Typography represents one of the great challenges in building an engaging and dynamic website. The greatest challenge lies in the fact that there are very few fonts a web designer can use that will be properly presented to all users. Fonts will only be properly displayed if they are installed on the user’s computer. If the designer opts for a beautiful font but the font is not installed on the user’s computer, the computer makes its own decision on what font should be used in the place of the specified font which may provide extremely disappointing results.

In this case, the design can – and definitely should – provide a list of fonts to use in decreasing order of desirability. This greatly enhances the possibility that the page will be rendered in an acceptable fashion, especially if one or more of the so-called web-safe fonts are included in the list. These are fonts that exist on the vast majority of computers – the nearly universal fonts such as arial, verdana, courier, and georgia. These fonts exist in one of just a few variations on pretty much every computer available, although the names may change between various operating systems.

There are work-arounds. Google fonts provide a much larger list of fonts available, but the fonts typically look a little odd. They’re just not presented well. In addition, there are some other services that will allow you to use fonts hosted on their servers. Most of these charge for that service. I can’t honestly speak to the quality of presentation because I haven’t tried them. Extensis and Font Agent Pro are the two dominant players in the field. If you have experience with these or similar services, please leave a comment, describing your experience with them.

Virtual Websource prefers to use the websafe fonts in more imaginative ways. By playing with the spacing, sizing, and other characteristics of the 15 or so web-safe fonts, a wide range of typographic presentations may be generated. An excellent resource for viewing and obtaining the style sheet control codes to generate those results may be viewed at TypeChart.com. Go view their displays and be prepared to be impressed.

For assistance in improving your website’s typography, Contact Us.