Yesterday, I was lucky enough to receive an invite to try out Typekit. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Typekit is a service that allows web designers and developers to use other licensed fonts on their website. If you aren’t familiar with web design, then this doesn’t seem like much of a big deal, but it really opens up a lot of typography possibilities.
Historically, there are only a handful of fonts that are universally installed and supported on PC, Mac & Linux. The majority of the text you read online is either in Arial, Verdana or Times New Roman. Now, that doesn’t mean someone can’t create a fancy header with unique typography via an image. The trouble with this is it’s an image, not text, so it’s not accessible by search engines. Recently, there have been various other methods, such as sIFR, that can convert text into a different font using Flash.
With newer browsers, designers can use CSS to link to fonts and the viewer downloads the font and the page displays the correct typography. The issue with this is the licensing and copyright of these fonts. Luckily, Typekit exists to solve this dilemma.
With Typekit, I’m able to place some Javascript in my page and call in a font that I’ve selected from Typekit’s library. Essentially, Typekit is a marketplace between the web designer and the creators of the font. I’m able to use different fonts on my website, and the work of the font foundries is protected.
So, how does it work? With my trial account, I’m able to go in and choose 2 fonts for 1 website. I then go into my site’s CSS and update it with the fonts I chose. I updated my main header along with the post header. With the free trial, I am required to have the badge you see on the bottom right of the page. Now, there is the option to upgrade to different premium accounts that do not require the badge and allow for more websites, fonts and bandwidth. These range from $24.99 to $249.99 a year.
How about support? Typekit will work fine in any browser that supports @font-face which includes Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 6+ and Safari 3.1 and higher. If someone is using an older browser, then it loads a web-safe font. This means that accessibility is not an issue with Typekit.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with Typekit. I’ll probably stick with the Trial for now, but I can see myself upgrading to the $24.99 account down the road. If you are interested in Typekit, let me know and I can send an invite your way. For more information, I also suggest viewing Chris Coyier’s Typekit video.
Personally, I’m really excited about the possibilities of Typekit.
