A new world has emerged for web designers looking for greater font options.  Until recently most web designers have relied on designing with a very narrow selection of fonts.  Only a handful of fonts have been considered reliable for viewing in PC and Mac and the major Internet browsing software options.

That all changed dramatically yesterday, May 4th 2010, as a major New England font company made 2,000 of their most popular fonts available to web designers. Several other font companies have done the same or will be doing so soon.

‘Web fonts’ as they are known allow the designer to pay a per site font licensing fee, and install code from the font company which then displays the font to website viewer. It is not necessary that the viewer has the fonts downloaded on their computer as the font company’s code will bring it to the site for viewing.

This is an enormous move forward for web designers and their clients. It will certainly cause growing pains for some, but will also open a whole new world of web design. Finally web designers will be able to choose from a multitude of fonts, just as print-based graphic designers have done for years.

Want to learn more?  You can get a good start at these sites:   http://typekit.com http://webfonts.fonts.com http://http://www.monotypeimaging.com

jweissberg Graphic Design, Website Design Web Fonts, WebFonts