The updated version of Google Web Fonts was updated this week in what should go down as one of the defining projects of web design for many years.
The whole project has been rolling along for a while and has slowly been gathering pace but the announcement at Google I/O 2011 of the new online directory was one of the standout talks. David Wurtz (@davidwurtz), Raph Levien (@raphlinus) and Darren Glenister (@typedna) presented an amazing web based repository which makes ‘Font Book’ look like yesterday’s news.
They haven’t just improved on the old font directory. They’ve given designers and developers the ultimate tool in selecting the best font for your project.
There are filters based on the type of font it is and they go much further than the run of the mill serif or sans-serif of old. They include international fonts and filters based on widths. If you’re like me, you’ve probably organised all of your fonts on your computer yourself. Well, Google Font Directory goes that one step further.
It is likely to be the first stop for any part of design work in the future.
What is the point of branding a company if you have to use fall back fonts for the website. Too long we have struggled with a handful of fonts, as of today, the Google Font Directory contains over 150 latin fonts and they aim to get up to 1000 by 2012.
You can add your fonts to a collection, which is a kind of ‘lightbox’ functionality. Then you can compare them side by side.
Once you’ve determined the perfect font for your project. You can grab the code, add it to your header and shazam! Exciting web fonts! Even if your copy is dry!
Better than that, if you’re only using it for your new ‘font only’ logo, you can customise the code to only include those specific characters to speed up the font even further!
This is such an exciting project, I can’t wait for even more fonts to be added!
Watch the keynote from Google I/O here:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTX1lU97z08
