About Font Replacement
Fonts are a quick and easy way to boost the visual appeal of your website. Previously, the only fonts that could be safely used on a website were fonts that were physically installed on your computer as part of the operating system.
To make matters more difficult, and more restrictive, a font available on a Windows computer might not be available on a Apple computer. So you had the further restriction of choosing fonts that would be available on both systems.
Enter web fonts, supplied from venders like Typekit. Now, when the website is loaded into your browser for viewing, rather than depending on the fonts installed on your computer, the fonts are supplied by the Typekit servers, nothing is installed onto your computer. Any of the fonts in Typekit's catalog can be supplied by putting a few lines of code into your website. The same can be done from the other font vendors I use; Fontdeck, Fonts.com, and Font Spring. The difference is the fees they charge and the fonts available in their catalog.
Prior to web fonts, the only alternative to using installed fonts was creating an image of the text with the font you wanted in a program like Photoshop. The problems with this method were that it made it difficult and time consuming to change the text, the image of text can't be indexed by search engines (Google) hurting your chances of being found, and it is not selectable for copying and pasting.
As you can see, web fonts fix most of the problems associated with using fonts not installed on a users computer, giving you maximum freedom in your design choices.
Which Service Should I Use?
When I provide the hosting for your website, you can use any of the fonts available in the Typekit catalog at know additional charge. They will be supplied to your site from my account with them. Some of the other providers listed have free accounts with a limited choice of fonts, but you may find one you like better than any available in the Typekit catalog, in which case you may elect to use it, and I will take care of setting it up. If you choose to create a paid account of your own with any of these font services, you will obviously have to pay the fee yourself, but I will set everything up for you.
If your site is already hosted elsewhere, or you choose, during the development of your new site, to sign up with your own hosting provider, you will have to create an account with the web font service you choose, and if not a free account, pay for the service yourself. I will then insert the code necessary to make it work on your site.
If I'm doing a website make-over and your site is already hosted elsewhere, or you choose, during the development of your new site, to sign up with your own hosting provider I can still set up the fonts from the provider of your choice, whether that be a free account, paid account, or from my own account with Typekit, however, any changes you would like made that can't be accomplished within the admin area of your font provider and requires digging into your website files, will incur a $35.00/hr. fee.
Typekit
Again, if I host your site, any of the fonts in the Typekit catalog are available for your website and included in the hosting fee. If you create your own account, the least expensive option is $24.99/year with a limited library of fonts to choose from. Visit the Typekit website.
Fonts.com
Fonts.com web fonts has a free plan with a catalog of 3000 fonts, with paid versions containing 8000. (This doesn't mean there are 3000 different fonts, each font comes in regular, bold, italic, etc. and they are all part of the count.)
Visit the Fonts.com website.
FontDeck
Fontdeck is a little different, in that you buy/subscribe to the individual font. So depending on what you want, it may cost you as little as $2.99 /year, or much more, for more expensive or multiple fonts. Visit the Fontdeck website.
FontSpring
With Fontspring you actually buy the font, and the rights to use it, on your site. Also the fonts are installed onto the server your site is hosted from. So while this costs more up front, in the long run it might be cheaper since it's a one time payment. Visit the FontSpring website.
Google Fonts
Google has a web font directory that, while it has only a few, they are quite distinctive and sharp looking. They are also free to use. Visit the Google font directory
