Google Fonts Blog

Adobe Typekit improves the Rosario typeface family

2013-05-23T10:00:00.002-07:00

Since 2010, Google Fonts been collaborating with the Adobe Typekit team to create better web font technology. And now that many fonts first published by Google Fonts are also available in Adobe Edge Web Fonts, we’re extending that collaboration beyond just software to fonts themselves.

Together with Adobe, we want to improve the quality of open source fonts available to everyone publishing on the web. As a first step, the Typekit team has optimized Rosario, a humanist sans serif based on the classic proportions of Garamond’s type.

To start the process, Typekit reached out to the foundry, Omnibus Type, to request up to date copies of the font source files. Here are some examples of the possible optimizations that the Adobe team might make to a web font:

Convert and/or clean up outlines, for design fidelity and file size efficiency
Re-componentize source fonts, for file size efficiency
Remove/reassign glyphs with incorrect Unicode code points, for semantic value
Add common missing glyphs (non-breaking space, soft hyphen)
Set vertical metrics values according to best practices
Set underline and strike-through values, for design consistency
Contribute PostScript hints and (if a typeface was designed for small sizes like paragraph text) TrueType instructions (also called hinting), which consist of instructions to the rasterizer embedded in the font file itself

After making some of these improvements, Typekit sent their version back to the foundry to review and release on the Omnibus Type homepage. The updated Rosario family is now available in Typekit, Adobe Edge Web Fonts and Google Fonts.

Together with the Typekit team, we’re looking forward to more quality improvements in the future!

Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant

A new look and name for Google Web Fonts

2013-04-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

This week, Google Web Fonts got a simpler, cleaner look that makes searching and accessing your fonts easier than ever. And in the spirit of simplicity, today Google Web Fonts is now just “Google Fonts.” It’s still the same great collection of free fonts you know and love, but with a new name.

You can get started with Google Fonts here: www.google.com/fonts

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager

Easier ways to find the right font

2013-04-05T12:08:00.000-07:00

We know that finding the right font for your website or blog is a personal choice, and there are many great fonts available to choose from on the web. Now when you search for a font that isn’t available on Google Web Fonts, we show you additional fonts available from Monotype. Each result is shown in the actual font so you can easily preview your options. To get more information on a font, simply click the link under it’s name.

We look forward to adding results from more web font providers in the future.

Posted by Raziel Alvarez, Software Engineer

Web fonts: a look under the hood

2012-10-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

Google Web Fonts are viewed more than 1 billion times every day across the web, on more than 100 million web pages. To help you sort through and pick the right font for your site you can order fonts by popularity, and now you can check out usage data for each font too.

Click on "Analytics" in the upper right corner of the homepage to view the new analytics tab, where you can see and compare numbers for individual font views by browser, operating system and see usage trends.

You’ll see a list of fonts, ranked by the total number of all-time font views and sortable by time period. To see a graph of font data for an individual font or a set of fonts, check the box next to the font name and click on the Trend button.

Clicking the views by platform tab on the left pane shows you a heatmap and pie charts of usage of each font by browser or operating system.

While browsing through fonts in the directory, you can also access analytics for an individual font at anytime by navigating to the Statistics tab on the font’s specimen page.

And finally, to help you compare and select fonts, clicking on the “Pairings” tab on the Specimen page will show you groupings of fonts that are frequently used together, based on actual usage data via the API.

Selecting the right font for your website is an expression of your personal style, and we hope to continue expanding the set of tools to help you do that. Happy browsing!

Posted by Raziel Alvarez, Software Engineer

More places to get great fonts

2012-09-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

Open source fonts are good for the web: they’ve helped spur web font adoption, and made it easier for anyone to contribute improvements to fonts for the whole web community.

Today, we’re happy to announce that all the fonts in the Google Web Fonts directory are also available via Adobe’s new Edge Web Fonts service.

And on the heels of the recent release of Source Sans Pro, another Adobe designed open source font, Source Code Pro, is available today from both Google Web Fonts and Edge Web Fonts.

We’re also working with the Adobe team to hint some of the fonts in the collection, a process that will make them look better at smaller text sizes.

Here’s to a more accessible, translatable, and beautiful web!

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager

Preview fonts with the new Poster mode

2012-08-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Selecting just the right font for your website or application is a personal decision, and making sure the font harmonizes with your content is often time consuming. To help you narrow down your font choices, last week we announced a new tool to compare individual characters in a pair of fonts side by side. Today, we’re introducing Poster Images, which allows you to easily see what a font looks like with different effects, on a variety of different backgrounds.

To start, visit the Google Web Fonts directory and select the Poster tab at the top.

