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TypeKit: Removing the Wrapping Paper
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Typekit: Removing the Wrapping Paper

on Oct 15th 2009 with 120 comments

Services like Typekit live and die by how intuitive their products are. A couple weeks ago, I finally received my beta invite to join. For those unfamiliar, Typekit is a service that allows you to use a plethora of fonts on your own site with minimal effort.

This video demonstrates just how easy Typekit is to work with. Rather than being a tutorial per se, this is more akin to removing the wrapping paper for the first time! I literally pressed record with zero knowledge of how to use Typekit. However, as you’ll soon see, this service very well might prove to be the number one choice for designers and developers, once it officially launches. I know I’m on board!

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I'm the editor of Nettuts+, and love making the process of building for the web as easy as possible. Also, I'm finishing up my latest book on Laravel Testing! If you want be friends, say hi on Twitter.  

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  • Andreas S

    Seems quite nice, i have just been battling Cufon for a while now with assistance from your screencast on that subject, typekit seems much neater even though Cufon was quite good once i got my head around it.

    So i humbly place myself in the long queue for an invite :)

  • http://www.oriolvalldeperas.com/blog Valldeperas

    Seems interesing, by now I’ll keep with Cufón, with some things is pretty useful.

  • http://erikreagan.com Erik Reagan

    Interesting service. I’m excited to see how it grows and evolves over time.

    Looking forward to possibly being 1 of the 100 invites :)

  • http://wearefriendlydesign.com/ Richard

    Certainly believe this is a game changer, once everything is worked out and some more of the major foundries get on board (because I believe, eventually, they will) that this will change the face of our business – hugely for the better.

  • patty

    wanna give this service a try too!

  • http://sirupsen.dk Sirupsen

    It looks like an interesting service, I’d love to try it out for my own Webdesigns. :)

  • jbayone

    Nice, can’t wait to try it out. Now I can make use of all the fonts I get fron dafont.com

  • http://www.shape-your-dreams.com Alex H.

    Wow. Let me participate!

  • http://www.madsoftgames.org/ Andrew-David

    Awesome!
    I think I may start using their service for my future projects,
    Thanks Jeff!

  • Cody Robertson

    I would love an Invite. I might use this service in future projects.

    Thanks Jeff.

  • Stephen

    I’d love an invite, if you have one to spare. I liked the “exploratory” screencast.

  • dan

    I’d be glad to give it a shot!

  • Richard Bagshaw

    The biggest problem for me is that even on the “portfolio plan” you are only able to use the fonts on 5 sites. I have way more than 5 clients, and each of my clients tend to have more than one site, so what happens when I get to my 6th website? I have to upgrade and then I am limited to 40, at which point I can’t upgrade again.

  • http://twitter.com/aziz_light Aziz Light

    Nice screencast. One thing I don’t understand though, is why would anyone pay for something that you can do for free. You can just use @font-face with packages from here: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface

    Besides, I don’t really like to rely to 3rd party for such things (what if the typekit server goes offline?)

    However I do reckon that it might solve a lot of headaches, for now at least, especially considering how easy it is to use.

    So yeah, I would love to have an invite if you can spare one, maybe I’ll end up loving this service (only idiots never change their minds)

  • Scott

    I’d like an invite…

  • stefan schaefer

    i just checked in from twitter and, well an invite would be really nice.

    thank you
    carrrramba

  • http://www.phpandstuff.com Burak

    Can I have an invite please?

    Also thanks for the screencast contest prize.

  • http://www.jennieroutley.co.uk Jen

    I really enjoyed the screencast, it looks like a good idea and would love to give it a go on some of my current projects. Would love an invite!

    Thanks
    Jen

  • http://brianswebdesign.com R. B. Gottier

    Wow, typekit is awesome. If I don’t get one of the 5 accounts, I’ll for sure be purchasing my own.

  • http://www.edhsystems.com Eric

    I registered this morning for the beta but if you have this many invites I would love to use one

    Thanks

  • Pierce Moore

    NetTuts, I love you! I would love an invite to TypeKit! it looks amazing!

  • http://www.idea-palette.com Chris

    Jeff,

    The fonts on the demo.jefrrey-way.com page don’t work anymore. According to your source code, it should be working. Do you know why?

    • http://11heavens.com/ Caroline Schnapp

      Hi Chris,

      It works for me, and the URL is demo.jeffrey-way.com.

      It’s a tad bit disappointing though because the 1st time you access the page it takes a while for the font to be ‘redrawn’. Takes a while (too long in my opinion) for the JavaScript to load.

      Mind you, I have seen others’ use of cufon taking just as long.

      • http://11heavens.com/ Caroline Schnapp

        Furthermore, there are jagged edges even when the font-size is very large Looks pretty bad.

        I would be curious about trying other fonts.

      • http://11heavens.com/ Caroline Schnapp

        Interesting, the redrawing only shows in Firefox.

        In Safari, or IE7 or IE8, the page remains blank for a while then when content finally appears the JavaScript has loaded and you don’t see a flash of unstyled text (if you will).

      • http://www.idea-palette.com Chris

        It was a FF problem on my end. False alarm.

  • http://www.kriffin.com/ Kriffin

    It’s awesome this one… I’d tried to win an invite but i’ve lost… If u can send me an invite say how can i greet u !

    I must to use it for a personnal project but i can’t !

