Several months ago, I logged onto my site Earl Grey Creative on a Windows computer only to find that my fonts weren’t showing up correctly at all. The font I used for all headings, Futura, was showing up as Times New Roman. Yikes! I wrote about this more in my Web Fonts 101 post, but the moral of the story is that unless you’re using web fonts (or standard web-safe fonts like the ones from this list), it’s likely that your fonts aren’t being shown consistently across browsers. When I realized that my Futura fonts weren’t showing up, I searched for a similar free font. In the end, I just really wanted to keep using Futura. This is when I decided to invest in Adobe Typekit.
Many websites sell fonts with the option to use them on your desktop or on the web. Prices can range anywhere from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars depending on how many styles you need of the font (regular, bold, semi-bold, extra bold, italic, etc). Adobe Typekit is an annual subscription to a giant library of fonts for both your desktop and your websites. Although I originally signed up for Typekit specifically for the Futura font, I’ve ended up using it for several web design clients.
If you’re subscribed to Adobe Creative Cloud, you already have access to Typekit! Otherwise, you can sign up for Adobe Typekit for free and have automatic access to a limited amount of fonts. This will allow you to sync up to 20 fonts to your desktop and use their select web fonts for one website. I ended up going for the Portfolio Plan for $49.99/yr because it doesn’t limit the number of websites you can use the web fonts on. To view all of the plans and details, click here.
What do you think of Typekit? Are you a subscriber? I think it’s kind of brilliant especially if you want to build a huge font library without spending all of your $$$.