It’s a lovely tool, a simpler alternative to sIFR (and others such as Cufon). It aims to make every art director happy, by allowing them to use a font other those dictated by web standards.
Everything looks good; we tell ourselves that our creativity knows no bounds, we’ll finally be able to play around with text as much as with print (within the limits of readability, of course, this isn’t to make you forget about Veranda of Georgia or all those fonts designed for the screen, allowing you to read texts in font size 10 on screen).
Actually, there is only one downside. Typekit only works with fonts offered by the kit. It’s impossible to use it with your own fonts, bought or created.
For example, if you make a website for someone who’s communications have all been in Helvetica, sorry, no can do… it isn’t part of the kit (Coolvetica, part of the kit… no thanks). After a bit of research, I realized that none of the websites on which we worked recently would have been able to used Typekit (Arborite = Avant Garde, RIDM = DIN, Novatech = Freight).
On the forum, the question of using your own fonts came up. Fontkit likes the idea and will work on it (a priori) but will no doubt be accompanied by agreements with Fontshop and other key market players… in short, it could take time.
Conclusion: it’s a good idea but depending on your client’s branding and what you want to do, this solution will not be applicable every time. However, if we could upload our choice of fonts (and its performance is as good as it claims), Typekit would be perfect!
TypeKit : http://typekit.com
