With the launch of our redesign for The Suncorp Employee Council which includes non-standard web fonts I thought it would be a good idea to post about how you can achieve the same effect on your website. I posted before about the use of Google’s free system to include non-standard fonts on the web, but for The EC redesign we chose to use a paid service called Typekit.

Just quickly for those of you who didn’t read my post about the Google system; until recently web designers/developers have been limited in their font choice to standard fonts or fonts that every computer will have installed, like Arial, purely for consistency. If you have a look at The EC website, you will notice that the font for headings is completely different to the body text and quite possibly isn’t a font that you have installed on computer.

You could get the same effect by using images, however images aren’t as good for SEO and usability (like screen readers etc.) as text on the page and they are difficult to update in a CMS (you can’t use the normal automatic article headings).

Is there any delay in fonts loading on my page?

There is a slight delay the first time the page loads but it is barely noticeable, depending on your internet connection of course. But the fonts should appear instantly after the first page load.

Do they provide many fonts?

Unfortunately they don’t provide a facility to upload and include your own fonts (maybe this would be a good feature although there are a lot of messy licensing issues with fonts which is another reason why this system is handy) the font library is very extensive and has a lot of well designed fonts. If you have a branded font you are almost certain to find one that matches very closely from the list of fonts that they provide.

Overall I think using non-standard web fonts is a great way to give your website a unique look and feel and can help promote your brand even further.