Feeling used by the merchandising nightmare that is Valentine’s Day? Fight back by surprising anyone and everyone in your circle of friends with a custom font.

View full post on Macworld

I know I have brought a similar variation of this to the site before. With the sales of the Vibrant through the roof since I last post about fonts and with this latest set being nicely bundled into one simple file, I though we should revisit the idea.

Klyentel, from xda-developers is responsible for putting this zip file together and it is greatly appreciated. Take a look at a few of the screen shots.

If you are up for using some of these great fonts, head on over to xda-developers and pick up the ZIP file. Once it is downloaded, unzip it and drop the ‘Files’ folder to you device. Open it up through your file manager application and install which ever fonts you want. Since they are all in APK format, you can easily install and uninstall them as you desire.

These should all easily work on any Galaxy S device as well, as for other devices, not sure. Since they are in the universal APK format, I would assume any android device that supports True Type Flip Fonts should be able to utilize them.

On a side note, this doesn’t not require root to use. For those of you requesting ways to “pretty-up” your device with out root, this is right up your alley.

View full post on AndroidSPIN

Ever wanted a font that looks like your handwriting? Or a font with better handwriting than you have? Jay Nelson walks us through the options.

View full post on Macworld

Almoko has released a new app called FontCollection for your BlackBerry. Personally I was super excited when I saw this in the CrackBerry store, because I love fonts and the chance to add some cool new ones to my BlackBerry was intriguing. Usually you are stuck with the stock fonts on your device, or if you change themes, the font that the theme developer used. With FontCollection you can browse through more than 60 fonts, right on your BlackBerry! You install the fonts you want, and then access them through your Options menu. FontCollection is available for just $.99 in the CrackBerry store and is compatible with devices running OS 5.0 and BB6.

Important notes:

• All fonts in the FontCollection are free for commercial usage.
• English fonts only are supported at this moment.
• BlackBerry OS 5.0+ supported.
• Small footprint

To purchase FontCollection in the CrackBerry store
To read more about the app in the forums

CrackBerry.com‘s feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. FontCollection v1.6 by Almoko – Customize your BlackBerry with different fonts!

View full post on CrackBerry.com blogs

The Web Font Awards are coming soon. It’s a new competition recognizing the most beautiful applications of web fonts in site design and technological achievements in type on the web. There’s no entry deadline or submission guidelines yet, but the contest will involve an actual meatspace awards ceremony and real cash prizes.

From the Web Font Awards site:

The Web Font Awards – the first ceremony to celebrate the newfound typographic freedom empowering Web designers across the globe. The Web Font Awards will be a design competition for websites using Web fonts. Aimed at promoting Web font awareness and adoption, the competition will be open to eligible users of any Web font service or technology.

Sign up at the site to be notified of dates, deadlines, rules and requirements as soon as they are available. Though we’re guessing this site (possibly NSFW) already has the top prize in the bag.

See Also:

• Web Heavies Send a Love Letter to Open Web Fonts
• Typekit Teams Up With Adobe to Offer More Web Fonts
• Test Drive Your Type With Google Font Preview

View full post on Webmonkey

The nascent Web Open Font Format (WOFF) is getting a boost this week thanks to some new initiatives being kicked off by the W3C, the web’s governing body.

The W3C recently created a working group to build a WOFF into a web standard, and that group will be holding its first face-to-face meeting at the TypeCon 2010 conference taking place this week in Los Angeles.

Representatives from the major browser vendors, several font foundries and web services providers will be in attendance. Also, a dozen or so select individuals will be participating in a series of presentations and panel discussions about WOFF throughout the conference. All the design industry folks in attendance will get a peek at the future of high-quality typography on the web. There are scores of topics on the program, but this year, WOFF is getting top billing.

Things are looking up for web fonts in general. Monday, Webkit announced a partnership with Adobe to include the company’s fonts as part of its licensing service. Last month, Google launched a new tool (tied to its Font API) that makes it dead easy to include any of its open source fonts in website designs.

