
Google Web Fonts Typographic Project - amjd
http://femmebot.github.io/google-type/
======
err4nt
Using web fonts isn't enhancement, it's savig you money down the road from
having to hire somebody like me to come and fix your site when it's broken on
Windows but not OSX because the system fonts are different.

There is such great typography available in CSS now that there's no longer an
excuse for crappy Arial and Times New Roman text.

~~~
ogig
Many web fonts render poorly on some combinations of OS/browser. Old windows +
internet explorer and there is a big chance for the cool typekit font you
picked to look like crap.

I use and like web fonts, but from a technical point of view I would rather
use a generic "font-family: sans-serif" and let the browser do its thing.

~~~
Silhouette
I don't think the parent deserved to be downvoted. I wouldn't personally go as
far as just using a generic font-family for most projects, but it is blatantly
true that a lot of web fonts, even some popular ones from supposedly high-end
font-as-a-service outfits, have rendering that looks worse under some
conditions than tried-and-tested designed-for-screen fonts like Georgia,
Verdana, and the more recent Microsoft "C fonts".

The web design industry, fad-driven as it so often is, seems to be in
collective denial about this. It's like everyone waited so long to get some
variety into their sites that now they'll use _anything_ that isn't one of the
handful of long-standing, widely available screen fonts. Unfortunately, being
different does not necessarily mean being better.

(Edit: Just to be clear, the above isn't intended as a criticism of _all_ web
fonts, nor any reflection of the fonts shown in the linked examples, several
of which render very nicely and show the technology of web fonts to much
better effect. I just thought ogig's point that many web fonts render poorly
on some OS/browser combinations was a fair one.)

~~~
RussianCow
Sometimes it's not even obscure OS/browser combinations--I've seen sites that
were clearly designed on a Mac and never tested on Windows, because the text
is completely unreadable on Windows 7 in any browser. I'm all for web fonts,
but designers have to test them across at least the major platforms.

~~~
Silhouette
Sadly, what you describe seems to happen all the time. As an obvious example,
it amazes me how many sites continue to use Proxima Nova as a web font. It
renders poorly at almost any common size in almost every Windows browser.

One thing that has surprised me with web fonts is that there seem to be plenty
of respectable choices available for free from the likes of Google Fonts and
Font Squirrel, and relatively few fonts I would even consider for serious work
from commercial font-as-a-service shops like Typekit and Cloud.Typography.
After years of me telling people that professional quality results need
professional quality fonts, the industry seems to be doing its best to prove
me wrong.

I suspect the main difference is that the good freebies were designed for on-
screen use from the start, while many of the commercial ones are adapted from
existing print fonts already available from the likes of Adobe and Hoefler &
Co. Unfortunately, many of those designs simply don't adapt well to the lower
resolutions and anti-aliasing used for on-screen rendering.

The trouble is, I don't really care _why_ a font on my visitor's screen
doesn't look good, and neither do they. The only thing that matters is that it
_doesn 't_ look good, and in many cases that seems likely to remain the case
until much higher resolutions become the norm for all screen sizes. Until
then, as demonstrations like the one we're talking about show very well, there
are plenty of decent screen-optimised fonts available from other sources, and
they don't come with the financial and legal headaches of the rent-a-font
services.

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mmf
Kudos to this project. Fonts and a tasteful use of them are a crucial portion
of the visual revolution we've seen in UIs.

------
danyim
This reminded me of a similar GitHub project that I had starred in the past:
[http://hellohappy.org/beautiful-web-type/](http://hellohappy.org/beautiful-
web-type/)

[https://github.com/ubuwaits/beautiful-web-
type](https://github.com/ubuwaits/beautiful-web-type)

------
digguser
the average internet user could care less about your fancy fonts

