A typically thoughtful look at the promise in Jeff Veen’s forthcoming font-embedding technology which will allow Web publishers to license and embed typefaces on HTML pages. Davidson, a co-creator of the type replacement method sIFR, says, “It’s important to examine the following characteristics, in order of importance: compatibility, functionality, legality, ease of use, and hackiness,” and he proceeds to do just that, very effectively. The comments on this post are interesting too and worth a read (at least the first dozen or so were).
While we’re idly speculating in advance of having actual hands on experience with Typekit, I may as well weigh in with some speculation of my own: if in fact the Typekit business model allows relatively cheap licensing costs, that is of course ideal for everyone — independent Web designers would have access to a fully rich array of typographic options, and type foundries would both stave off illegal uses and open up new markets for their products. Unfortunately the type business has never really been a consumer business, and it’s quite possible that licensing won’t be particularly affordable for individuals — and yet Typekit could still succeed. There are enough big companies willing to pay a few hundred or a even a few thousand dollars to render their messages in their own typographic voice to make this work. However, fingers crossed that everyone involved sees the upside in affordability.
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