Adobe + Typekit to bring legendary typefaces to the web | Hacker News Reader

Adobe + Typekit to bring legendary typefaces to the web

blog.typekit.com

68 pointsniyazpk21 comments

Firefox does really badly with Minion Pro at smaller sizes. Well, maybe someday.....

So don't set running type in "exotic" faces; use Minion for display type and subheds, and use a compatible standard face for the body.

The main reason to use Minion is that it’s an awesome text face which ends up taking up a bit less space than other faces at a similar size without sacrificing readability (I used it for almost all my papers the last couple years of college, for example). As a display face, it’s not terribly exciting (especially since it doesn’t seem that the fonts designed for display size are included here; so these Minion fonts are intended for 10–12 pt. on paper).

Weird, I'd think that they would all use the same font rendering provided by the OS.

Well, Chrome actually appears to use font rendering from Windows (it looks the same as IE8), and Indesign has a good reason not to.

IE9 shot would be interesting to see for comparison. Based on what IE people were saying over at Typophile forums, they made a targeted effort to dramatically improve the rendering quality of IE font rasterizer.

Thank goodness, the web font debate is now over. Now we can go back to revolutionizing typography through interaction and social text, without the annoying sneers about Georgia and Arial.

Why would they use an image to show the fonts? Don't they offer a product that allows you to embed fonts? I tried interacting with the text (e.g. selecting it) and ended up dragging an image file around.

Performance. Embedding 18 fonts via CSS would add a lot of weight and the browsers (particularly mobile safari) don't cope too well when you embed too many fonts at once.

(I work at Typekit)

I guess in a blog post announcing new fonts I would expect to see the system in action. If performance is an issue then I won't want to buy your product, right? All I'm saying is I'm surprised you're not using your own product on a product announcement blog post :-).

On the other hand, I suppose most websites only embed one or two unique fonts.

As a typekit user, I have insight into this. It's as PaulHammond said: Embedding fonts means downloading a copy of the whole font.

TypeKit tracks how big the font files are. Each font might only be ~20-30K - but that's one weight/style. If you use multiple weights and styles, that's 20-30K per each. It's easy to rack up 3-4 weights, and of course I want italics on some of those == 4 weights times 2 italics times 3 fonts = 20-30k times 24 and now we're talking half a meg or so...

If I'm demoing 18 fonts on a page, even at a single weight and style - that's approaching half a meg right there.

I think using an image is the right call.

But if you want to see TypeKit in action (I get no benefit from pushing them - I'm just a satisfied user), here's a couple of sites I'm using it on:

http://picklepatchpcb.com/

http://daychilde.com/

http://music.isaac.im/

http://oilspillupdate.us/

http://panamacitypc.com/

http://rockincompany.com/

Have you guys sorted out the Safari issue?

We were going to use TypeKit but it looked like crap in Safari 5.

Are you hoping to use it for running text? Our corp site is Typekit, and it works just fine with Safari 5 (we're an all-Mac shop). But we're not trying to set body text in Minion or anything; we use a neutral sans for the body, and FF DIN for heds and subheds.

We're not aware of any issues in Safari 5 - could you drop an email to support@typekit.com with an example URL showing the problems so we can look into it?

Isn't this because of all the obfuscation you're adding? Extra scripts, split font files and data: URIs can't be good for performance...

Ok, let me rephrase. I've been working with design agencies for years, and not once have I been asked to use a font that typekit offers. I've actually suggested typekit and it got shot down. While I think that typekit is a good alternative, it is not (YET) a good solution to the current web typography problem.

What do you think of renting fonts?

Where's Bleeding Cowboys?

Deleted comment

Yeah, people like Jason Santa Maria or Jeffrey Zeldman or Veerle Pieters or Jon Hicks or Adam Stoddard or Liz Danzico or Kai Brach or Dan Benjamin would never even dream of using anything from Typekit. And no serious designer has ever used an Adobe font for anything, of course.

Rephrased. I've been drinking, so excuse my rudeness.

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