This shouldn’t deter us from following proven principles that have been laid out by some of the greats like Paul Rand, who was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design.  Frederic Goudy, who at the end of his life had designed 122 typefaces and published 59 literary works. I love typography, but for some reason when it comes to web design all that knowledge is thrown out the window.

Yes, CSS3 with its fancy @font-face properties is not too far away, but in the mean time what other options do we have? We could always use sIFR and drain away all our hours setting it up, or we could make our lives a little easier by using the new kid on the block called Cufón.

cufon the easy way to embed fonts

I’m not going to dive into the details too much on how to get this working, but I will tell you this; it is one of the easiest solutions out there!

1. Download Cufon script at Cufón

2. Upload your font choice and create a compatible java file.

3. Insert Cufon and the custom font file in your head (if you would like the page to load faster then insert right before the </body> tag).

4. Tell Cufon what tag to convert. It’s that simple.

Above is a great tutorial byJeffrey Way over at nettuts . He will walk you through the whole process. Literally, you will have this up and running within minutes. Now there shouldn’t be any more excuses as to why you can’t use a certain font anymore because Cufon works all the way down to IE6 and degrades gracefully. Even if java is turned off or not supported. So, what are your thoughts on typography and the web? Is this something you feel won’t be an issue in a few years.

Tim

I start with the FastTrac® TechVenture™ program in May. The same program that has been offered to many successful start-ups and I can’t wait to dive in. Below is more info on the program offered by momentum.

“Momentum is a venture firm that invests in web based technology start ups. Momentum exists because we get excited about great ideas, new technology, and opportunities to be a part of positive change in West Michigan.
In short, we’re a collective of passionate and purposeful geeks.

Our vision
We want to help entrepreneurs build really cool stuff in our beloved West Michigan. Even if we could accomplish this alone, we wouldn’t want to; Momentum is all about inclusion, participation, making connections.
In other words, Momentum isn’t just a company that invests in companies—we’re people investing in our community.”

Learn more about this great program at http://www.momentum-mi.com