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Typekit makes using traditional fonts in your web design easy

After reading an article about Typekit.com and Adobe licensing classic fonts for use on the web - my interest was piqued. I know that web fonts are coming, but like most HTML5 and CSS3, wide spread adoption will take years. But Typekit seems to do it now.

A reasonable yearly subscription provides access to a bevy of fonts (free trial available too).

We’ve used various “hacks” to add custom typography to websites previously, such as sFIR. But there’s always been a tradeoff - and with sFIR, the downside is that the most popular mobile devices don’t support Flash - so that’s a major draw back. Web Fonts via CSS pose compatibility issues and of course font licensing issues. But after looking at typekit.com it appears there might be a new, simple solution for augmenting our web designs with classic fonts and more type choices.

The Typekit process is simple

A quick sign-up with TypeKit.com, the addition of some javascript code to your website, the selection of a font kit, and the addition of a css selector to any element. That’s it, you can be up and running quickly. To demonstrate I choose the unique script Lobster by Pablo Impallari because it’s a good example of non-standard web font. It displays online, on my iPhones, and on my iPad. It’s that simple.

Typekit.com offers cross browser compatibility and uses it’s own content delivery network to distribute the licensed fonts - so you the web developer doesn’t need to deal with installing a font file. It’s a nice, quick, elegant solution that I’m positive we’ll be making use of in the near future. Designers have been clamoring for finer typography choices and control from day one of web design….and now Typekit has made it a reality.