More Web Font Options with Webtype.com

As you’re probably aware, services such as Typekit and Google Font Preview offer web designers more flexibility and options for web typography. Web safe fonts are slowly becoming a thing of the past. WebType.com is another new service offering “better type for better websites.” Webtype’s palette of fonts are created specifically for the web and their fonts are prepared with a specific target size in mind.

With previous flash-based or image replacement of font faces, there has been a tendency to change only the headings and sub-headings while leaving the main body text in a “web safe” font. Roger Black, type designer said:

Webtype is the first service that offers web fonts tuned for reading at small sizes while at the same time providing web designers with an interesting choice of typefaces

You can browse fonts by category (Serif, Sans Serif, Script, Decorative, Sign & Symbol) or by Intended use (Small Paragraphs, Medium Subheads, Large Headlines). To implement Webtype fonts, you copy a chunk of HTML which is provided when you choose your font, then paste it into your HTML. Once it’s pasted in you can specify the font in your website’s CSS.

All Webtype fonts can be tested free for 30 days. You can see the full set of plans here, but to give you an idea of the range of prices, a personal plan (for a blogger, for example) which offers 1GB of bandwidth per month for up to 30 thousand unique visitors costs from $10 per year. A Business plan for sites with heavy traffic offers 18 GB bandwidth per month for up to 600 thousand visitors per month costs from $100/year. Those prices are for individual Webtype fonts rather than a whole library of fonts.

Webtype is a collaboration of several experts in the field of type and technology,and includes Font Bureau, Ascender, Roger Black, Petr Van Blokland, and DevBridge.