Font Bureau now offers selected typefaces for use with @font-face through its partnership in Webtype, a cloud-hosted web font delivery service.

Support in all the major web browsers for the CSS @font-face rule has opened up a new world of possibilities for web typography. Websites can now be typographically rich while still presenting content that remains fully accessible, indexable, and searchable. Web designers are freed from the limitations of “web-safe” system fonts or various Flash workarounds.

However, implementing @font-face is not without its complications. Different browsers support different font formats, and typical font licenses do not permit the use of standard font files on open web servers. At Font Bureau, we decided that the only way to maintain certain essential requirements, and the best way to provide web fonts to our customers, was to start from scratch and build a new service from the ground up.

Web Fonts Made Easy

Webtype is a subscription-based, hosted service that makes licensing and implementing web fonts straightforward and reliable. When you license Font Bureau web fonts through Webtype, you receive CSS code that you include in your HTML to link to secure font resources on a worldwide network of high-performance cloud servers. The fonts and the code are optimized to provide just the right font format to each browser with minimum load times.

The Webtype service is affordably priced and modular by design. Each yearly license is per font, per domain, priced in tiers according to monthly traffic (measured in page views). Tools are provided to monitor your traffic, and you’ll receive automated messages if you approach your allotted bandwidth, so there won’t be any unpleasant surprises.

A 30-day free trial period allows you to experiment with different fonts before making a commitment.

Also, Font Bureau can provide specialized fonts through Webtype to meet any individual client’s particular needs for their website.

By utilizing a hosted web fonts delivery service, you can ensure that as standards and browsers evolve, your website’s fonts will also evolve and continue to provide maximum compatibility.

Quality Type and Typography

Improved typography on the web means more than just a plethora of fonts. Selections from Font Bureau’s library have been carefully chosen based on suitability and versatility. Designated bold and italic styles have been selected to display properly with font-weight and font-style properties.

Font Bureau’s David Berlow has taken his vast experience with screen font requirements and assembled a team with expertise in hinting and rendering to tune the FB web fonts for the highest quality performance. The result is type that renders crisply and cleanly across all browsers and operating systems.

But because the computer screen is a unique format with its own particular properties (and constraints), achieving the most readable fonts for setting paragraphs of small text onscreen requires more than just hinting. Font Bureau has developed the Reading Edge™ (RE) series of web fonts, specially designed to hold up under the greater demands of typical text sizes in coarse resolutions and to provide web designers with a flexible palette of hard-working text typefaces.

Keep an eye on webtype.com for a steady stream of new fonts and functionality over the coming weeks and months.