Posted on
TypeKit vs. Fonts.com Web Fonts
by Joy Burke
Who will reign supreme in bringing web typography to the masses?
Last week, fonts.com released their answer to the ever-popular web font system known as TypeKit, cleverly calling it Web Fonts (no confusing its purpose, is there?). At Mightybytes, we have used TypeKit on projects for the past year or so and find it to be a really helpful addition to our bag-of-tricks. However, with font.com’s new release, we have discovered both good and not-so-fab differences between the two systems.
TypeKit
Some of the things our beloved TypeKit has won our hearts with include:
- Design: Typekit’s site is well-designed, engaging and user-friendly
- Navigation: easy to find what you’re looking for
- Cost: a cost-effective option, especially considering what a difference some of those fonts can make in place of standard system fonts, even at the highest, or Professional, subscription level
Although we’ve seen success in our use of TypeKit, and though both systems have some core functions in common, in diving into each a bit farther, I came to find several instances where fonts.com Web Fonts had something better to offer.
FONTS.COM WEB FONTS
- Search: Fonts.com Web Fonts offers several more ways to search and sort fonts than TypeKit, including: style/classification, foundry, designer, language support, keywords, first letter of the font name, and free fonts versus the entire selection
- Viewing Fonts: the ability to view either 10, 20 or 50 results per page (TypeKit only allows 9 without the option to view more per page). This is particularly helpful, especially when browsing through thousands of possible font choices.
- Downloads: the ability to download the font for use in design comps. This was one of our biggest struggles with TypeKit because creating designs with one set of fonts for the design phase, then having to wait to implement the TypeKit fonts until the production phase is just like putting the cart before the horse. We’d have to show the client one thing and get approval, then have that change in production if we found something that worked better via TypeKit. There is a catch, however. In order to use this feature, use must pay a whopping minimum of $100/month to be able to do this.
- Selection: over 7,000 fonts for both paid subscription options, and 2,000 for the free version, all of which are far more fonts than TypeKit offers
- Unlimited Usage: does not restrict you from where or how many fonts you choose to use
SIMILARITIES:
Both TypeKit and fonts.com Web Fonts offer plenty of similar core functionality and benefits including:
- Trial: a free, or trial, version you can sign up for to get a feel for how to use the system and what your options are
- Tour: a featured tour to help users get acquainted with how to get started
- Simplicity: overall both are very easy to use
It remains to be seen if TypeKit will answer this release with a stellar option of their own, and at a lower price point, but for now we like the idea of giving fonts.com Web Fonts a go with our next few projects. Here’s to better typography on the web! Chin chin!
3 Comments
Cool, Interesting!
Have you guys observed any differences in the rendering speed and font quality that the competing systems offer across different browsers, OS, etc. ?
Hi Chaz—some of that depends on the fonts themselves—how well they’re hinted for the screen, and such. David Sutoyo at Schema did some very extensive cross-browser testing of Typekit here: http://helloschema.com/code/testing-cufon-font-face-and-typekit
His test was done back in March, and I know from Typekit’s email newsletters that they’re constantly testing and optimizing their fonts, so things may look better now than they did then.
I personally haven’t had much experience with the Fonts.com web fonts, but here at Mightybytes we’ve made the jump to using Museo Sans via Typekit on all the text on this very website, as it now looks much better than it used to at small sizes across platforms.
Post a Comment
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.