Typophile

Help Understanding Google Web Fonts

kylec

Hi everyone -

Apologies for what may be a basic question, but my company has been evaluating TypeKit for the past month and I'm trying to figure out if we can use Google Font API instead. I have a couple of questions I was hoping folks might be able to help answer.

We've been wanting to use TypeKit in the hopes that we'll be able to use a variety of typefaces across a portfolio of sites that we manage and it's attractiveness up until this point has been that it provides the largest library of high quality typefaces in a way that protects the foundries rights as well as offers the most cross browser support.

That said, if we can use the Google Font API to access non-open source fonts that we buy from foundries such as Mark Simonson, Veer, Village, etc., it might be cheaper and more cost effective for us to buy the fonts and use them this way, rather than pay for the enterprise TypeKit account.

Specifically, I see that the Google Font API has a "custom" module that allows you to reference fonts on other servers. My understanding is that you still have to be referencing fonts that have a web embedding license in order to use the custom module, and that you can't just use any standard font that you've purchased.

Is this correct?

Also, while I'm asking, does using the Google Font API automatically convert your TTF typeface to other formats such as EOT in order to display it in IE browsers or do I need to provide links to an EOT packaged typeface on our servers?

Thanks in advance. Any help navigating this subject would be greatly appreciated.

best,
kyle

Frode Bo Helland

I don’t think I’ve seen any commercial foundries allowing such use. And yes, converting a commercial font to EOT is most likely a violation of the license agreement (EULA).

With Fontfont Webfonts you can upload the files to your own web server, but they demand a license per domain, per business. Also: they only offer EOT and WOFF files, which isn’t completely cross browser yet.

Si_Daniels

I think web font services can offer two distinct advantages over "host your own" solutions.

1. Make commercial fonts available
2. Provide on-the-fly enhancements when improved (hinted) versions of fonts become available, or when new platforms and browsers emerge.

The downside would seem to be having someone else host the fonts, and losing a level of control.

So unless I'm missing something, the Google service doesn't provide item 1 and doesn't mention 2. So I really don't see the point of it vs freeware "host you own" sets from operations like Font Squirrel.

My guess is that this was developed for Google's own use (in ads) or perhaps for things like Googledocs (where it will be used to host licensed commercial fonts), and Raph is just sharing Google’s engineering cleverness with the world.

Richard Fink

@sii

Number one on your list *is* available: in addition to whatever Google is offering in their repository, you can add Typekit's offerings (using your Typekit account), as well.
Not sure how it would work with anybody else's product. Haven't had a chance to fully absorb all of it.

>So I really don't see the point of it vs
>freeware "host you own" sets from operations
>like Font Squirrel.

I am assuming (only assuming, don't know for sure) that Google is using a CDN so speed of delivery is an issue. Also - and this is almost sure to be the case - Google's servers will already be set up to gzip and add appropriate cache-headers where appropriate. So, if you're unsure of what you need to do server-side to host effectively, Google is providing that.

>My guess is that this was developed for Google's own use or perhaps for things like >Googledocs, and Raph is just sharing Google’s engineering cleverness with the world.

Well, if you ain't at least got engineering cleverness, what have you got?
I'm guessing differently. The whole thing has been set up as a big open source project and there's a lot of enthusiasm behind it.
But it's still in the cradle right now and only time will tell.

@kylec

I would contact Garrick Van Buren at Kernest.com - the open source font hosting service. He will probably be able to provide you with exactly what you need, even if it's just sound advice. http://kernest.com
garrick[at]kernest.com

raph

In its current state, the Google Font API only works with the fonts we're hosting, which are all open source. The WebFont Loader library (written in JavaScript) has modules that will load fonts from other providers, including Typekit.

For the fonts we host, we automatically generate EOT, with more formats coming. We will be improving hinting, spacing, and other technical aspects of our fonts, and all these improvements should just work when you use our API.

We are using Google infrastructure for content distribution. Without getting into specifics, it's pretty good, and we're doing all the things you'd expect to optimize performance.

We definitely built this to serve both the world (as an open source project) and Google applications, including the new Spreadsheet Forms themes, and of course we're excited about the future of the project.

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