Comic Update: Typekit Comes To Font-Face’s Rescue
Posted by Kyle Weems on August 17, 2009What I don’t know about typography is quite immense. I entered the web design/development world from the viewpoint of a coder, not a designer. So when it comes to the wild world of fonts, my lack of knowledge is so large that I could be commanded to construct a mighty ark to contain it all.
So when it comes to @font-face, and all the licensing hoopla that accompanies it, it’s best to disclose that I’m the sort of person that is extremely dangerous to introduce to a limitless set of fonts to unleash upon the world. I am inclined to make use of a font because it “looks radical”, rather than because of some sort of carefully constructed reasoning that sounds like how people taste wine, with words like “bold” and “stately”.
Despite this, I still want to see @font-face become widely used. I’m not a fan of a web where only eight or so fonts get to play in the pool. If we want our sites to continue to mature, we need all the tools the print guys get to use.
Of course, the print guys have less problems when it comes to ensuring security. Hence the whole problem with @font-face, it makes fonts easier to steal. Jeffrey Zeldman just today put up a post on Web fonts and standards, talking about where we are and where we’re going with font support. It sums it all up much more intelligently than I could ever manage.
One of the current (well, near future) solutions is a new batch of “middlemen”, as he terms it. Web services that secure fonts enough to make foundries feel safe, but provide web authors with the @font-face access we love and crave. Typekit and Fontdeck are two of these on-the-horizon matchmakers. I’ll admit, I’m intrigued by their service. Elliot Jay Stocks talks about Typekit in The Font-as-Service over at i love typography, which sums up the pros and cons that Typekit represents as a font solution. I found it a very good read, and I think if you’re interested in what these services will offer that you should go read it as a primer of sorts.
Today’s comic settles firmly on one point he mentioned that worries me the most: price. I’m the sort of person that, for better or worse, prefers concrete purchase to subscriptions. Although I find Netflix to be a neat way to rent, I’d really rather own Big Trouble in Little China outright, rather than leasing it for all time. In the world of websites, I worry about being dependent on a middleman for all time to keep my site looking pretty. Although I don’t know what the rates that Typekit and its peers will charge, I can only imagine that over a period of years, it’ll add up to the point where I’d rather just have owned the fonts outright. What if someone came back to CSSquirrel ten years later, and a number of rich fonts I’d used via Typekit were no longer present, replaced once again by mundane Arial or such? Will it represent the vision I had?
For that matter, with client sites, will studios be able to convince their clients to pay a monthly fee after their site is built, just to keep the font? I’m not running screaming from the concept of font-as-service. I’m just concerned about how renting will impact the bottom line.
Tags: Comic, elliot jay stocks, font-face, fontdeck, jason santa maria, typekit, typography
Another benefit of centrally hosted fonts is caching, depending on how browsers handle that. Some font files will be quite heavy, and if the user has already gotten a font from for instance Typekit they’ll hopefully not have to download it again, speeding up the rendering/replacement of the font.
@Jacob And perhaps take care of another issue, such as fonts disappearing off Typekit but still be stored, at least for regular viewers, on their browser?
It won’t negate the issue of what will happen if Typekit removes a font and new users come to a website, but I suppose it’s a little bit of a relief.
After @font-face: User clicks on a site and a font is temporarily downloaded and installed.
Before @font-face: Link with “Hey, download this .ttf file and install it and you can see the font I’m using!”
Mind you, I only ever saw one site like the second, with myself at some point thinking of doing the same.
Using @font-face is less secure than using only default fonts, but I’d say it’s more secure than the above method of getting the fonts you want on your site.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, ultimately. If you were using a font with font-face, it would either be free (so you’re free to use it), or you’ll have paid a couple hundred for a license (same as Typekit, really). The benefit lies entirely with the foundries, so they had better make it easy for those who are on the fence about subscribing or just bittorrenting fonts.
@Jacob – I don’t know how browsers handle font-caching, so that might be a good point. On the flip side, Jeff Croft brought up the potential downside of centralized font-linking to the effect of: What happens when/if Twitter and Facebook use Typekit? Does the massive resource drain cause fonts everywhere to break?
@Janae – Yeah, if Typekit loses a font for some reason, I could see that being a major issue. I don’t know how likely such a scenario is, however.
@Michael – It’s not really an issue of whether fonts are illegally shared now. Obviously they can be, and as such, are. It’s an issue whether @font-face exposes fonts online (it does), and thus if it became widely used would it present a problem where fonts were suddenly much more available for stealing (it would). The idea solution preserves @font-face (or some similarly easy technique) while preserving the safety of the fonts. Typekit is a proposed way to do both.
Since legitimate fonts usually cost money (genuinely “free as in beer” fonts exist, believe it or not), I’m not opposed to paying through a service like Typekit. I’m opposed to renting it past the point where I’d normally own the font outright, only to have the font disappear if I stop renting. I’m not sure if this will be an issue, but it’s a concern.
Browser-side caching will achieve neither of the benefits Jacob and Janae posit above.
At least as initially envisioned, TypeKit will be delivering font files which are modified for each particular web site, with site-specific subsetting, etc.
Caching is also relatively temporary. If TypeKit (or any other web font service) stops serving up a font, existing users will see it go away soon enough, cache or no cache.
Cheers,
T
Hmmm I am not sold I’d rather target OS with good font’s people already have. The price well they can go $uck themselves and most clients will not pay for it maybe Million+ companies but most no.
Fail.
What is it exactly what requires you to buy a license for a font? Is it the actual typeface or the file you buy/rent?
I mean, I see a lot of flash sites and a lot of images with non-free fonts on the web, are those actually legal? Or should that use also had to be paid for?
I am with you, when I design a site, it usually is live for at least 10 years, which means I must rent a font for 10 years. Is that viable?
I can see benefits for short-lived sites (for example promotional sites) but not for long term use.