Change the font size or the appearance of the poster to check out how different styles look. When you find a font you like, hover over it to see more details and add it to your collection.

We hope this makes choosing the right font easier and more fun!

Posted by Sang Tian, Software Engineering Intern

New Fonts, Early Access, and More

2012-08-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months, we’ve been busy adding support for web fonts to Google documents and Google presentations. Today, we’re adding seven font families in Google Web Fonts, a new tool to compare similar fonts, and an early access program to get feedback on non-latin scripts in development.

When you choose a new font, you want it to look good for all your readers, regardless of the platform or browser they’re using. To help make fonts look better in more places, we’re starting to hint more families in Google Web Fonts, thanks to the ttfautohint project, which automates this process. Amarante, Capriola, Courgette, and Quando were hinted using this tool.

Eagle Lake expands on our existing collection of calligraphic font styles, and you can use Metal Mania to bring out your inner guitarist. We’re also very excited to be including a special contribution from our friends over at Adobe - Source Sans Pro, their first open source type family.

As the number of fonts in Google Web Fonts continues to grow, it’s becoming harder to select the right font from among many potential choices. To make this process easier, you can now easily compare two fonts side by side using the new comparison tool. Just add a few fonts to your collection, select Review, and click on the Compare tab at the top.

You can then overlay glyphs from each font on top of each other, and use the slider to transition between fonts to see the differences between them more clearly.

Non-latin fonts can be more complex than latin fonts, both as designs and as font software, which often require more time to develop and polish. The designers of these fonts may not be native readers, and we’re hoping for your feedback to help them understand where their fonts need improvement. You can try them out by downloading them from the Google Web Fonts early access page.

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager

450+ new ways to make your Google presentations pop

2012-08-01T10:22:00.003-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Google Drive blog)

Good design is an important part of getting your point across in a presentation. Over time we’ve added a bunch of features to help you bring a little something extra to your decks, like slide transitions and animations, thousands of free stock photos, and a growing collection of templates.

Today, creating eye-catching presentations gets even easier, with more than 450 new fonts to choose from. (flip through the presentation below to see them in action)

To browse and select new fonts, click on Add fonts from the bottom of the fonts dropdown in the toolbar. This will take you to the menu of all available fonts, where you can pick the ones you want to use.

Any fonts that you select will get automatically added to your fonts list so it’s easy to find them later.

Plus, fonts that you’ve already added to Google documents will automatically appear in your presentations font list too.

So next time you're working on a presentation, jazz it up with some Calligrafitti, Indie Flower, Short Stack, or hundreds of other new choices.

Posted by Erin Rosenbaum, Software Engineer

Google documents, now with web fonts!

2012-05-02T11:12:00.001-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Google Docs Blog)

In the past month we’ve made updates both big and small to Google Docs, and today we’re announcing one more: web fonts in Google documents. Often the best way to get your point across is to present your idea in a creative, captivating way. Today, we added over 450 new fonts to Google documents to make it easier for you to add a little something extra to whatever you create.

To use these new fonts, click on the font menu and select “Add fonts” at the very bottom, which will take you to a menu of all the Google Web Fonts available.

Once you’ve selected new fonts, you’ll be able to select them from the font menu.

Whether you’re looking for the perfect font for your first comic book or fancy handwriting for your wedding invitations, we hope you try out the new fonts and create some eye-catching documents.

In addition to hundreds of new fonts, we have a lot of other exciting updates to report:

Google Drive launched as a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all your stuff.
There are now a few more options for inserting images in Docs, including inserting from Google Drive, searching for images from the LIFE Photo archive, or taking a snapshot with your webcam.
Charts in spreadsheets now has support for minor gridlines and options to customize the formats of axis labels
Accessibility in Docs got better with support for screenreaders in presentations and with the addition of NVDA to our list of supported screenreaders.
From File > Page setup... you can now set the default page size for your new documents.
It's now easier for speakers of right-to-left languages by automatically showing bidirectional controls when you type in a language that might use them.
Apps Script had many improvements, including

A new ScriptService for programmatically publishing your scripts and controlling when they run.
A new function to find the root folder of someone’s Drive.
An increase in the allowed attachment size in emails from 5MB to 25MB.
An increase in the size of docs files you can create from 2MB to 50MB.

There are now over 60 new templates in our template gallery.

Posted by Isabella Ip, Software Engineer

ttfautohint reaches its $30,000 funding target!

2012-04-06T16:02:00.002-07:00

The Google Web Fonts team would like to congratulate Werner Lemberg on reaching his $30,000 funding target for ttfautohint.

