We were thrilled recently to learn that the man behind The FontFeed, our pal, Yves Peters, was selected to fill the final speaker slot at the Inspire Conference in Leiden this fall. We were even more excited to see their beautiful website’s use of FF Meta Web.
Speaking of conferences, FontShop is pleased to be a sponsor of TypeCon, taking place in New Orleans this week. We’re also buzzing about TYPO London coming up in October. Check out our newsletter for more information. The 2nd round of early bird tickets has just started!
We know you’re busy and the Internet is a crowded place, so we’ll try to give you a little reminder on Fridays of what’s going on out there. Below please find five recent FontShop-related threads that you may have missed.
New Fonts Recap
Miss buying your new fonts for June? Visit our list.
Gallery Highlights
We pick our fave submissions to the FontShop gallery.
Swiss Miss Likes the FontFonter
Recently we told you about updates to the FontFonter. Design maven The Swiss Miss takes a look on her blog.
Speaking of Webfonts…
This week’s Webfont Wednesday looks at the use of FF Enzo Web by Impose Magazine.
Conferences Galore
Yves Peters recaps his rockstar experience at Ampersand on The Font Feed. While on the topic of conferences, FontShop is a proud sponsor of next week’s TypeCon in New Orleans.
Friday Five Fonts: Acta Symbols by DSType and Sweet Sans by Sweet
This week we move away from Web FontFonts in the design world and into the realm of pop culture – specifically the use of FF Enzo Web over at Impose Magazine. We were definitely impressed at the use of multiple weights to add some gorgeous nuances to the site. The mix of thin and bold makes the site really “pop” to the culturally-inclined reader.
Do you have any favorite sites employing Web FontFonts? Suggest them in the comments.
Summer is almost here and instead of hitting the books and taking exams, our staff studied the gems in the FontShop archives to find this month’s Staff Picks. Here’s a sampling of our June selections:
Aaron’s June pick is Refrigerator Deluxe by Mark Simonson. The beginnings of this design date all the way back to 1988, inspired by vague memories of block-style lettering from Mark’s youth. As time went on, additional styles and alternate glyphs were added, leading to its Deluxe release in 2008. While the basic block-style lettering remains by default, Refrigerator Deluxe can transform into a stylized Art Deco face, both with squared and open shapes, with the flick of an OpenType feature. This User Guide gives a great overview of the available glyphs and features, and how to access them in various applications.
Download Refrigerator PDF Specimen (152 KB) and User Guide (41 KB).
One of my own picks for this month, Xavier Dupré‘s FF Sanuk is deceptively buoyant: its squared veneer gives way to a calligraphic flare. Take the lowercase ‘k’, for example — the foot tails off in a friendly way that you might not expect upon first glance. FF Sanuk has perfect form and character for the web, and was recently released as a Web FontFont.
Download FF Sanuk PDF Specimen (545 KB).
Theresa chose a blast from the past: Blockhead Alphabet, a classic display face from John Hersey and Emigre. One of my earliest lettering memories as a child is the pride and sense of accomplishment I felt when I discovered how to make letters look three-dimensional. (Of course, this meant that every time a class project required a poster or some other visualization, I had an extra task.) Blockhead Alphabet is reminiscent of that childhood discovery, right down to the details of imperfection.
Though “good design” and “term papers” don’t usually cross paths in our train of thought, the web designers for the Chicago Manual of Style clearly saw a relationship between the two. The result is a clean, crisp website set in FF Tisa Web and complemented by an inviting, cheerful color palette.
The site is a companion piece, rather than a mere “footnote” to the printed guide, which is also set in FF Tisa. Although we aren’t too particular about citations on this blog, we couldn’t help but cite this site for Webfont Wednesday!
Almost a year ago, we first announced FontFonter, a tool which allows you to temporarily replace sans and serif fonts on almost any website with a selection of Web FontFonts. Since then, FontFont has greatly expanded its Web FontFont selection, and that expansion has carried over to FontFonter: you can now preview over 40 Web FontFonts, ranging from trusty standbys like FF DIN Web, to some of the newer designs like FF More Web and FF Sanuk Web.
The process is simple: Go to FontFonter.com, type in a website URL, and FontFont It! You’ll then be able to specify which Web FontFonts you want to preview in a control panel at the top of the page; below will be the website you entered, with the chosen fonts replacing the default fonts used for that website. You can choose to replace all fonts with a single Web FontFont, or you can specify replacements for sans and serifs, respectively.
(Note that FontFonter doesn’t quite work as expected on 100% of sites. It will not work with secure sites [https], and will occasionally conflict with some sites’ Javascript or other code.)
Here are some examples to entice you:
FF Clan Web on Apple.com
FF Milo Serif Web on Google.com
Lukasz Dziedzic‘s serif and sans siblings FF More Web (navigation, headline) and FF Good Web (body) on Guardian.co.uk
FF Spinoza Web (navigation, headlines) and FF Basic Gothic Web (body) on NPR.org
FF Suhmo Web (headlines) and FF Hydra Text Web (body) on printmag.com
FF Chambers Sans Web on Flickr.com
FF Sanuk Web on tdc.org
Steve Jobs announced a whole heckuva lot of stuff yesterday at the WWDC here in San Francisco. Between iCloud, iOS 5, and all of the new features Jobs introduced in OS X Lion, there’s a lot to be excited about.
But the most exciting feature for FontShop and its customers introduced yesterday didn’t make it into Jobs’ keynote. Hidden in this expansive feature list for Lion was this bit of gold:
Support for the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) gives web designers and developers the ability to use a wider range of fonts on websites.
What this means for us and you: soon, your Web FontFonts (as well as the recently released Azuro Web) will be supported in Safari as well as every other major browser, allowing you to comfortably host webfonts knowing that your visitors will view your website in all its typographically fine-tuned correctness.
For the uninitiated: WOFF is a file format which provides lightweight compression and the capacity for additional metadata, which can be implemented on websites using CSS @font-face rules. Developed by Jonathan Kew, Tal Leming, and Erik van Blokland, WOFF fonts are generally converted from TrueType (TTF), and can contain hinting for optimal onscreen rendering. WOFF is a recommended standard by the W3C, and is already supported in FireFox (3.6+), Chrome (6+), and Internet Explorer (9+).
Mac OS X Lion will be available in July. This gives you just enough time to browse our Web FontFont offerings and pick some new faces for your site in celebration of Safari joining the WOFF revolution.
If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you may have noticed a slightly new look in the past week. No we have not lost weight or gotten a haircut (thanks for asking), but instead changed the webfonts we are using for our headers and text.
The featured webfont for headers is now FF Amman Serif Web and body text is set in FF Milo Web.
Some words from our designer, Aaron, as to why he picked this pairing:
FF Amman is a distinctive Latin/Arabic family designed by Yanone in 2010. This post at the FontFeed covers the story of its unique design. I wanted to highlight a newer FontFont that isn’t used widely as a webfont (if at all), and FF Amman fit the bill perfectly.
The body text is set in Michael Abbink‘s FF Milo, a pleasant and versatile typeface with a large x-height that works well at smaller sizes on screen.
Our blog isn’t the only part of FontShop with an updated appearance. Web FontFonts are now categorized by classification for easy browsing. This will make it easier for designers to find and try out fonts to freshen up existing sites or build a new one with typography in mind.
Have you recently changed your “look” using webfonts from FontShop? Share your experience in the comments.
