{"id":8982,"date":"2006-03-11T09:57:33","date_gmt":"2006-03-11T16:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/03\/11\/fonts-2.html"},"modified":"2006-03-11T09:57:33","modified_gmt":"2006-03-11T16:57:33","slug":"fonts_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/11\/fonts_2.html","title":{"rendered":"Fonts"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting point made here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There is something absurd about typography on the web. Think about these scenarios: You don\u2019t need to own a font to read a book set in Goudy. You don\u2019t need to own Futura to watch a Wes Anderson film. You don\u2019t need to own Times to read the Times. You don\u2019t need to own any fonts to watch television. Why not? Because that would be insane.<\/p>\n

And yet this same logic doesn\u2019t apply on the internet. Online, a person needs to own a fully licensed version of a font in order to view it in a web browser. You are reading Arial right now. That\u2019s right, Arial. Why? Because everybody on Earth has a licensed version of Arial on their computer. The great democracy of the internet has failed to produce typography any better than the least common denominator of system fonts. As a designer, I hope you are outraged and offended. So what can you do about it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem it two-fold. First is that the above info is not altogether accurate — you don’t need to own Goudy to read a book set in it, but the publisher\/printer did, in fact, buy that Goudy font and pay for it based on it being use to typeset a book. Ditto, presumably, for video presentations.<\/p>\n

The second problem is more fundamental, and that’s the distributed nature of fonts on the web. The font itself is not driven by the service provider or web page, but by what’s installed on the person’s machine. The reason that Arial — or a whole slew of other fonts — are used so much is that they are already out on people’s machines, as stated. The best of the solutions the author describes in the rest of the article — creating open-source versions of classic fonts — will work only insofar as people are willing or able to download those fonts once created. And that’s a proposal I’m dubious will happen, unless it’s done automagically in conjunctoin with, say, browser downloads, similar to the way Micro$oft used to make Tahoma and Verdana and Georgia available for download<\/a>. Imagine if Mozilla made some standard Open Source fonts available for download in a similar fashion with Firefox …<\/p>\n

This is sometimes done on a site-by-site basis — Marn<\/a> used to have a link, I think, to let her readers download the Mead Bold that her site is designed around. But to be successful, fonts need to be as easily available and downloadable as PDF readers and other plug-ins — easier, in fact, so that it’s transparent to the viewer.<\/p>\n

Some day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting point made here: There is something absurd about typography on the web. Think about these scenarios: You don\u2019t need to own a font to read a book set…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-my-computer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7395,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/03\/16\/microoft_back_i.html","url_meta":{"origin":8982,"position":0},"title":"Micro$oft back in the font business","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 16-Mar-05 7:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the Win95\/Off95\/IE4 days, M$ started shipping with its systems (and making available on its website) some fine fonts optimized for screen display, to be used for web design...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9553,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/06\/05\/end_of_a_typogr.html","url_meta":{"origin":8982,"position":1},"title":"End of a Typographic Era","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Jun-06 6:42pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Times New Roman has been the default font of a generation of computer users. But ... in Office 2007, the default font is ... Calibri? It's a major change --...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/Calibri.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12712,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/you_wrote_it_in_wingdings.html","url_meta":{"origin":8982,"position":2},"title":"“You wrote it in Wingdings, John! Wingdings!”","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 20-Feb-08 6:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Heh. ; (I try not to be a Font Perv -- at the very least, I try to pick appropriate fonts, and not mix more than a couple of them...","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4599,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/01\/soda_font_ain.html","url_meta":{"origin":8982,"position":3},"title":"Soda Font-ain","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 1-Aug-03 10:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"Ever wanted to do a memo in a Cherry Coke font? Now you can, along with other fun fonts such as Snickers, Heinekin, or Burger King. Cool. (via BoingBoing)...","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5468,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/07\/back_to_the_dra.html","url_meta":{"origin":8982,"position":4},"title":"Back to the drawing board","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 7-Mar-04 1:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"When you've been working on a blog redesign for a few days, using a test index file to see how it would look, and then go back to your regular...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10041,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/09\/18\/typeredfaced.html","url_meta":{"origin":8982,"position":5},"title":"Type(red)faced","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 18-Sep-06 10:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Collecting interesting fonts and typefaces? Cool. Not paying attention to where you're using them? Not so cool. School officials apologized after an X-rated font was used on a third-grade spelling...","rel":"","context":"In "School Daze"","block_context":{"text":"School Daze","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/school-daze"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}