In the past, designing a website was limited to the most basic font types available across both Mac and PC platforms. The only way to include unique fonts as part your website design was to create an image for every custom text element you needed. This was, of course, a very time consuming and cumbersome task. It also affected the download time of your site. In recent years, the ability to include custom fonts has become available, opening the doors for more flexibility and creativity in your font selection.
Font Squirrel, launched in 2009, and provides what is called an @font-face kit. Without going into technical details, an @font-face kit allows you to load a specific font file via CSS, that each web browser will recognize so that you your custom fonts will render correctly across all browsers. This significantly cuts down on the development time, and improves your website’s performance.
Font Squirrel allows you to download hundreds of pre-packaged @font-face kits for free – that include multiple font formats, CSS and HTML code. You can then incorporate these elements in your website project. If you own fonts, you can also use their @font-face kit generator to develop your existing fonts. This is especially useful for businesses that have specific font needs to align with their corporate branding.
Their pre-packaged kits cover many different styles of fonts, so there’s bound to be one that fits the style of your project.
As an interactive designer, Bart’s responsibilities include website design, development and programming along with the implementation of interactive media. A graduate of Northern Michigan University, he previously worked at Bearingpoint and as a web developer for Shopko Corporation. Bart has done significant freelance web development, taking many websites from concept to layout to programming and completion.