Here is a fun video that explains what the project is about:

As a true open source project, it has sought contributions from across the industry. Google Web Fonts, FontLab and many individuals have given the project financial support. This week the Extensis WebINK team announced they have enabled Werner to reach his goal:

blog.webink.com/webink/extensis-webink-funds-open-source-ttfautohint-better-fonts-on-screen

You can download a graphical user interface for GNU/Linux and Windows today, a command line tool for Mac OS X, and of course the source code, from the project homepage:

www.freetype.org/ttfautohint

Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts Team

Congratulations to All Designers of Tipos Latinos 2012!

2012-03-30T21:56:00.006-07:00

¡Felicitaciones a todos los diseñadores de Tipos Latinos 2012!

The Google Web Fonts team would like to extend our congratulations to all designers selected for the Tipos Latinos 2012 Biennial.

El equipo de Google Web Fonts felicita a todos los diseñadores seleccionados en la Bienal Tipos Latinos 2012.

We were looking forward to seeing the results of this prestigious review of work by typeface designers across Latin America because we have been working with many of them.

Tenemos muchas ganas de ver los resultados de este prestigioso evento de diseño tipográfico de Latinoamérica, porque nosotros estuvimos trabajando con muchos de ellos.

Around a quarter of the typefaces featured are available in Google Web Fonts today – or very soon:

Aproximadamente un cuarto de las tipografías seleccionadas ya están disponibles en Google Web Fonts o lo estarán muy pronto:

Buenard, by Gustavo J. Ibarra (Argentina)

Petrona, by Ringo Romei (Argentina)

Ruluko, by A. Sanfelippo, A. Díaz y M. Hernández (Argentina, Colombia, Colombia)

Unna, by Jorge de Buen (Mexico)

Acme, by Juan Pablo del Peral (Argentina)

Macondo, by John Vargas Beltrán (Colombia)

Rufina, by Martín Sommaruga (Uruguay)

Abril, by José Scaglione y Veronika Burian (Argentina)

Alegreya, by Juan Pablo del Peral (Argentina)

Almendra, by Ana Sanfelippo (Argentina)

Andada, by Carolina Giovagnoli (Argentina)

Bitter, by Sol Matas (Argentina)

Delius, by Natalia Raices (Argentina)

Rosarivo, by Pablo Ugerman (Argentina)

The Alegreya family (including its Small Caps sister family) received a "Mención de Excelencia" (Recognition of Excellence) – congratulations Juan Pablo!

La familia Alegreya (que incluye una familia Small Caps) recibió la única "Mención de Excelencia" que en esta edición entregó el Jurado. ¡Felicitaciones, Juan Pablo!

You can read more about Tipos Latinos at tiposlatinos.com.

Pueden ver más sobre Tipos Latinos en tiposlatinos.com.

Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts

Publicado por Dave Crossland, Consultor tipográfico, Google Web Fonts

Google Web Fonts is integrated into Network Solutions’ Website Builder Tool

2012-02-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

The Google Web Fonts team is proud to announce that Network Solutions have integrated our service with their Website Builder Tool.

Network Solutions is one of the largest domain registrars. When you register a domain with them, you can quickly and easily create a website using the Website Builder Tool. In the Page Editor, you can simply select a font from a drop down list in the typography palette for any text area:

Get a domain from Network Solutions, create your site and you’re good to go with web typography!

Read more at the Network Solutions blog.

Are you a web developer, looking to present our growing collection to your users? If so, you should definitely check out the Google Web Fonts Developer API, which allows convenient programmatic access to a list of all fonts in the directory.

Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts

Web Fonts, now more compressed

2012-01-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

One of Google’s core principles is that "fast is better than slow", and the Web Fonts team takes that to heart. We’re always looking for ways to make web fonts load faster, and that’s doubtless a key factor in our rapid user adoption. Today, we are announcing a new way to make web fonts smaller and faster, in collaboration with the Monotype Imaging Fonts.com Web Fonts team. Google Web Fonts now implements Monotype Imaging’s MicroType Express compression format, which yields an approximate 15% savings in file size over using gzip alone. This change will automatically speed up Google Web Fonts for Internet Explorer browsers (version 6 and up). We’re also actively working to offer improved compression with other modern browsers, including Google Chrome.

We’ve kept the interface simple, so designers don’t need to update their integrations in any way — we’ll automatically upgrade the CSS snippet and font files so that site designers and visitors get their fonts faster. We’ve done this for previous speed optimizations as well, such as automatically stripping the hints (metadata used for improving rendering quality on Windows) when serving fonts to Mac, iOS, and Android clients. We expect that most future optimizations will also be automatic and transparent.

Monotype Imaging has agreed to make MicroType Express available to the public at no cost; the license can be found at monotypeimaging.com/aboutus/mtx-license. We believe it’s friendly to both open source and proprietary implementations.

