Pixillion

Although its been in the pipeline since 1998, the past few years have finally seen the ‘big five’ browsers embracing @font-face compatibility. With the number of web-font sites on the rise; whether it be Typekit, Font Deck, Google or any of the myriad of other new sites that keep popping up, it’s definitely safe to say that the past year has been fairly significant to designers and typographers alike. But with this ever growing web font explosion, is web design coping with its new found abilities and freedom or should we be taking a leaf out of Spiderman’s comic; that with great [design] comes great responsibility?

For Pixillion the change was felt the most significantly during the design of our recent project, The Work Cycle. On acquiring a subscription to fonts.com, we found ourselves designing with such wonderful classics as Futura (medium Condensed even) and Garamond (with proper italics too!). It’s fair to say that we feel like a certain kind of graduation has happened in web design. Finally we have the same freedom of choice in typography for the web that we have aways had in print.

The Work Cycle – featuring Futura Condensed Medium and Garamond

We’ve come a long way since the days of hand binding type sorts in order to make a word, sentence or page. From the letterpress era to the use of phototypesetting to the Letraset dry transfers (I can still remember having stickers which used this technique when I was younger), the techniques used all required a high skill level and a lot of time. In contrast, the simplicity of the present changes to web typography, in turn born from the desktop publishing age, seem revolutionary, and yet it’s also slightly comical that it’s taken this long to get to this stage – especially considering offline typography has been there for decades.

It certainly does make a difference to us though, especially where branding is concerned, as it gives us a wider repertoire to choose from when dealing with new identities, rebranding old ones or expanding established ones online. There are other upsides too; for instance being able to move away from image replacement techniques (hacks even?) like sIFR and Cufon, and move back to plain old text which is both just more usable, elegant and easier to maintain. And it could be argued that the challenges provided by this development could have typography going through a whole new phase of creativity and production.

It’s not all good news though and the evolution and font revolution is anything but over. With the jury still out regarding payment choices (one off fees vs yearly rental), the mounting issues over licencing and the relative ease with which you can find free but sub-standard fonts, it’s obvious that the fallout from of all of this is ongoing and will take time to work through. Cost is a huge factor, and although some designers are happily choosing to pay for established commercial fonts, others aren’t. And it’s not neccessarily piracy by the designers, the amount of imitations and knock-offs being offered for free out there might be affecting the livelihoods of typographers and devaluing their work. And the amount of typographers on the net is on the rise – some amazing and welcomed certainly, some not so much. And it begs the question – if we don't pay for professional commercial fonts, will we lose the quality and craftsmanship at the leading edge that we are so used to? Or will a whole new wave of talented Typogrophers break down the boundaries, allowing us all to enjoy quality web typography without the relatively high costs and confusing or antiquated licencing options.

It is equally important to remember that just because we have both new and old fonts now available and cross-browser @font-face compatibility, this doesn’t necessarily mean that all fonts will render correctly or consistently in all browsers. Which means for us we sometimes have to take a little extra time on building a website tweaking the font implementation. Garamond comes in all sorts of flavors and from various foundries, and on The Work Cycle we had to try four versions before we could find an italic that rendered in a way we were happy with, and the eventual weight we went with was different from the one in the design too. There is also a lot of competition arising between the font foundries which means that some fonts are exclusive to certain sites; fonts.com for instance is fairly pricey but for us it also has the best choice (having 7 out of 8 of my favourite faces, see below).

All of this comes before we even take into consideration the actual application of fonts in designs. The ever increasing database of web based fonts can be a minefield to the untrained eye, and unless you’re careful you could get carried away with excitement at all the new possibilities. Until recently, the budding web designer with a lack of typographical confidence could safely stick to Arial or Georgia and do alright. Choice is not necessarily always a good thing and can actually lead to inexperienced designers taking longer over projects than is needed in a world dictated by strict deadlines. It is the ability to use the tools we’re given well that marks a good designer from a bad one. The key is in knowing which typeface is appropriate and for when. Take for instance ‘Futura’ – it’s a classic and wonderful typeface, but it’s a challenge to use well and it is often tortured by being clumsily used simply because something needs to be ‘futuristic’.

I'm a huge fan of Elliot Jay Stocks’ ‘8 Faces’ magazine which focuses around that tricky question,  “if you could only use eight typefaces for the rest of your life, which would you choose?”, so what better way to end with my 8 faces…

Avenir

Futura

Bodoni

Garamond

FF DIN

Interstate

Helvetica Neue

Officina