The Web Fonts working group was formed earlier this year at the W3C, and the group has already released the first working draft of the specification that will eventually lead to WOFF becoming a recommended web standard.

WOFF works just like OpenType and TrueType — you use the @font-face CSS property to drop the fonts in — but the font data is compressed, so the files download faster, and you can include more fonts in your designs without worrying as much about payload bloat.

The W3C adds this bit: “The WOFF format is not expected to replace other formats such as TrueType/OpenType/Open Font Format or SVG fonts, but provides an alternative solution for use cases where these formats may be less performant, or where licensing considerations make their use less acceptable.”

Support for WOFF is already strong — Google, Mozilla, Apple, Opera and Microsoft browsers either ship with or are building support, and the fast-moving foundries are releasing WOFF fonts — so why is the W3C’s involvement a big deal when the open source format is enjoying such success?

Standardization by the W3C is the best path to true interoperability. It will keep all the parties on the same page when it comes to things like accessibility, cross-browser compatibility, internationalization and search engine indexing. How much metadata to include and how it is handled are also big issues. Plus, fonts have taken an astonishingly long time to arrive on the web because of red tape around licensing, and a collaborative process for developing licensing infrastructures will go a long way toward convincing some of the more conservative type designers to make web-friendly versions of their creations.

The standard will take years to complete (the process is very slow — we’re guessing 2012 or so), and until then, we’ll see designers, developers and innovative service providers like Typekit and Google continue to feed the interest in fancy web fonts. Those not on the bleeding edge may be stuck in the boring world of “web safe” fonts for a while, but at least the future is bright.

TypeCon 2010 runs from August 17 through 20.

Photo by Leo Reynolds/Flickr/CC

See Also:

• Typekit Teams Up With Adobe to Offer More Web Fonts
• Dealing With the Dreaded ‘Flash of Unstyled Text’
• Test Drive Your Type With Google Font Preview

View full post on Webmonkey

Typekit, the web service that helps designers use elaborate typefaces in their page designs, is celebrating its one year anniversary with a big announcement: the company has added 16 of Adobe’s popular font families to Typekit’s ever-growing stable of options.

With the addition of Adobe’s fonts to TypeKit’s already large library, designers now have access to popular workhorse fonts like Adobe Garamond, News Gothic, Myriad and Minion, as well as slightly funkier options like Rosewood or Trajan, the “movie font.” These typefaces are heavily used in the print publishing world.

The new Adobe fonts are the original cuts of the typefaces, not reproductions or downgraded web versions of the designs. This means it’s now possible to use them just like you would in print work with same rendering accuracy and technical detail you’d see on paper. Monday’s development should have a positive impact on the use of fancier fonts on the websites of old-school institutions and larger corporations — companies which have been using Adobe products to build their print materials for years. Now that they have the same level of control over details like kerning pairs and line height on the web, they’ll have an easier time making the jump.

Adobe is a little late to the party — the company is one of the last major font foundries to partner with Typekit — but Typekit President and co-founder Bryan Mason tells Webmonkey the reason for the delay is a heavy attention to detail.

“Adobe has been working on the hinting and screen rendering of these (and others to follow) for months,” says Mason, “[that] means character-by-character, weight-by-weight review of each font family.”

Typekit is like a YouTube for fonts. The service lets web developers pick a font from its library, pay a licensing fee to the font creator (though some fonts are free), then use that font across their website. Unlike many fancy type solutions on the web, TypeKit isn’t using any sort of image replacement for rendering fonts, just the standard CSS @font-face declaration with a minimal amount of JavaScript to simplify the process and account for various browser versions. The service is one of the easiest ways for web designers to use creative fonts without sacrificing web standards or violating font licenses — most of the time, it’s just a matter of copying and pasting some code snippets. There are also options specifically designed for easy integration with popular publishing platforms like WordPress. The company also released an API last month, allowing third parties to integrate Typekit font selection into their apps.

