Last Wednesday I attended my first Brighton SkillSwap, a monthly event where experts in the local  digital community volunteer to speak to a small group of their peers on a subject that interests them. The subject of interest last week was Web Typography.

Being a designer in the 21st century I am fully aware of designing for the digital age, but having been tutored and trained in the more traditional area of design for print, the subject of Web Typography is of real interest to me – particularly as I’ve got quite an obsessive love of fonts, grids and generally all things type related.

Like most designers, I thought that the fact that you can only use a core set of fonts in your web designs seemed very limiting – after all the choice you have when creating a print project is practically endless. But, after some very enlightening talks by Jon Tan and Richard Rutter it seems that there is light at the end of the tunnel for the art of Typography on the web.

The first half of the night was led by Jon Tan whose topic was 80% Science, 20% Art. Jon is a much respected purveyor of type on the web, and took us through his thoughts and theories on the subject. These included the correct use of italics (not obliques), through to how he goes about compiling a web design stemming from logical grids based on  The Golden Ratio, and CSS styles referencing the Fibonacci Number Sequence. Most print designers are familiar with grid systems so applying similar principals to the web is something that should appeal to a lot of designers out there.

I enjoyed Jon’s talk immensely and could listen to him for hours, but then again I would happily discuss x-heights, counters and glyphs with anyone who wants to listen, let alone spend hours playing ‘guess the font’!

The second half of the night, led by Richard Rutter was entitled Facing Up To Fonts. This part brought out my inner geek as it turned to the more technical side of font usage on the web – trouncing the myth of web-safe fonts, detailing the technicalities of font embedding and exploring the commercial and ethical minefield therein. I’m certainly not going to pretend that I fully understood all that was discussed but it does seem that things are starting to shift towards better standards for font usage on the web. In particular the introduction of font embedding is a long-awaited step in the right direction.

Font embedding is basically the ability to embed fonts into web pages. This allows for more flexibility when deciding what font to use, and is especially useful for web pages that use foreign characters that are not widely supported. However, embedding fonts can increase the time a web site takes to load, and it is controversial because it can potentially allow copyrighted fonts to be freely proliferated via the web.

Font embedding is not widely used on the web but a lot of people think it is the future and many type foundries are now keen to make this a new revenue stream.

On reflection I left Skillswap with a very positive feeling about where web design and web typography is heading. It certainly seems that the methods many use for print design are now, more than ever, applicable to web design and that surely can only be a good thing. There is life outside of using the core web fonts if you are willing to experiment and just use them as a fail safe backup.

Great typography lives on.