Today, we are also releasing an implementation of MicroType Express compression as part of the Embedded OpenType converter in the open-source sfntly library, adding to the existing WOFF compression. The sfntly library, developed by the Google Internationalization Engineering team, serves as the core conversion engine in Google Web Fonts for subsetting, hint stripping, and related functions of our dynamic serving path. We hope that all web font services, as well as people hosting their own web fonts, will use sfntly to optimize font serving across the web.

We are proud to be working with Monotype Imaging, and we look forward to learning more from designers, users, sites and other partners to advance the state of web fonts together!

Posted by Raph Levien, Engineer, Google Web Fonts

Extensis plug-in now supports Google Web Fonts

2011-11-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Do you use Photoshop® to design your website? Looking to spice it up with cool web fonts like Lobster or Dancing Script? Well, now you can do that and more (with over 280 font families) using Google Web Fonts right in Photoshop®.

That’s because, today, Extensis has added support for Google Web Fonts to their Web Font Plug-in for Photoshop®. Now, the entire catalog of Google Web Fonts is only a click or two away!

In addition to making the entire catalog of Google Web Fonts easily accessible, the plug-in takes advantage of the full power of Suitcase Fusion 3. This means that any web fonts you choose to use for your designs are automatically kept up to date, and fully activated as needed. For example, this makes it easy for you to send your Photoshop® files around to your coworkers and not worry whether they have the font(s) installed — it will "just work"!

The free Extensis Web Font Plug-in for Photoshop® can be downloaded now, from: webfontplugin.com

Posted by David Kuettel, Technical Lead, Google Web Fonts

Interview with Polish Type Designer Ania Kruk

2011-11-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

Ania Kruk is a type designer from Poznan, Poland. She currently lives and works in Barcelona and Google Web Fonts is proud to include her first published typeface, Cookie.

Q: What is your background as a designer, and how did you become interested in type design?

Actually, I'm still a beginner in the world of type design: I have drawn letters for only 2 years. I've recently graduated from the University of Arts in Poznan, Poland. Originally, I studied product design, but after 3 years I found myself more interested in graphics than in furniture.

So I took a one year break and moved to Barcelona, Spain, where I worked as an intern in Estudio Mariscal (which was quite an experience, as they were working on the 'Chico y Rita' movie at that time), and did a one-year Masters in Typography and Editorial Design at Eina, Escola de Disseny i Art.

When I came back to Poland for my last year of studies, I was 100% sure that I wanted to focus on type design.
And here I am now, 3 months after my graduation, with my first typeface to be published: Cookie :)

Q: What is your favourite part of the type design process, and why?

Generally, I'm interested in complex, narrative projects that require creating a whole from various elements (meaning: editorial design, information design, typography). Type Design is not about designing one letter, it's about creating a system: the alphabet.

I like the moment when you can start writing words and sentences with your letters, because then you can actually work on the flow and on the balance between the characters. For example, to make some of them more 'normal', transparent, in order to make others more distinctive or decorative.

Q: Designing a new typeface is a long journey. What inspires you to keep motivated throughout all the different stages?

For sure, Type Design is all about details, that an average user won't even notice, so you need to be patient to do this kind of work. I'd say I'm quite competitive, so when I see other peoples projects and I think 'Wow, that's so cool!', it get's me motivated ;) I spend an awful amount of time digging through the internet, checking out blogs, personal websites, etc.

Q: Can you recommend how other type designers can learn the skills involved in making type?

It's hard to say, because I'm still learning myself. But I'd say that calligraphy and drawing are essential to understanding the construction of the letters.

Q: What do you think could be improved about the type design process?

For me the hard part is hinting ;)

Q: What inspired you to create Cookie?

Cookie is a script typeface, based on brush calligraphy. It has a little bit of the 1950s look, that makes you think about all the beautiful ads and pin-ups from this time. It's sweet and friendly - but not too decorative. I tried to keep it simple and legible.

Q: Did you try to accomplish something specific with this typeface design, and did you succeed?

It's my first script typeface, so the whole design process was like discovering a new way of working. I wanted to create a typeface with a nice flow between the letters, and I wanted the letters to join in a natural way - that's the tough part, if you think about all the possible combinations between 26 lowercase characters. I hope it works ok...!

Q: What kinds of uses are most appropriate for this font?

Its clearly a display typeface, suitable more for titles than main texts. But it can be used for short texts, if you're aiming for a hand-written look. It will look good on an invitation, menu, recipe... poster, flyer or as a header of your blog :)

Q: What are your favourite fonts, and why?

Well, I don't really have any favourites. It all depends on the context and what you want to communicate: a typeface can be perfect for one kind of a job, but look horrible when misused.

