Nice Web Type

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Notes

Skepticism about Typekit

From the post announcing Typekit:

While it’s technically quite easy to link to fonts, it’s legally more nuanced. [...] We’ve built a technology platform that lets us to host both free and commercial fonts in a way that is incredibly fast, smoothes out differences in how browsers handle type, and offers the level of protection that type designers need without resorting to annoying and ineffective DRM.

We’ll offer a free version of the service to get you started, and a low-cost way to grow from there.

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about Typekit, but the reactions I’ve heard so far are mixed. Things like, “Why should I pay to ‘rent’ fonts if I own them?” and “If I use a typeface with Typekit, then cancel my subscription, does my website lose that typeface?”

What I know is this: Typekit will provide an extensive FAQ. You and I can help with that by asking the questions we’d like to have answered. Why might you not use Typekit?

7 comments

Kyle Meyer 28 May 2009
I actually just wrote a hasty post myself about that paragraph. Glad to see others are taking heed, hopefully I’m just blowing smoke, because I’d love to see this service succeed.
Dustin Wilson 28 May 2009
I would personally love to see it succeed as well as it does look to be a novel approach, but if I’m required to rent fonts to use them I won’t be using the service. Hopefully that’s not what you’re paying for.

For them to be stating that they’re providing a free service my thoughts are that they are allowing you to prove that you’ve purchased a typeface already. Perhaps the paid service is a single user license for renting fonts that you haven’t purchased for mocking up websites and whatnot where you have access to Typekit’s library of fonts. That way you can instantly use different typefaces for those pesky picky clients. This is just speculation, however.
Pablo Impallari 30 May 2009
I wont use anything I can’t host myself.
I don’t even use jquery’s hosted (by google) version.
Chris 13 Jun 2009
Yes, many are certain to have security concerns about using type that works by scripts running on another host.

- C
Lodro Donyo 13 Jun 2009
Typekit hypekit. Suddenly, shortly after Microsoft / Monotype’s EOT proposal was turned down by W3C, and Firefox is about to lauch a version supporting @fontface, there is a lot of noise about webtype “solutions”. In April it was Cufón, in May (with the aid of a campaign on Twitter) Typekit, and this month it seems to be OTW.

Technically sophisticated solutions that work cross-platform have been around for years in the form of products like Boreware’s Fairy and em2’s Glyphgate, yet almost nobody uses them. If this is such a crying need, why not? Perhaps because you have to pay for them.

Fact is within a few months, and with a couple of lines of code, anyone will be able to serve EOT fonts to IE and TTF fonts to Firefox, Safari, Opera and the rest from one’s own server. Provided you stick to fonts that have a permissive license you won’t need any of these orher “solutions”.

Lodrö
mcloki 10 Jul 2009
With an @fontface stack, sites are going to be designed with webkit and FF users in mind first and IE users are going to end up in a font Ghetto of Arial and Times. I can’t see Typekit getting out of the gate if I can’t host the fonts myself.
Aidan 25 Sep 2009
It seems like a reasonable deal. The free version has 20 odd fonts and then pay as you go from there if you want more. The concept of licensing a font based off of annual rent is a easy way to get the ball rolling by typekit because it relationship between what you pay for and what you get is very clear.

I too would love to see @fontface fonts for sale for self hosting. I’ll be very surprised if the licensing is anything like a “traditional font” like adobes sells. (Buy it and use it in whatever you want). You might pay a site license to use a font.

But unless there’s some way for the font vendor to protect their intellectual property with some kind of DRM there’s no way they’ll ever do this. Someone would just upload a torrent with ever font they sell and then next day everyone on the net would be using them. It isn’t fair to the vendor as fonts are about the hardest thing to design in existence. Until this issue is sorted out, get your clients to sign up for the $50/year to get hosted fonts. If they don’t like it – There’s always verdana, arial, and trebuchet!

Hey, the site looks broken

Notes

Skepticism about Typekit

7 comments

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