Mini how to: 2. Which fonts can I use online?
In the beginning it was easy.
The only fonts you were allowed to use on a web page were the ones everyone had installed, so:
Times, Arial, Courier, Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet, Tahoma, Lucida
And that's yer lot. Everything else had to be created as an image.
Then came a little widget called Sifr, another called Cufon and finally the widespread use @font-face in stylesheets.Yeah, I know that sentence is gibberish, but in plain English: you can now use any font online. And 'lo the designers were greatly pleased.
It's not quite a free-for all though.
- Every non-system font we use adds about 20k to the page load. So add more than a couple and it will start to affect website load time (especially on mobiles).
- Fonts aren't free and need to be licensed. Sorry, we can't just include it on the quiet. This is public, easily searchable stuff and you will get caught. It's a cost we can't predict until we see the artwork, so be prepared for us to come back and ask you to license the fonts.
- We still can't do kerning and leading in the way you are used to in print work. Sorry. Give it five years.
- Email is stuck in the past. You can still only use the standard system fonts. Everything else has to be done in images.
Do
- Use fonts creatively, but sparingly
Don't
- Use comic sans. Ever. No really, why would you? It's deliberately choosing something ugly when there are so many beautiful options available.
