Adobe Typekit improves the Rosario typeface family

Since 2010, Google Fonts been collaborating with the Adobe Typekit team to create better web font technology. And now that many fonts first published by Google Fonts are also available in Adobe Edge Web Fonts, we’re extending that collaboration beyond just software to fonts themselves.

Together with Adobe, we want to improve the quality of open source fonts available to everyone publishing on the web. As a first step, the Typekit team has optimized Rosario, a humanist sans serif based on the classic proportions of Garamond’s type.

To start the process, Typekit reached out to the foundry, Omnibus Type, to request up to date copies of the font source files. Here are some examples of the possible optimizations that the Adobe team might make to a web font:

• Convert and/or clean up outlines, for design fidelity and file size efficiency
• Re-componentize source fonts, for file size efficiency
• Remove/reassign glyphs with incorrect Unicode code points, for semantic value
• Add common missing glyphs (non-breaking space, soft hyphen)
• Set vertical metrics values according to best practices
• Set underline and strike-through values, for design consistency
• Contribute PostScript hints and (if a typeface was designed for small sizes like paragraph text) TrueType instructions (also called hinting), which consist of instructions to the rasterizer embedded in the font file itself

After making some of these improvements, Typekit sent their version back to the foundry to review and release on the Omnibus Type homepage. The updated Rosario family is now available in Typekit, Adobe Edge Web Fonts and Google Fonts.

Together with the Typekit team, we’re looking forward to more quality improvements in the future!

Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant

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A new look and name for Google Web Fonts

This week, Google Web Fonts got a simpler, cleaner look that makes searching and accessing your fonts easier than ever. And in the spirit of simplicity, today Google Web Fonts is now just “Google Fonts.” It’s still the same great collection of free fonts you know and love, but with a new name.

You can get started with Google Fonts here: www.google.com/fonts

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager

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Easier ways to find the right font

We know that finding the right font for your website or blog is a personal choice, and there are many great fonts available to choose from on the web. Now when you search for a font that isn’t available on Google Web Fonts, we show you additional fonts available from Monotype. Each result is shown in the actual font so you can easily preview your options. To get more information on a font, simply click the link under it’s name.

 

We look forward to adding results from more web font providers in the future.

Posted by Raziel Alvarez, Software Engineer

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Web fonts: a look under the hood

Google Web Fonts are viewed more than 1 billion times every day across the web, on more than 100 million web pages. To help you sort through and pick the right font for your site you can order fonts by popularity, and now you can check out usage data for each font too.

Click on "Analytics" in the upper right corner of the homepage to view the new analytics tab, where you can see and compare numbers for individual font views by browser, operating system and see usage trends.

You’ll see a list of fonts, ranked by the total number of all-time font views and sortable by time period. To see a graph of font data for an individual font or a set of fonts, check the box next to the font name and click on the Trend button.

Clicking the views by platform tab on the left pane shows you a heatmap and pie charts of usage of each font by browser or operating system.

While browsing through fonts in the directory, you can also access analytics for an individual font at anytime by navigating to the Statistics tab on the font’s specimen page.

And finally, to help you compare and select fonts, clicking on the “Pairings” tab on the Specimen page will show you groupings of fonts that are frequently used together, based on actual usage data via the API.

Selecting the right font for your website is an expression of your personal style, and we hope to continue expanding the set of tools to help you do that. Happy browsing!

Posted by Raziel Alvarez, Software Engineer

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More places to get great fonts

Open source fonts are good for the web: they’ve helped spur web font adoption, and made it easier for anyone to contribute improvements to fonts for the whole web community.

Today, we’re happy to announce that all the fonts in the Google Web Fonts directory are also available via Adobe’s new Edge Web Fonts service.

And on the heels of the recent release of Source Sans Pro, another Adobe designed open source font, Source Code Pro, is available today from both Google Web Fonts and Edge Web Fonts.

We’re also working with the Adobe team to hint some of the fonts in the collection, a process that will make them look better at smaller text sizes.

Here’s to a more accessible, translatable, and beautiful web!

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager

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Preview fonts with the new Poster mode

Selecting just the right font for your website or application is a personal decision, and making sure the font harmonizes with your content is often time consuming. To help you narrow down your font choices, last week we announced a new tool to compare individual characters in a pair of fonts side by side. Today, we’re introducing Poster Images, which allows you to easily see what a font looks like with different effects, on a variety of different backgrounds.

To start, visit the Google Web Fonts directory and select the Poster tab at the top.




Change the font size or the appearance of the poster to check out how different styles look. When you find a font you like, hover over it to see more details and add it to your collection.

We hope this makes choosing the right font easier and more fun!

Posted by Sang Tian, Software Engineering Intern

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New Fonts, Early Access, and More

Over the last few months, we’ve been busy adding support for web fonts to Google documents and Google presentations. Today, we’re adding seven font families in Google Web Fonts, a new tool to compare similar fonts, and an early access program to get feedback on non-latin scripts in development.

When you choose a new font, you want it to look good for all your readers, regardless of the platform or browser they’re using. To help make fonts look better in more places, we’re starting to hint more families in Google Web Fonts, thanks to the ttfautohint project, which automates this process. Amarante, Capriola, Courgette, and Quando were hinted using this tool.

Eagle Lake expands on our existing collection of calligraphic font styles, and you can use Metal Mania to bring out your inner guitarist. We’re also very excited to be including a special contribution from our friends over at Adobe - Source Sans Pro, their first open source type family.

As the number of fonts in Google Web Fonts continues to grow, it’s becoming harder to select the right font from among many potential choices. To make this process easier, you can now easily compare two fonts side by side using the new comparison tool. Just add a few fonts to your collection, select Review, and click on the Compare tab at the top.

You can then overlay glyphs from each font on top of each other, and use the slider to transition between fonts to see the differences between them more clearly.

Non-latin fonts can be more complex than latin fonts, both as designs and as font software, which often require more time to develop and polish. The designers of these fonts may not be native readers, and we’re hoping for your feedback to help them understand where their fonts need improvement. You can try them out by downloading them from the Google Web Fonts early access page.

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager

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