{"id":4066,"date":"2016-07-08T14:46:12","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T18:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.duke.edu\/bitstreams\/?p=4066"},"modified":"2017-03-20T17:29:34","modified_gmt":"2017-03-20T21:29:34","slug":"typography-and-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.duke.edu\/bitstreams\/2016\/07\/08\/typography-and-the-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Typography (and the Web)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer I’ve been working, or at least thinking about working, on a couple of website design refresh projects. And along those lines, I’ve been thinking a lot about typography. I think it’s fair to say that the overwhelming majority of content that is consumed across the Web is text-based (despite the ever-increasing rise of infographics and multimedia).\u00a0As such, typography should\u00a0be considered one of the\u00a0most important design elements\u00a0that users will experience when interacting with\u00a0a website.<\/p>\n

\"CIT
An early mockup of the soon-to-be-released CIT design refresh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early on, Web designers\u00a0were restricted to using certain ‘stacks’ of web-safe fonts that would hunt through the list of those available on a user’s computer\u00a0until it found something compatible. Or worst-case, the page would default to using the most basic system ‘sans’ or ‘serif.’ So type design back then wasn’t very flexible and could certainly not be relied upon to render consistently across browsers or platforms. Which essentially resulted in most website text looking more or less the same. In 2004, some very smart people released sIFR<\/a> which was a flashed-based font replacement technique. It ushered in a bit of a typography\u00a0renaissance and allowed designers to include almost any typeface they desired into their work with the confidence that the overwhelming majority of users would see the same thing, thanks largely to the prevalence of the (now maligned) Flash\u00a0plugin.<\/p>\n

Right before Steve Jobs fired the initial shot<\/a> that would ultimately lead to the demise\u00a0flash, an additional font replacement technique, named Cufon<\/a>, was released to the world. This approach used Scalable Vector Graphics and Javascript (instead of flash) and was almost universally compatible across browsers.\u00a0Designers and developers were now very happy as they could use non-standard type faces in their work without relying on Flash.<\/p>\n

More or less in parallel with the release of Cufon came the widespread adoption\u00a0across browsers for the @font-face rule. This allowed developers to load fonts from a web server and have them render on a page, instead of relying on the local fonts a user had installed. In mid to late 2009, services like Typekit<\/a>, League of Moveable Type<\/a>,\u00a0and Font Squirrel<\/a> began to appear. Instead of outrightly selling licenses to fonts, Typekit worked on a subscription model and made\u00a0various sets of fonts available for use both locally with design programs and for web publishing, depending on your membership type. [Adobe purchased Typekit in late 2011 and includes access to the service via their Creative Cloud platform.] LoMT and Font Squirrel curate freeware fonts and makes it easy to download the appropriate files and CSS code to integrate them into your site. \u00a0Google released their font service<\/a> in 2010 and it continues to get better and better. They launched an updated version a few weeks ago along with this promo video:<\/p>\n