Google Fonts Blog: 2010

New Fonts for the New Year

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Google Font Directory

Ubuntu

Mountains of Christmas

Introducing the Ubuntu Font Family to the web

Monday, December 20, 2010

font.ubuntu.comwww.ubuntu.comGoogle Font Directory

The Ubuntu Website using the Ubuntu Font FamilyCanonical LtdDalton Maag

Mark Shuttleworth

a history of the fonts’ development

Web fonts go mobile

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Google FontsGoogle Font API

Google FontsPosted by David Wurtz, Product Manager, Google Fonts

New! Web Font Statistics

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Google Font Directory1) Font level statisticshere

2) Sort by popularityfront page

Posted by David Wurtz, Product Manager, Google Font API

Web fonts on the rise

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Google Font DirectoryGoogle Font API

The Google Font API currently serves over 17 million requests [1] a day to users across the globe.

We’ve seen a 30% month-over-month growth rate since we launched. (This corresponds to over 20x year-over-year growth.)

Roughly 400,000 unique websites [2] use the Google Font API.

Typekitsimilar analysisfeedback page
Posted by David Wurtz, Product Manager, Google Font API

[1] A request is a single call to the Google Font API for one or more fonts.
[2] We count a unique website as unique domains, except that “www” subdomains are not counted. For example, www.myblog.com and myblog.com would count as one domain. However, sam.myblog.com and sally.myblog.com would count as two domains.

Navigate the font directory more easily and submit your fonts

Thursday, October 28, 2010

To make it easier for you to navigate all the tools and documentation that are part of the Font API we have created a unified navigation for the directory.

The directory pages now show a new dropdown menu at the top that takes you to our documentation pages, blog, previewer and other tools very quickly. Don’t forget to check out our new chrome extension as well.

Submit your font or tell us where you have used the Font API
In the new navigation you will also find two new forms we have created for you. If you are a font designer and would like to see your font as part of the directory fill out our font submission form and tell us about it.

Have you created a website and used the Font API in a creative way? We would love to hear about that, too.

We are working hard to improve our service and the directory. If you have any suggestions you can always give us feedback on our moderator page.

By Marc Tobias Kunisch, Webmaster for the Font API Team

Interview with Danh Hong, designer of Hanuman

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Google Font DirectoryCyrillicGreekKhmerHanumanQ: What inspired you to create the Hanuman font?
Q: Did you try to accomplish something specific with this font, and did you succeed?
Q: What kinds of documents are most appropriate for this font?
Q: Designing a new font is a long journey. What inspires you to keep motivated throughout all the different stages?
Q: What is your favourite part of the type design process, and why?
Q: Can you recommend how other type designers can learn the skills involved in making Khmer fonts?
Q: What are your favourite fonts, and why?
Q: What do you think could be improved about the type design process?

International Fonts Launch Today

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Today is a big day for the Google Font API. We have officially added our first non-Latin fonts to the Google Font API and Google Font Directory. Our additions include high quality web fonts for the Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Khmer scripts. That puts our total offering at 6 scripts, with over 25 unique font families and around 60 fonts in the Directory.

This launch marks a significant milestone for the web. We believe web fonts are critical not just for Latin-based scripts, but for all the world's languages. Fonts are a means of expression, and our choice of fonts freely available on the web should be large enough to allow for many different types of communication. In the coming months, the Google Font API team plans to expand our international coverage across even more scripts.

It's easy to take the variety of Latin web fonts for granted, but we have to remember that some scripts have no web fonts available at all. In these cases, users are required to download “font packs” to display the fonts correctly or they suffer from a poor web surfing experience:

A Khmer snippet properly displayed as a web font:

A Khmer snippet when the reader's computer does not have the correct font installed:

The creation of these web fonts is a labor intensive task that takes incredible patience, attention to detail, and skill. We'd like to thank all the immensely talented type designers that contributed to this launch, including Danh Hong, SIL International, the Greek Font Society, ParaType, and Jovanny Lemonad.
If you use a script that you would like to see supported by the Google Font API, please get in touch with our team through our moderator page. If you are a type designer with experience in designing for a script and you would like to contribute an original font family, we are actively soliciting commission proposals through this Proposal Form.

A more fontastic Google Docs

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog and the Google Docs Blog)

Documents without font choices are like photographs without colors. Just as shades of color can add depth to a picture, smart font choices give your text another dimension.

For a long time, the set of fonts that you’ve seen when you browsed the web has been quite limited. That’s because you could only use a font that’s already been installed on your computer. So if a website designer wanted all her visitors to see the same thing, she could only use fonts that are so ubiquitous that the chances are very high that every computer will have them. And there are only a handful of fonts that fit that bill.

Thankfully, that situation is changing. All modern browsers now support the ability to download web fonts. A web font doesn’t need to be installed on your local computer—it can be read directly from a web server and used immediately on the webpage that you’re loading. In May, we launched the Google Font API, which makes it easy for website developers to include any one of an ever-growing list of web fonts on their pages. We’re already using the new API for the latest themes in Google forms.

As of today, Google documents supports web fonts (using the Google Font API) and we’re excited to announce six new fonts.

Droid Serif and Droid Sans
Android fans will already be familiar with the Droid family of fonts. Droid Serif and Droid Sans both feature strong vertical lines and a neutral, yet friendly appearance. They’re designed specifically for reading on small screens.

Calibri and Cambria
Every day we have many people import documents from Microsoft Word into Google Docs. Today we’re making import fidelity better by adding two of the most popular Microsoft Word fonts. Calibri is a beautiful sans serif font characterized by curves and soft edges. It’s designed to be high impact. Cambria is built with strong vertical serifs and subtle horizontal ones. It’s very legible when printed at small sizes.

Consolas and Corsiva
Consolas joins Courier New as the second monospaced font in Google Docs. It’s a modern monospaced font with character proportions that are similar to normal text. Finally, Corsiva is our first italic font with embellished characters and an elegant style.

Right now our font support covers most Latin and Western European character sets. However, we’ll be adding web fonts for other languages (like Hebrew and Greek) soon. If you don’t see the new fonts in your documents, check that web fonts are supported in your language and that the document language is set correctly from the File -> Language menu.

This is just the beginning of fonts in Google Docs. We added six new fonts today and we’re already testing our next batch. You’ll see many more new fonts over the next few months. And because Google Docs uses web fonts, you’ll never need to install a new font: when you load your document, the latest set of fonts will always be there, ready to use.

Finally, adding web fonts is just one of the challenges that we have been working on. If you’re interested in learning more about the challenges of building a collaborative application, check out the first post of a three-part series on collaboration posted earlier today.

Posted by: Jeremie Lenfant-Engelmann, Software Engineer

Optimizing the use of the Google Font API

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

1. Combine multiple fonts into one request.<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Droid+Sans">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Droid +Sans|Lobster">
2. Don't put the @import in an external CSS3. Put the font request early4. Don't ask for fonts you don't use5. Use tools to analyze your page's performance

A larger scale analysis of latency impact

By Raph Levien and Jeremie Lenfant-engelmann, Engineers on the Google Font API Team

Welcome to the Google Web Font Blog

Friday, August 6, 2010

Since we launched the Google Font API and Font Directory at Google IO we have seen wide adoption of Google web fonts. We've also had great feedback and feature requests from across the web.
So far we've used the Google Code Blog to tell you about new developments from the web font team. Now we're introducing a dedicated blog to give you better insight into what we're up to.
Come back soon or even better subscribe to our RSS feed for more information about new features and fonts that we're working on to make the Font API work even better for you.
By Marc Tobias Kunisch, Webmaster for the Font API Team