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Why Typekit will change everything

Well, perhaps not quite everything. Today Jeffrey Veen let the cat out of the proverbial. He announced Typekit.

Every major browser is about to support the ability to link to a font. This is a massive upgrade for the web. But there’s a problem. While it’s technically quite easy to link to fonts, it’s legally more nuanced. Almost all fonts are protected by copyright — even those available for free — and very few of them allow for linking via CSS or redistribution on the web.

That’s where Typekit comes in. We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. 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.

I'm sorry. Did I just read that right?

We’ve been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license. 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.?

Typekit is an opportunity to change the look of the web in a way that no other combination of related technologies has done before. Working with type designers and foundries, building a delivery platform and handling licensing issues through a simple payment process.

Typekit will revolutionize the way that we work with, and purchase typefaces in the same way that iTunes revolutionized the way we buy and listen to music and the App Store opened the doors to millions of iPhone/iPod customers for their developer community.

But Typekit will not only change the way that web designers work with type, it will spark renewed interest among typeface designers in making specific typefaces that work well on screen, something Mark Boulton has been suggesting for a while. This can only be good news for typeface designers, type aficionados and for web consumers.

Actually I got it right the first time, Typekit will change everything.

Leave your comment

Srdjan

May 29 2009 @ 01:33am #

I don’t know. I’m a bit skeptical about it. Their service needs to be super-reliable in order for me to link to it. Wouldn’t this be a single point of failure?

What’s the backup option?

Matt Wilcox

May 29 2009 @ 01:35am #

Not comfortable with relying on a CDN to supply fonts. Even big players used to massive demand still have their CDN’s fail: Google, Amazon, Twitter. All of them go down every now and then.

The advantage of @font-face is the certainty that the visitor has a copy of the preferred font, meaning you can style explicitly for it. If you use a CDN and it fails then you rely on the font-stack to supply a stand-in font. We all know how poor the font stack is. If the x-height is different, there will be screw-ups, which don’t matter on some designs but surely will on others (I’m thinking of headings with custom backgrounds aligned to the font’s base).

Also, what if the CDN’s slow? Does it cause the whole page to slow down, or will you simply get an un-slightly FOUC when the resource finally loads?

I welcome any advancement in the typography business model, and the licensing issue, and I think this will push the issue even further and open a lot of eyes. But a hosted solution is not appropriate for every designer or every use case.

Dave Randall

May 29 2009 @ 01:36am #

This could well be the best thing to happen to the web for many, many years. Well done to Jeffrey and the crew!

simon r jones

May 29 2009 @ 01:40am #

JS libraries like JQuery have the same issue. They offer a downloaded version or hosted versions usually on big networks like code.google.com - so I’m sure distribution of the JS code is the least of their problems.

Typekit looks great though, can’t wait..

Kyle Meyer

May 29 2009 @ 01:42am #

I’m still very skeptical, about this being the proper solution. To me this is a bit of a patch over the technical ineptitude of @font-face to properly handle DRM for the foundrys’ sake.

Andrew Durdin

May 29 2009 @ 02:14am #

Count me in the skeptical bunch also. All I can see from here is a press release, not even any details on how this’ll solve the technical problem (will it host the fonts in EOT and TTF so we can use @font-face? Will it only host a JS-ified version for typeface.js and the like?).

I can’t see any evidence that TypeKit will yet change anything, so I’m going to watch and wait for the present.

Robert

May 29 2009 @ 03:25am #

I can handle that the fonts are hosted on a CDN, but the “just add a line of JavaScript” part is frustrating. I’m still a big fan of my sites working well without JS. If JS being off kills my @font-face fonts, I’ll have to continue to piss off the font foundries. I don’t understand why they can’t use a combination of query strings and HTTP referrers to determine whether the site and the site owner have permission to use the font. JS shouldn’t be needed at all.

Luke Stevens

May 29 2009 @ 03:29am #

I’m also waiting for more details - on the one hand if they have a neat solution and can make a biz out of it, hats off to them! On the other, didn’t we decide $/month music was bad, in that no server, no money, no music was not cool? What if the biz doesn’t take off, the servers go dark, and your client wonders why her site looks plain all of a sudden? I’m not anti-paying, I’d just rather host it myself. Look forward to more details.

In the mean time, I wonder if FontJazz is worth a look?

John

May 29 2009 @ 04:17am #

Google as a CDN is distributing freely-accessible code, and if it fails we can replace or fall back on other copies elsewhere. TypeKit is providing a licensing arrangement. I can forsee font foundries *only* licensing their fonts for delivery through TypeKit, forcing us to subscribe to the service to use those font faces legally.

If TypeKit changes their terms, or the foundries change their terms—what happens? Is a TypeKit subscription just renting the font? Will it discourage the foundaries for being more open since they have a single point of control? These are the things I want answered before I get too excited.

David Hund

May 29 2009 @ 05:07am #

I’m with Kyle and others: it sounds great, but when I think about it some more I get the feeling I pay for fonts _again_, the display of fancy fonts will _still_ depend on JS being enabled and I am sure the font I would like to use just happens to _not_ be supported by TypeKit.

That said: It is wonderful to see this renewed fervor in trying to get proper typography on the Web, kudos!

ps: Luke, FontJazz seems, imho, to be a clever, creative, way to enable something that is not new at all: image-based font replacement. It still suffers from the same (usability-) issues as with other (older) IR methods: non selectable/scalable text, etc. In that sense, I feel, Cufon offers a better alternative.

Richard Rutter

May 31 2009 @ 03:09am #

It will be really interesting to see what happens with Typekit. I think it, or something like it, will go a long way to making font linking a reality.

In fact, I’ve already put my money where my mouth is: Clearleft has been working on a system very much like this. Our technology sounds different, but the effect should the same: a font-face delivery system that will work keep both font designers and web designers happy.

I agree there will always be a potential single point of failure with having one point of delivery for the fonts, but in my opinion it’s the only way to guarantee font files will be protected enough to persuade foundries to license typefaces for font linking. That said, Clearleft has teamed up with a massively capable partner whose sole raison d’etre is dealing with the situations of wide scale distribution and optimum reliability.

A proper announcement with more details will arrive next week, meanwhile you heard it here first!

Richard Fink

June 4 2009 @ 05:00am #

@Richard Rutter
Good luck with that project, Richard.
And good luck to Typekit, too.
Even if both projects - and the others to follow - end up, ultimately, as noble experiments, we will all learn from them.
You have to TRY dammit.
And praise to all who do.

(And I’ll be watching closely. My current freebie blog at Wordpress, Readable Web, is going live with a full installation at readableweb.com this week. And please keep crackin’ on The Elements Of Typgraphic Style. It’s importance as a reference will only grow. Especially now that font-linking is on the horizon as a practical proposition.)

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Why Typekit will change everything

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