If you’d like to try the new fonts on your site, head over to Typekit and log in to your account. The fonts are available for all paid Typekit accounts. If you’re using the limited, free option you’ll have to settle for Adobe Garamond, the only family that Typekit is giving away.

See Also:

• Typekit Gets an API
• Typekit Now Offering Custom Fonts For WordPress Blogs
• Review: Typekit Delivers Custom Web Fonts to the Masses
• Google, Typekit Join Up to Improve Web Fonts

View full post on Webmonkey

Want to start using web fonts, but you’re not really sold on the benefits? Head over to FontFonter, a neat little tool that lets you try web fonts on any website out there. I did the deed on Webmonkey in the screenshot — as you can see, the headline and the post body text are now styled in beautiful Meta.

It was created by Tim Ahrens and the folks at FontShop, a font foundry and storefront that’s also providing simple fonts optimized for use on the web, plus the tools to implement them. Check out their collection of Web FontFonts you can include in your designs.

View full post on Webmonkey

Google has announced a new Font API and a collection of free, open source fonts anyone can use in their site designs for free. The Google Font API allows you to embed any of the new Google fonts on your website using CSS.

The fonts themselves are quite nice, with a range of script, serif, sans-serif and monospace typefaces. They can all be used to style text via @font-face. There are only eighteen fonts available — so there’s probably no need for Typekit to worry that Google is muscling in on its territory.

In fact, Typekit has partnered with Google to announce WebFont Loader, a JavaScript library for improving the web font experience. Typekit will also be adding Google’s new free fonts to its collection, so there’s clearly still a lot of love there.

The WebFont Loader is an open source library of scripts that Typekit developed to help eliminate the “flash of unstyled text” page load hiccup that we’ve mentioned before. The WebFont Loader offers a number of JavaScript events which allow developers more control over when their fonts load.

Even though things have been progressing quickly in the world of type on the web, with advancements in CSS, HTML5 and the rise of services like Typekit, inconsistencies in browser support and implementation have stopped some from making the move to web fonts. The new WebFont Loader gives hope to those still on the fence by providing a consistent way to handle what the browser does while the fonts are being loaded.

“The WebFont Loader does for @font-face what jQuery has done for JavaScript,” says Typekit co-founder Jeffrey Veen in an e-mail to Webmonkey. “For people who really care about about the speed and user experience of their web pages, the WebFont Library gives them much more control. It essentially moves us a big step forward in the evolution of fonts on the web.”

Veen also praises Google’s decision to keep its work open source and free.

“Getting fonts technically ready for web use is a lot of work, and using the open source model allows anyone to contribute their expertise to a core set of fonts.” he says.

You can use WebFont Loader with fonts on your own server, with links to the just-announced Google Webfont API, or with your Typekit account.

Google made the announcement at its annual Google I/O developer conference, which is taking place in San Francisco this week.

As for Google’s new Font API, well, it’s so simple its hardly an API. You just need to add a link to Google’s stylesheet in the head tags of your page and then apply that font to some element in your page.

The syntax looks like this:

Then, in your stylesheet, you can apply that font to any body element. For example:

h1 {
  font-family: 'Font Name', serif;
}

Google’s new Font API will work in any browser that supports @font-face (which is pretty much all of them). If the Google fonts happen to strike your fancy, the API is certainly easy to use. If you’re looking for a broader selection, check out Typekit.

Typekit offers Google’s new open source fonts, Veen says, but Typekit also offers access to a library of over 4,000 commercial fonts of professional quality. Typekit is currently the only source offering these high-quality typefaces for legal use on the web.

Disclosure: Jeff Veen is a former Webmonkey editor and a former Wired.com employee.

See Also:

• Dealing With the Dreaded ‘Flash of Unstyled Text’
• Google Chrome to Support the Web Open Font Format
• Review: Typekit Delivers Custom Web Fonts to the Masses
• Use @font-face Today With Free, Legal Fonts
• Review: Typekit Delivers Custom Web Fonts to the Masses

View full post on Webmonkey