Typography has never been easily managed or controlled on the internet. Hacks like SIFR or Cufón, attempt to give some semblance of control to designers but are still not standard methods of typographic use on the web. HTML5 has support for @font-face embedding, yet it still lacks settings for kerning, ligatures, and other preferences — let alone the controversy over copyright issues for font foundries.
Typekit wants to solve this dilemna. Support from multiple (yet still unnamed) foundries, simple embedding through a line of javascript, and no DRM help to bolster its case against @font-face embedding and other methods. Despite this, I still had doubts: how would fonts render in different browsers, how would copyright problems be handled without DRM, and which foundries would actually back this? Their original press release was vague and left these questions to linger, causing me to doubt this ever coming to market.
Now, though, they’ve released a notice about their first round of funding:
“This funding is the next step in our plan for bringing real typography to the web,” said Bryan Mason, Small Batch co-founder and President . “We want to build a nimble, safe tool that makes it easier for web designers to do amazing design online, and a lot of people believe in that goal. We’re excited and humbled by the team of investors supporting us.”
Tony Conrad of True Ventures leads a team of high-profile investors that also includes:
* Evan Williams, Twitter CEO and Founder
* Caterina Fake, Flickr and Hunch Founder
* Matt Mullenweg, WordPress/Automattic Founder
* Ron Conway, Angel Investor whose early investments include Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal and Twitter
* Chris Sacca, Lowercase Capital
* Josh Felser and Dave Samuel, Freestyle Capital
“Typography is the last missing piece of great web design,” said Jeffrey Veen, Small Batch co-founder and CEO. “We’re working closely with type designers to create a new market for their work.”
That’s a serious group of high-profile entrepreneurs; if there wasn’t a tangible product with a real chance of making it to market and succeeding, they wouldn’t have invested so heavily into this venture. There obviously is real interest in the internet and design community for something like this to be released, and with this they’ve calmed the fear and uncertainty of before. Their is hope for a web with good, beautiful typography coming — and it has some legitimacy and excitement behind it now.