Does @font-face trump suggestion?
Today, your average web typographer makes do with a quiver of techniques such as sIFR, FLIR, and Cufón, in addition to good old image replacement and thoughtful font stack planning. Many of these techniques are built to degrade gracefully in cases where visitors do not meet prerequisites like having a new enough Flash player, having Javascript turned on, and having desired (or even passable) typefaces available.
So if you think about it, our techniques amount to suggestion. “Here’s what I, the designer, the typographer, think would be best. What’s that? You don’t have the right setup? Ok, try this instead.” And so on.
The question is, for how long will design be a matter of suggestion?
@font-face! That’s an order!
Fast forward a little.
Support for the CSS @font-face rule has made it possible for real fonts to be used on the web. For many visitors, web pages look exactly as their designers intended. We’ve won! Or have we?
Whither suggestion?
Write this down in your Backpack or in your Field Notes. What we have to remember, amid ever louder roars of, “Viva @font-face!” is that as web designers two thirds (or more) of what we do was, is, and will always be suggestion.
A text without structure – in our case, without markup – lacks meaning. Structure is a third of what Jeffrey Zeldman calls the trinity of web standards; I would argue that it is more important.
The other two thirds, instructions about how things should look (presentation) and act (behavior), are optional layers. Our work has to make fundamental sense without using these layers as a crutch.
@font-face is an option. Let us not lose sight of this as the gates of web type heaven open and our audiences pour in to witness the mastery of our art and craft. We will do beautiful work, yes!
But deep down, remember that the typefaces we choose are no substitute for the structural hierarchy of markup, and are merely a suggestion in the scheme of things.
Hold tight. Nostradamus Manutius says we’re in for a bumpy ride.