Responsive Typography

Chapter 4. Buy or Borrow: The Designer’s Dilemma

When it comes to actually utilizing @font-face to embed fonts on your site, you have some choices to make. Mainly, the choice is between self-hosting (where you serve the files along with the rest of your site) or using some sort of service. Each choice has its benefits, but there are some significant differences, so it pays to do your homework. Know what you want and what your project requires in terms of platform support, traffic levels, and typographic features, so you can be sure to make the right choice. It seems that most type vendors support one or both options these days, and even if you don’t see pricing for the option you want on the website, it often pays to send an email and just ask. You may be surprised at the answer. Each of these options has a cost—material, qualitative, or both—so I’m going to explain how they work, what is involved in using them, and some of their pros and cons. As with everything else on the Web, it seems, the answer is a clear-cut “it depends,” based on your individual circumstances and requirements.

First Things First: Weigh the Dollars and Sense

Let’s get the money part out of the way. While there are certainly some notable exceptions, in most cases good type costs money. It costs because it’s hard to design, hard to finesse, and hard to make work well on all platforms and in all browsers. So just as with photography, we should expect to pay something for its use.

As a fan of type, I enjoy having ...