As any web designer will tell you “this is not print design! It’s the web.” That may be true, but the web is fast approaching the day when it will be able to accommodate any font, with any type of configuration via CSS3. This is not the future and there are still just too many factors to account for when designing for the web. In that respect, graphic designers have it easy. Period.
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
