I must confess that I am a type junkie. I actually like watching the title credits at the beginning of a movie and trying to guess what font they used and I get outraged when I see bad kerning, especially on huge billboard signs (I mean, come on, the type is 10 feet high and you didn’t notice that huge gap between the P and e?!) My husband doesn’t get it, but then he’s a lawyer. And I know that are much more pressing problems in the world than my crusade against terrible kerning, but it’s a quirk of being a designer I guess. I have spent so many years immersed in the world of typography that I just don’t understand when a non-designer doesn’t see what I do.
My years of designing in the print world have made me a “Type A” personality when it comes to type, which is why I was so reluctant to jump on board the web design train until now. I hated that there were so many limitations on typography when you design for the web. I had no control over what typeface your computer might bring up on the screen when you viewed my web page. What if the only font you had was Comic Sans? Ugh…the humanity!
Then I was turned on to Google web fonts (www.google.com/webfonts). Finally there was a place where I could go and peruse a large selection of fonts that will work specifically for web design. When I use a Google web font, I know that what I have created in my design will be what you see on your computer screen. Our web programmers love it too because Google also generates the code to use for each font which makes their job easier, so it’s a win-win all around. Those people at Google are geniuses I tell you!
I highly encourage all you type-lovers out there to check it out for your next web site design project. It still doesn’t combat the bad kerning tragedies that still take place every day, but it does help a type junkie like me cope a little better in the web design world.