There are some surprises: I've always considered Mistral by Roger Excoffon as very kitsch and ugly, until I've seen it in on the opening credits for the movie 'Drive'. It looked just great, combined with the music and pictures.

Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts

Kickstart new fonts!

2011-10-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

Google Web Fonts is proud to announce a new funding experiment, using Kickstarter - a popular way to fund creative projects.

Each month there are many typeface designs proposed to our team for publication and financial support. But we can’t support everything! Even with the best quality proposals, it can be hard to decide about those that are quite similar to ones already published. Really the best judge of which web fonts you want to use is you!

So we invited the designers of three recent proposals to try out Kickstarter and see how it works for font projects. There are some fun rewards for pledging a contribution so click through to see the details!

Folk

First is Marcello Magalhaes’ Folk, which transforms the vernacular lettering of Sao Paulo into a font. Already popular as web font, it has been used by The Independent Film Channel and Mozilla - but it only includes an uppercase set of glyphs, and not all the symbols and accents that Google Web Fonts requires. For this project, Marcello will complete the font to the Basic Latin character set, and has designed a poster to go with the new release.

Fast Brush Script

Fast Brush Script is the working name for a font by Pablo Impallari. Pablo's first font, Lobster, is one of the most popular Google Web Fonts, having been served over 2 billion times.

Pablo is offering a very unusual reward - choosing the name! Normally the name of a font is sacred to the designer, but Pablo is opening up the opportunity for corporate patronage of his work. The development name 'Fast Brush Script' reflects the core concept of the typeface. This font is currently in an early development stage with the lowercase letters now fully prototyped, as you can see above, and you can download the current develop version from the Kickstarter project page.

Montserrat

Montserrat is an extremely high quality sans serif text typeface by Julieta Ulanovsky. Advancing substantially during her studies at the prestigious University of Buenos Aires' Masters degree in Typeface Design, the design revives the historical type of the Montserrat neighbourhood where Julieta lives and works.

This genre of type has been a popular trend in recent years and this typeface in particular stands out with its excellent quality. Setting it apart are the set of alternative caps, which add a little fun to a very functional text typeface.

The Google Web Fonts team has already contributed directly to these Kickstarter projects, and we hope you will also become a backer for all three projects as well - let's hope the type designers will be paid far beyond their minimum funding goals!

Update: When fonts are made available in Google Web Fonts, all their source files are also available from the 'Google Font Directory' Google Code Project in a Mercurial version control system, under a free, libre and open source license - typically the SIL Open Font License.

Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts

Scary Fonts For Halloween

2011-10-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

Halloween is here - what a fun time of year! The pumpkins are carved and the seeds are roasting in the oven, a chill is in the air, and all the little monsters are busy planning their best tricks and hoping for excellent treats. With all the trick or treating & costume planning, why not add some Halloween spirit to your website as well? We're happy to publish 4 new, fun, and scary fonts this week that are sure to provide a spoooooky feel for your website!

We would love to see how creative you can get with these fonts - please let us know where you are using them in the comments of this post, and we'll send out a Google Web Fonts T-shirt for our favorite!

Creepster by Sideshow

Its ghastly! Its gory! Its gruesomely gleeful! It's Creepster Caps, the blood-curdling new font from Squid and Sideshow. This fright-filled font has so many alternates its like stitching together your own monster every time you use it. Creepster Caps: perfect for all of your grisly graphic needs!

Eater Caps by Typomondo

Eater Caps is a display font infected by the darkest of rare disease that slowly spreads at night while the webfont user sleeps.

Nosifer Caps by Typomondo

Nobody knows where Nosifer Caps comes from. It emanates a dark stench as it drips from the internet.

Butcherman Caps by Typomondo

Butcherman Caps is a zombified display font, hacked and chopped and left for dead, yet still crawling!

Posted by Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts

Integrate Google Web Fonts selection into your apps

2011-09-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

We’ve received lots of requests from developers for a dynamic feed of the most recent web fonts offered via Google Web Fonts. Such a feed would ensure that you can incorporate Google Web Fonts into applications and menus dynamically, without the need to hardcode any URLs. The benefits of this approach are clear. As Google Web Fonts continues to add fonts, these fonts can become immediately available within your applications and sites.

To address this need, we’ve built the Google Web Fonts Developer API, which provides a list of fonts offered via Google Web Fonts. Results can be sorted by alpha, date added, popularity, number of styles available, and trending (which is a measure of fonts growing rapidly in usage). Check out the documentation to get started.

