Ralf Herrmann: Wayfinding & Typography » Webfonts

Using webfonts to insert characters or symbols in a website

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:50:58 +0000

Using webfonts to insert characters or symbols in a website—Or why is Opera screwing up my font stacks? Back in 2008, shortly after Apple started the new webfont revolution with the release of Safari 3.1, I wrote an article about how the webfont technology could be used to insert certain glyphs or vector objects like logos [...]

The 10 best fonts from the Google Webfonts Directory

Ralf Herrmann — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 14:36:12 +0000

The idea of the Google Webfonts Directory is great: offering everyone free webfonts, which you can include in your website with just one line of code and without worrying about the multiple webfont formats, subsetting, file size, download speed and so on. When the service started in 2010 it offered just a couple of fonts. [...]

Font Dragr – drag and drop webfont testing

Ralf Herrmann — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 16:52:42 +0000

Font Dragr is a great tool by Ryan Seddon to test freeware and Open Source fonts as webfonts without the hassle to create and implement webfont packages in your site first. As the name suggests: you can just drag and drop the font from your computer to a website. Font Dragr can currently be used [...]

Introducing the Typecast app

Ralf Herrmann — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:22:07 +0000

Typecast by FRONT is a tool for creating your CSS code with webfonts directly in the browser with a true WYSIWYG view. The initial layout of websites is still mostly developed in applications like Adobe Photoshop. There you can play with layers, images, bitmap effects and easily present a mock-up to the client without having [...]

Webfont demos of fonts.info typefaces

Ralf Herrmann — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:38:42 +0000

We created some demo pages of our new fonts.info webfonts. They are not as exciting as the Lost World’s Fairs or similar demos you might know, but they show our fonts in a real-world context with a typical use in common font sizes. Needless to say, all text on these pages is live text created with [...]

Better web typography with OpenType features

Ralf Herrmann — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:08:58 +0000

Now that webfonts are supported by all major browsers, more and more professional fonts are available for web linking. These fonts usually contain a large set of OpenType features, which are only accessible in OpenType-savvy applications like InDesign, Illustrator or QuarkXPress. Browsers have barely supported such advanced typographic features so far. But with the latest Beta [...]

The iPad and SVG fonts in Mobile Safari

Ralf Herrmann — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:00:23 +0000

With all this hype around the iPad, people keep asking if the iPad supports webfonts. The good news is: Yes, it does. The bad news: the iPad runs Mobile Safari and in contrast to the standard version of Safari only SVG fonts are supported. Oh my gosh! Yet a another font format for the web? [...]

Introducing Web FontFonts

Ralf Herrmann — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:31:15 +0000

While FontFonts were already available thru TypeKit, FontShop International has now announced, that more than 30 of the most popular FontFont families are now available for download as so-called Web FontFonts, including FF DIN, FF Meta, FF Dax, and FF Kievit. This enables a more seamless and effective transition from print design to the web. An organization whose identity uses FF DIN, for example, can now [...]

TypeFront – a font distribution platform for the web

Ralf Herrmann — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:13:42 +0000

Services around webfonts are currently springing up like mushrooms. Here is another one: TypeFront, a service to host webfonts for users and foundries. Website owners can upload their licensed fonts and the service ensures that the fonts cannot be accessed from other websites. Moreover the service also provides an API, so foundries can set up [...]

Fontspring – @Font-Face ready typefaces

Ralf Herrmann — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:05:35 +0000

While webfont services are getting a lot of attention these days, there is still the “old way” of licensing fonts with a one-time license fee. But usually such licenses don’t cover the use of fonts on websites via @font-face. Now Fontspring has opened its store—a font reseller which offers fonts for regular desktop use, but all [...]

Firefox 3.6 with WOFF support released

Ralf Herrmann — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:33:29 +0000

Firefox 3.6 was just released and it supports the new webfont format WOFF. If you want to give it a try, the FontFont Typeface Library offers the font FF Nuvo Medium for free in the WOFF format.

Why webfont services are the future of fonts on the web

Ralf Herrmann — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:01:05 +0000

The debate about webfonts just reached its peak at a panel discussion on this year’s TypeCon conference. (You can listen to the 2 hours audio at Typographica and read summaries at i love typography and NiceWebType.) The discussion left a lot of people puzzled about how the future of fonts on the web might look like. Here [...]

The Potential of Web Typography

Ralf Herrmann — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:27:08 +0000

Firefox 3.5 with support for webfonts is out. This demo page by Ian Lynam & Craig Mod shows how commercial webfonts can enrich a website. The demo page uses subsetted versions of fonts from the Dutch foundry Underware and “is intended to show what will be possible once foundries revise their EULAs allowing for high-quality [...]

Sneak Peek: @font-face in Opera 10

Ralf Herrmann — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:06:32 +0000

The team of Opera was actually one of the first ones which worked on an @font-face implementation for linked TrueType/OpenType fonts. But this feature never made it in any of the final released. In Opera 10 it should finally happen and you can try it yourself with the public beta. Here is a short test [...]

Webfonts tweets

Ralf Herrmann — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:21:03 +0000

Now you can also follow me on twitter. I will use this account mainly for comments and discussions about webfonts. http://twitter.com/opentype