17 Nov 09
Friendly custom fonts on the web
There has been a major change in web design during the last few years. Less Flash-based websites and more HTML surfacing now, mostly for SEO, CMS and mobile accessibility purposes. I somehow feel that fonts are somehow being underused on the web due to that change. There are a lot of good fonts out there and in many occasions bespoke fonts are designed for a brand. So, why be limited to the usual Arial, Georgia, Times, Courier, Verdana… (I am not even going anywhere near Comic Sans)
Using your brand’s bespoke font on your site’s navigation, menus & titles can add a nice subtle genuine touch that sets you a level up from your competitors.
Text replacement technology in layman’s term:
• Most of these technologies are open-source
• Only need a font license for the font in use.
• Just specify which sections you want to be replaced (headers, menu items, dates etc).
• Fully content managed.
• SEO friendly, meaning all the keywords will be picked up by search engines.
We have currently applied this function(more specifically Cufón) to one of our latest projects on the Amanda Wakeley ecommerce & blog.
Find out more on text replacement tools for the web here.
I personally prefer Cufón, Typeface.js & sIFR.
What are your views?
I’ve always had a problem with sIFR. When you open a blog, for example, with 10+ posts on a page there is a lag in the browser while it replaces all those post headers with a Flash movie. Although our blog is guilty of this it’s about to change.
I’ve just written a post on the future of fonts on the web and the ability to specify fonts other than the standard browser-safe options. Services such as Typekit have got round the problem of licensing and DRM by allowing the site owner to effectively ‘rent’ the font license on a per site basis. A couple of lines of javascript and away you go.
More detail on my post here. http://madebymany.co.uk/life-after-verdana-002350
Hi Simon, I do agree with what you mentioned about sIFR. Typekit is an interesting one too. It would be good to see some more of these text replacement tools in-situ.
I feel that within the next year everyone will be using @font-face, the foundries will have sorted out an appropriate solution, and the days of font hackery will be behind us.
Pod1 NY has used SiFR for several sites as well as Cufon and found Cufon to be superior from an ease of use and consistency standpoint. Check it out on Dakota Collective. http://www.dakotacollective.com/