Web Fonts

Have you tried web fonts yet? If not, I encourage you to do so as it's easy to try and FREE too.

Here's How To Try Google Web Fonts

First you'll need to go to Google Web Fonts to find a font you want to try. When you have one selected, you can follow the directions on the site, or just do the following:

Step 1
Add a link in your head section that points to the font you want to use like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Font+Name">

The Font+Name is replaced with the name of the font you want to use.

Step 2
Add a style in your site stylesheet that indicates which selector you want to use the font on, like this:

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

Again, the 'Font Name' is replaced with the name of the font you want to use. It's also recommended that as a fall back, you also use the generic style, like 'serif', 'sans-serif', or 'cursive' just in case something goes wrong. (You're probably used to doing this anyway. A very good habit.)

That's all there is to it. Test out your site and you should see the Element you've selected display in the font you chose. The only drawback I've run into is that sometimes, you'll see the Element displayed in the default font first, before it's displayed in your chosen font. This is anther good reason to use the generic font style, so that it more closely matches your intended style.

Recommended Reading

Here's an interesting article written by Mike Clark about how to bridge the gap between Right Brained creatives and Left Brained clients or business partners. Check it out!

Outlined

Here's a term that's thrown around a lot that may be confusing to some of you, so I thought I'd offer a quick explanation. Outlined is a term used in graphics production that commonly refers to fonts and the need for outlining them, or turning them into graphics, which means they aren't fonts anymore (even if they look like it). Most people don't have the tools to do this. If you want to, you'll need graphics applications like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop or if you have it, Quark might work. So what's the point of doing this? Fonts have been known to change to a font that is other than the one it was intended to be. Sometimes this isn't a big deal, but many times it is. In the case where IT IS A BIG DEAL, the solution that always works is to outline the font. Yes, there are other solutions, like buying the font so that you can have it on your machine, or having the file rewritten so that the fonts are embedded successfully in it. Yes these other solutions will often work too, but outlining will always work.

If you're taking files provided by your graphic designer and having trouble outputting them because the fonts are changing, you should ask them to provide a file with outlined fonts, and they should do this for free. I'm not trying to take away income from designers here, as it's my belief that designers should provide files to their clients that work regardless if it takes another step. That's called customer service and it should be included with every project.