This may seem like spam. But it's not. I have no stake in the things I'm about to geek out on.

I'm a design and typography geek. I absolutely love looking at well crafted designs (print, web, whatever). Especially layouts where the typography is what sets it apart without people even realizing it's the typeface creating the bulk of the look and feel. I geek out over it and marvel at how it works (even though I know next to nothing about the design concepts themselves).

Anyway one thing that's always bugged me about the web is the clumsy ways for dealing with all things font. Got a cool font you want to use for a heading? Tough. Most visitors will probably not have the font on their computer. You'll have to make do with standard fonts.

Or you can try to get around the problem by making images of the headings. Or you can use something like sifr and use Flash objects to load the fonts. But your page loads will suffer and forget compatibility with many mobile devices or older computers.

Or.

You can try TypeKit. TypeKit is a brilliantly good thing (in my not so professional opinion).

I'd dearly love to hear the thoughts on TypeKit and sIFR from the professional graphic designers amongst the PSC community.

Great site ! great idea !
Unfortunately, the classic fonts are not here (of course).
thanks for the link

A Thierry sighting!

TypeKit has different libraries of fonts depending on your licensing level. The free level is still pretty big. I can't wait to try it.

I need a LICENSE to TYPE!??

Man, am I ever in trouble.

Guess I'm the only font geek here.

That is a very cool concept...

I deal mainly with print, but I plan to share that link with the web designers at work.

Oh... I like a little FONT FUN when I can get it.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766

I'm happy to see that Century Gothic was invited to the conference, i like her

You CAN use any font you want on a page (CSS3).

the @font-face

If you want it to also work for IE you need the free WEFT tool from microsoft to convert them so it works for everyone.

Here's a great writeup:
http://randsco.com/index.php/2009/07/04/p680

Thanks for the link, Jasper.
Another possibility could be what Google announced: their robots are now able to read flash text. I don't know if it works or not :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13530_3-9844989-28.html

Yes but the key part is this:The copyright on commercial fonts would make embedding them a legal (and licensing) nightmare. That's where TypeKit comes in the bridge the gap. They host the fonts for you, handle the WEFT stuff, and your CSS simply pulls them in as needed.

Not only do they manage the licensing but you get a full library of fonts.

Yep, easier for sure. But it's a subscription based service, right? I like doing things on the cheap, and if I own the font I think fair use covers it for the most part. It's fortunate CSS3 covers the use of url linking to be sure (or TypeKit wouldn't be viable either).

True dat jasper. Good news is that for personal sites the service is free. The limitations are that you have less bandwidth allotted to you for transferring the fonts, have a smaller font library, and can only use your account on one domain. Still, for my own domain, it's perfect. I'm working on the code tonight hopefully.