Some developers have helped us test this new API over the last few months, and the results are already public. Take a look at TypeDNA’s photoshop plugin as well as Faviconist, an app that makes generating favicons as simple as can be, and Google Web Fonts Families, a list of Google Web Fonts that have more than one style.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Posted by Jeremie Lenfant-Engelmann, Engineer, Google Web Fonts

The new Google Web Fonts - Now fully launched

2011-07-12T12:00:00.001-07:00

At the end of June, we announced an experimental interface for the Google Web Fonts interface. Today, we’re pleased to offer this new interface to all users, by default. From now on, you can simply visit www.google.com/webfonts to use the new layout and functionality. The old interface will no longer be accessible.

There are a few things we’ve added since we initially launched the interface. We’d like to call attention to one of those features in particular. We’ve added the ability to bookmark your collection. Simply click the “Bookmark your collection” link from the top right of any page. This will give you a link that you can share with friends or coworkers to quickly share your selection.

There’s more to this than meets the eye. The bookmark will depend on which page you are currently on. For example, if you grab the bookmark link from the Review step, your link will forward to a page that displays your selection in the Review step. Similarly, if you grab the link from the Use step, the link will forward to the Use step. In this way, you can selectively choose which step in the font selection process you’d like to link to.

We hope you enjoy this new interface. We’re grateful for all the feedback we’ve received over the past 2 weeks, and we aim to continually improve the Google Web Font selection experience based on everything we hear. Keep it coming!

Posted by Marc Tobias Kunisch, Webmaster, Google Web Fonts

The New Face of Google Web Fonts

2011-06-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

As we talked about at our Google IO session, the Google Web Fonts team has been hard at work designing a new font browsing experience for www.google.com/webfonts. Today, this new interface is available for you to try! Just click here, or you can click the New Version link at the top of our current product. The interface has a lot of the features you've requested, including the ability to preview your own custom text, the ability to compare fonts side-by-side, as well as an indication of page load times.

To arrive at the final design, our team spent significant time researching how users pick which fonts to use on your web pages, blogs and projects. Based on our findings, we sketched out dozens of possible ways to design our font browsing experience. After many iterations of testing with our test users, we believe we've arrived at a font browsing experience you'll really like.

Our primary goal with this new interface is to ensure that as the library of free, open source web fonts grows, you can still browse the library quickly and easily. To accomplish this goal, we've introduced the concept of a collection, which is similar to the concept of a shopping cart on your favorite ecommerce website. Just add fonts to your collection, and then proceed through the Choose, Review and Use steps. During this process, you can compare them side by side, experience with them in sample layouts using the new Test Drive feature, and finally copy and paste the HTML snippet to use these fonts in your pages.

During our user studies, we noticed that when users proceeded to select a font, they have a certain use case in mind. In other words, they knew they were looking for a font for a logo, for a heading or for body text. So we designed 3 different viewing modes - Word, Sentence and Paragraph - to facilitate font browsing in each of these cases. By default, you are in Sentence mode, which shows about a sentence length of preview text. But when you switch to Word mode, the font preview size increases, and the font cards shrink so you can see more fonts on the screen. When you switch to Paragraph mode, the text size will shrink significantly, and you'll see the fonts used in sample paragraphs instead.

Second, the new interface allows for easy font browsing by weight. Just use the thickness filter in the left hand panel. Looking for an Ultra black font? How about Ultra Light? Look no further. This feature relies on the font technology of TypeDNA. The Google Web Fonts are analyzed to determine each font's specific boldness characteristic. In this way, you see a consistent level of boldness across the fonts in your filter, regardless of how the font designer originally categorized them.

The new interface introduces the Test Drive module, which allows users to visualize their font collection in a sample layout. In this way, you can see what your fonts look like in practice, before embedding them in the final product. To take your fonts for a test drive, click on the Test Drive tab from within the Review step.

And finally, the new interface has a final step, Use. Here you'll find an indication of page load time based on your font selections. It's important to remember that the more fonts you use on your page, the more font data needs to be downloaded before your users can use your pages. Although Google Web Fonts is highly optimized to serve web fonts quickly to any user in the world, it's always important to request only the font families and styles you intend to use on your pages.

Sometime in the next few weeks, this interface will replace the current homepage at www.google.com/webfonts. But until then you can give it a spin and let us know what you think.

Posted by Jeremie Lenfant-Engelmann, Engineer, Google Web Fonts

Interview with Argentinian Type Designer Pablo Impallari

2011-06-13T06:21:00.000-07:00

Pablo Impallari's Lobster font is one of the most popular fonts on the web. Its exciting design, excellent OpenType features, constant development and inclusion in the launch of Google Web Fonts last year have made it a favourite for millions of people.

Pablo continues to actively design and release his own typefaces and help other designers learn and publish new fonts. You can see all his fonts and read more about Pablo on his Google Profile.

Q: What inspired you to create the Dancing Script font?

