPhone and iPad environments.

Thank goodness, we finally have something new. It’s Typekit.

Typekit is a subscription-based library of fonts that designers can use for their websites. All the fonts are hosted online by Typeface, so anything you can find on Typekit, you can plug into your site. And your users won’t require Flash, like other font substitutors have in the past.
As a designer, I appreciate the selection of fonts that Typekit makes available. They look like they were hand-picked by someone with a strong design sensibility and an understanding of what works visually on the web.

And as a developer, I love how easy it is to find the font you’re looking for and apply it to your CSS classes, IDs, or any other HTML tag in your markup. You can also pare down your bandwidth use by choosing only the weights and styles in each font family that you need.

Finally, from a business perspective, Typekit is just plain affordable. You can buy one subscription for your company and use it across all the sites that you develop.

I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but Typekit may make fonts fun again for web designers. I think it’s time to break out the champagne.