The debate around the use of fonts in web design is once again emerging with vigour. A proposal for a fonts working group is now under discussion at the W3C. You can read Jeffrey Zeldman’s account of the meeting here.

It’s worth reading the minutes of the initial meeting which was held on Thursday 23 October. They include a condensed account of the discussion between a small but an interesting sample of individuals from the font industry which included Bitstream, Microsoft and Monotype as well as big internet companies such as Opera and Mozilla.

The meeting included a discussion of Microsoft’s EOT (Embedded OpenType) versus raw fonts, which I have posted about before here. Bert Bos, style activity lead and co-creator of CSS, summarised the relevant pros and cons discussed. These are the major concerns:

1. CSS provides a mechanism for embedding real fonts on your website, and some browsers support it, but its use probably violates your licensing agreement with the type foundry, and may also cause security problems on an end-user’s computer.

2. Microsoft’s EOT (based on the same standard CSS mechanism) works harder to avoid violating your licensing agreement, and has long worked in Internet Explorer, but is not supported in other browsers, is not foolproof vis-a-vis type foundry licensing rules, and may also cause PC security problems.

The proposed fonts working group hopes to navigate the technical and business problems of providing real fonts on the web but whatever proposal or solution it comes up with will be fraught will controversy. The concerns of small foundries and individual type designers versus the really big companies such as Adobe and Microsoft will undoubtedly clash. However, in light of what has happened with the music and movie industries, and the rampant pirating of fonts that currently exists, is it realistic to think a DRM model will work? From the perspective of web designers, developers and users, the freedom to use any font will definitely envigorate (for better and worse) the presentation of content on the web. Good design and typography will emerge where it always does and mediocre tat will continue to flourish in parallel. That’s the beauty of democracy on the web.

On a serious note though, it should focus designers to think critically about which fonts are really suitable for screen and why? And in turn, hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of the screen typography and its related design principles.

There is something kind of strange about viewing pixels from the future. Pixels are crude, and although screens are becoming sharper with higher resolutions, rendering type with them is difficult.

Hoefler and Frere Jones have this interesting picture on their blog, its an example of type in a Renaissance ‘lace book’ from La Vera Perfettione del Disegno di varie sorte di ricami, an embroidery guide by Giovanni Ostaus published in 1567. It looks just like a low-res bitmap.

Jonathan Hoefler has this to say: It’s likely that the pixel’s final and most enduring role will be a shabby one, serving as an out-of-touch visual cliché to connote “the digital age.”

I finally got an iPhone! It was worth waiting for, though there a few niggly UI things that I have to get used to. Its a must have from a UI design perspective. Creative Review has picked up some of the latest additions to the ever increasing list of new iPhone apps, and two happen to be type related.

Firstly, is the FontViewer by Thomas Podewils at osXwerk.de. It is a fairly basic reference tool for graphic designers: it lists the system fonts found on Apple computers and allows you to examine a type sampler for each font. You can view different sizes using the zoom slider. There’s great potential for this application if you consider it in the context of something like Typophile’s TypeID online resource/forum or Myfonts’ What the font. Imagine if users could upload an image (taken with the iPhone camera) of a font that would then be identified by the app.

On a totally different note is a second type related app by Andreas Muller called For All Seasons. This is a typo animation based loosely on the seasons. It won the Toyko TDC Grand Prix Award in 2005. Muller has now resurrected the work and ported it to the iPhone. Its a quirky piece but it shows off the beauty and surprise of dynamic letterforms when liberated from the traditional page. Its not so much useful as engaging to look at and interesting to muse over.

Everyone thinks it won’t happen to them. Well it did. This site was hacked and officially flat-lined in Google analytics. Yikes! Anyway, its temporarily fixed, but it does mean that I will have to make some significant changes behind the scenes, which is time consuming. Send me a mail if you notice anything strange. Also, watch out anyone who is using WordPress as the problem seems to have been fairly rampant, its well documented on the boards.