I love scripts, both formal and casual. For Dancing Script, my inspiration came from the many casual scripts of the 1950s. "Murray Hill" and "Mistral" were the two main references.

Q: Did you try to accomplish something specific with this font, and did you succeed?

I wanted to create an informal flowing script where the letters bounce up and down the baseline. And to keep it friendly and legible at the same time.

Q: What kinds of documents are most appropriate for this font?

Any place where Arial and Times New Roman look boring. Informal invitations, party flyers, Happy Birthday cards... you name it! Its better to use it together with sans-serif fonts, so the spontaneous effect is enhanced through visual contrast.

Q: Designing a new font is a long journey. What inspires you to keep motivated throughout all the different stages?

If you look at the whole picture, thinking that you have to complete more than 200 glyphs, that can be overwhelming. But if you goes one letter at the time you get little "Eureka moments" each time you get finish a glyph. That motivates me to move on to the next one. Also, being able to write more words every time a new letter is added feels fantastic.

Q: What is your favourite part of the type design process, and why?

Designing the lowercase letters. Don't really know why... maybe because this is where everything else is defined.

Q: Can you recommend how other type designers can learn the skills involved in making a font like this?

Doyald Young's books are mind blowing. I encourage everyone to buy them. Sadly Doyald passed away recently and he surely will be missed!

Q: What are your favourite fonts, and why?

So many...

Young Galland and Young Finesse from Doyald Young, they are just perfect!

Montague Script from Stephen Rapp, its a truly lively script.

Pooper Black and Sneacy from Michael Clark, for the same reason.

Cabazon from Jim Parkinson, a legible, friendly Blackletter.

Tyffany and Ronaldson, for they spikey caps.

I can continue forever... There is always something to love in almost every typeface.

Q: What do you think could be improved about the type design process?

Hinting TrueType fonts is very hard to do. On Type 1 or OpenType-CFF fonts, that was not really a big problem since their hinting is much easier and looks much better. But since TrueType fonts are coming back for the web, TrueType hinting is important once again. This is my new reason to hate IE. Having a nice TrueType autohinter would be great!

Posted by Dawn Shaikh, Senior User Experience Researcher, Google Web Fonts

Streamline your web font requests. Introducing “text=”

2011-04-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Oftentimes, when you want to use a web font on your website or application, you know in advance which letters you’ll need. This often occurs when you’re using a web font in a logo or heading.

That’s why we’re introducing a new beta feature to the Google Web Fonts API. The feature is called “text=”, and allows you to specify which characters you’ll need. To use it, simply add “text=” to your Google Web Fonts API requests. Here’s an example:

<link
  href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Special+Elite&text=MyText'
  rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

Google will optimize the web font served based on the contents of this parameter. For example, if you only require a few letters for a logo, such as “MyText”, Google will return a font file that is optimized to those letters. Typically, that means Google will return a font file that contains only the letters you requested. Other times, Google might return a more complete font file, especially when that will lead to better caching performance.

The “text=” parameter has the potential to dramatically cut down web font file size. In some preliminary studies, web fonts can be cut from 35k down to just 5k (or even smaller), if only short strings of text are required. If you have a longer string, you can shorten the request by removing duplicate characters, as the order of characters in the string doesn’t matter.

The effect of this feature is even more pronounced on mobile devices, where connection speeds are limited. Using the text= parameter, you can ensure your users will have a great, quick loading experience.

We’re happy to say that the feature also works for international fonts. There’s no need to also specify the subset= parameter, as text= has access to all the characters in the original font. To access Unicode characters, use standard technique of url-encoding the UTF-8 representation of the string. Therefore, ¡Hola! is represented as: text=%c2%a1Hola! .

Enjoy!

Posted by Raph Levien, Engineer, Google Web Fonts

Using UX Research to make Google Web Fonts even better!

2011-03-14T16:16:00.001-07:00

Late in 2010, our team spent hours learning more about our users through surveys and traditional usability methods. In our survey, users spoke up loud and clear - “We want more fonts!” We are working hard to add new fonts with 35 font families added since December. What did users like best about the Google Font Directory? It is easy to use, available, dependable, and it has decent font choices and features... all at a great price - free!

What new features would you like to see added to the Google Font Directory?
More fonts! (More in general, international fonts, basic fonts, more weights/variants, & specific fonts)

What, if anything, do you like best about the Google Font Directory?

During our usability sessions, we were able to see many types of users interact with our web fonts. We identified major user groups and documented their typical workflow. The research we conducted took us to the brainstorming table. Our whole team spent an entire day brainstorming goals and priorities based on user research. The brainstorming day was followed by a design sprint in our Seattle office. Four talented Google designers and other team members spent five full days working through hundreds of mocks and design concepts. Stay tuned for the results of this effort!

