That's not terrible, and works if you only need a headline and body face. For example, if you are designing a site for yourself or just one client, Adobe is actually generous enough to allow you to choose from over 800 faces, and choose two faces to use on one website. (Keep in mind that this is a different library than the traditional Adobe type, even if many faces/families are the same.) Using the new approachĪlright, it's not really that bad, at least, depending on what plan you sign up for and what your real needs are. Now let's go up to Adobe's (opens in new tab) site and you will see things are quite different. There are somewhere north of 2,000 typefaces offered in this Adobe library, and they can be used with both older and newer versions of either the CS or CC lines. Today, if your main use of type is for printed items, or any non-web applications, you can still continue to go up to digital type foundries and purchase type by either individual face, or by the entire family. Really, this was a throwback to the earlier days of the web, before Flash. So devs kept looking for exotic solutions.Īnd we designers? Well, most of us took a big step backwards and 'cheated' by using rasterized images of custom font headlines. CSS version two offered ways to embed fonts, but wasn't implemented well at the time, and not supported by all browsers. This solution was relatively easy and worked well for designers, but is no longer a full-spectrum option today.Ī variety of other technologies were given a shot as well, though each came with their own set of complexities, limitations, and compatibility issues. One of the most popular ways to get access to a decent range of typefaces for your web design needs required using Flash, which would embed the fonts you used. It even took years before we had the paltry number of 'web safe' fonts assembled (and just how truly 'safe' they are is questionable in itself). The web was never designed with type in mind. Then there were the web issues over the last decade or more. (It's also worth noting that from any high-end type foundry's point of view, the growing availability of free fonts (opens in new tab) cut heavily into their profits.) Problem 02: on the web Building a large library could very quickly get expensive. So traditionally if we wanted great typefaces to work with in these programs, we had to go out and buy expensive fonts (see above). Depending on how they are used, so do programs like Photoshop (opens in new tab) and Illustrator (opens in new tab). Publishing and design applications like Adobe's InDesign CC (opens in new tab) live and breathe their type design.
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