  • http://www.lunarcafe.com Brad

    How did this work out with the PC? I find it just as easy to make @font-face and use the MS tool WEFT and make the EOT fonts for the ones I like.

    Although if you are on multiple sites typekit might be quicker for a developer to use.

  • http://www.anubiscreative.com Kevin

    I would love an invite! I’m so excited for the new possibities!

  • Meshach

    May I please have an invite? :)

  • Marcelo Kanzaki

    Nice video as aways.

    I hope i get picked to win an invite. :)

  • http://twitter.com/daanweijers Daan

    I’d really love that screencast, and no Jeffrey, you didn’t bore us :D

    I’d like an invite if possible!

  • John

    It looks a great idea and a bit easier than cufon, but I agree with some of the other posts that you are outsourcing, paying for, and losing control of the page style rather than just elements of additional functionality.

    On the other hand, the ability to view and choose from a large amount of fonts without worrying about licencing issues and too much about implementation is appealing though for smaller or quick projects and the price for multiple sites isn’t too bad.

    An invite to have a play with it would be nice, and it was another great video.
    (I’m really looking forward to the next code ignighter one too!)

    • http://11heavens.com/ Caroline Schnapp

      Agreed on all points.

  • Jaysone

    Nice screencast..would like to try typekit..please do give me an invite. Just wanted to know if the ‘diving into php” and “wordpress for designers” screencast have been discontinued? Thanks again :)

  • http://www.seraph-design.de Ben

    An invite would be great. Typekit seems to be much better than cufon and so on.

  • http://www.daco.lt Domas

    Typekit seems to be much more better then cufon, not even mentioning sifr(what a head ache). Can’t wait to try it!

  • Dru Martin

    It’s really exciting to know that this technology is just around the bend. Free us designers to use beautiful fonts!

    If you have any free beta invites left please send one my way!

  • Jamie

    Would love an invite! :) ta muchly!

  • Adrian

    I’m interested in an invite.

  • http://craigps.co.nr/ Craigsnedeker

    who needs typekit? css3 ftw.

  • http://adrusi.com adrusi

    interesting, but i saw that it used @font-face in css, so it’s just a js version of css3, what’s the point of paying for it?

  • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan

    Hi Jeffrey,

    If you still have a couple of invitations, I’d love to get my hands on one. Thanks for the cool vid!

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan

      I found myself an invite, and now have 5 to give away! If you want one, please twitter me @brianegan with your First and Last name, and Email Address.

  • http://smart-is.co.uk Neilly

    Making post for choosing invite purposes :D lol jk

    Thanks for all the work you do and for the calm voice too lol

    (and you dont bore people lol)

  • unnikrishna menon damodaran

    It’s really going to bridge the gap of “Typographic Excellence” on the web. Amazing and it’s so simple to execute. Well done Typekit.

  • http://warez-bb.org Luiz Alvaro

    I’ve 4 invites for typekit

    my email is luizin.alvaro@gmail.com

    feel free to send me you request

  • http://klugin.com Phsyckr

    Doesn’t work on Google Chrome 4

  • unnikrishna menon damodaran

    hi all,

    those who are asking for an invite please go to http://typekit.com/

    and enter your email address and wait for a reply.

  • http://portugalwijn.nl Portugese Wijn

    Great screencast and a very interesting service. Still, I don’t like the idea of being dependent of an external service for the layout of my websites.

  • Nori Silverrage

    Hmm, well I don’t see much of a benefit in using this to just using @font-face. The only advantage i see is that you’ll most likely get a better selection of fonts. But the hundreds of free and open source fonts out there seems to be enough to me.

    Maybe it’d be good for someone who designs a lot of websites, but even then I’m not sure.

  • http://owoce-ffa.eu straw

    Yours tuts are very helpful! Thx so much:)

  • http://www.yanayzohar.com/blog/ Yanay Zohar

    It’s a great idea, but it would be even better if the cost in page size would be smaller.
    High traffic websites can’t afford to add a ~200K for a single font upgrade.

  • http://www.munjeet.com Munjeet Singh

    Great screencast – sometime all you have time for is a very quick overview, so this was perfect.

    Looks like a decent solution, if anyone has a spare invite, I would like to give it a try.

    Cheers.

  • Ash

    I’ve been doing a LOT of research on this topic, and this service for my company for a little while now. I can see absolutely no reason to use TypeKit over @font-face. None. Set up a WOFF, EOT, SVG and TTF font in your CSS file, upload the fonts and call it a day.

    http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface

    Download a couple of fontface kits from FontSquirrel, explore the css & html, learn something and avoid loading unnecessary Javascript files and becoming reliant on offsite sources for your visual styles. This service is absurd. Good developers and designers are already worried enough about FOUT without having to load the fonts from an offsite source through Javascript.

    The subject can be confusing, but do yourselves a favor and do the research yourselves. This is a horrible solution for web embedded fonts, when free of cost. Once you apply a monthly/annual fee, it becomes downright absurd.

  • http://www.quickit.net.au/ Bronson Quick

    Awesome screencast JW. I’m just about to go in and have a play around with it as well.

    I’ve been working with Cufon on some sites this week and it really annoys me that it doesn’t copy and paste nicely. I’m sure they’ll fix that but TypeKit looks like a winner.

    Thanks again for the invite to join Typekit!

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