Traditionally, when designing a website only certain fonts were available for use. These fonts earned the title “web safe fonts” because these fonts were installed on almost everyone’s computer. So back in the day, web designers and developers were limited to a list of boring, standard fonts. Some of these fonts included classics such as:
New York Times Impact Lucida Console
Palatino Linotype Georgia Courier New
As you can imagine, this made for quite a dull user experience and was somewhat depressing for website designers as there was little room for typographical creativity.
Out With the Old, In With the New
But as all things go in life, things have changed and the state of website typography is quite different and very exciting! With font-serving applications such as Google Web Fonts and Typekit, the race is on to give a little bit of life to your website copy.
By utilizing such these font-serving applications, which are free to use with a few limitations, creating a beautiful website that uses rich typography is not in the distant future anymore… the time to incorporate beautiful web typography is now!