So what’s next? More user testing, of course! Our engineers and user experience team have been busy working on ideas from the design sprint, and we are ready to get some feedback. If you would like to help us, sign up here!

Brainstorming involved lots of discussions & lots of stickies!

Hard at work in the design sprint.

Sign up to help us make Google Web Fonts even better!
http://goo.gl/1hmDN

posted by Dawn Shaikh, Senior User Experience Researcher, Google Web Fonts

Introducing Expletus Sans

2011-03-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

Expletus Sans was added to Google Web Fonts this week.

Jasper de Waard, born in 1996, first came in contact with the beauty of type design when he was 10, and developed his skills as a type and graphic designer ever since. He was born and raised in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and went to a bilingual high school there, training him to read and write English fluently and have a more international focus. He is currently in his third year, three years before his exam. He hopes to continue his practices in the fields of type and graphic design after he finishes school and release many more typefaces in the future.

His love for the tiny details, balance in proportions and urge for perfection made him into what he is today. However, the great support and feedback from people on several forums can't be denied as a great source of inspiration and evaluation material, giving him a greater understanding of the method behind type design. He is also available for custom type work and identity design.

Q: What inspired you to create the font?

It was a single x in a logo that started me off, but it was largely a search for my own opinions in type design so in a way you could say Expletus Sans was 'self-inspired'.

Q: Did you try to accomplish something specific with this font, and did you succeed?

I wanted to create a look that was completely different from everything I knew. I feel like I definitely succeeded in this.

Q: What kinds of documents are most appropriate for this font?

It could be used for anything that needs a good dose of elegance. I would personally love to see it in identity work.

Q: Designing a new font is a long journey. What inspires you to keep motivated throughout all the different stages?

Ones I put my mind to something, I finish it. With designing a typeface I feel like I have no choice. Once I've started, I get obsessed with perfection. Apart from that, it was the many great responses I got on the internet on my work that kept me motivated.

Q: What is your favourite part of the type design process, and why?

The very beginning. Trying to work out the basic lines of a concept and see the skeleton of the typeface emerge. It pleases me most, because it's the fastest and most rewarding process. After that it's months of tiny little details.

Q: Can you recommend how other type designers can learn the skills involved in making a font like this?

Start drawing or straight on the computer and post your work on as many type-related websites as you can think of. Take your time to read through feedback and never dismiss an idea before you have seen it. Don't give yourself a deadline. You'll never make it in time.

Q: What are your favourite fonts, and why?

All fonts by Robert Slimbach, because of his brilliant eye for perfection. Dolly, because of it's comfortable, yet fresh feel. The Centro superfamily, for excellence throughout all styles. Many more, for even more different reasons.

Q: What do you think could be improved about the type design process?

Multiple Master should be used more extensively and automated processes like iKern are underrated.

Q: How do you feel about publishing your font as an open source project?

It just happened to me. I never particularly thought about it, until you knocked at my door. It seems like a good way to start and increases the chance of seeing my work in use. I feel like it gives me the chance to make the world just a little bit more beautiful and let others enjoy that too, without charge.

Posted by Dave Crossland

Google Web Fonts - New Stats, New Name

2011-02-17T23:29:00.000-08:00

Web fonts are taking off in a big way. Back in November, the Google Web Fonts team first published stats on the rapid adoption curve of the Google Font API. Then, Google was serving approximately 17 million daily font requests[1] to roughly 400,000 unique websites[2].

And today, less than 4 months later, we’re excited to announce that Google Web Fonts has since grown by another 290%. The Google Font API now serves roughly 50 million daily requests[1], across roughly 800,000 unique websites[2]. This equates to over 30% month over month growth. Amazingly, these stats don’t factor in caching, so the actual views of Google Web Fonts may far exceed these numbers.

Growth picked up considerably after Google Web Fonts announced over 20 new font families for the New Year. From these numbers, it’s clear that web fonts are quickly becoming part of the standard practice of web developers, game developers, and bloggers.

To make it easier for all, we’re also pleased to announce a re-branding of the “Google Font Directory” to “Google Web Fonts.” The service is now available via the simple, memorable URL: www.google.com/webfonts.

Web fonts are on their way to changing the very fabric of the web, and this is very exciting to Google.

Here’s to a beautiful web!

Posted by David Wurtz, Product Manager, Google Web Fonts

[1] A request is a single call to the Google Font API for one or more fonts.
[2] We count a unique website as unique domains, except that “www” subdomains are not counted. For example, www.myblog.com and myblog.com would count as one domain. However, sam.myblog.com and sally.myblog.com would count as two domains.