Desktop and Web Typefaces – An Exciting New Era for Designers

Today Myfonts.com announced a new service allowing designers to subscribe to a vast number of desktop typefaces by Monotype foundries. Over 2200 to be precise.

Combined with webfont subscriptions provided by fonts.com (or typekit), web designers now have an incredible arsenal of fonts to try out, with complimenting systems that make experimentation convenient and cost-effective, contributing hopefully to more interesting design.

Webfont subscriptions have been around a couple of years, allowing web designers to embed a staggering number of quality fonts in their sites. Combined with Google Fonts and Font Squirrel, there were very few fonts that weren’t usable.

Web fonts followed the Netflix / Spotify route of subscription-based, though I don’t fully understand how it works financially for the foundries. A brave new world though. The only limits are on total number of pageviews. Like 250,000 pageviews a month. Should a site require more the plan can be upgraded. But a major issue with this alone, was that if you wanted to try a bunch of fonts for a layout this was much trickier. Webfonts can’t be downloaded to your local machine to use in Photoshop, Illustrator or Sketch.

Well, there are a few ways to play with them. Typekit allows you to borrow fonts using an Adobe account. Fonts.com uses Skyfonts (this is our preference, as Adobe is a bit proprietary for our liking). There is also the marvellous Typecast, allowing you to experiment with fonts in browser. But each has its own issues of portability, licensing, and testing period.

But with this new service, access to thousands of the world’s best fonts is largely unrestricted. One can use them for testing, for branding purposes, or for print work, equally. The system sets up a special folder on your local machine that cannot be copied. When your subscription runs out, the folder disappears. Simple.

Font-tastic

Expect our typography – and designs! – to take a leap forward with this new service. After all, typography is 99% of design.