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!
