Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Well done!
You have completed Typography for Designers!
You have completed Typography for Designers!
Preview
Now that we have some general knowledge about typography, letβs install some shiny, new fonts and look at what to consider when choosing a typeface.
Resources
Font websites
- Google Fonts - large directory of free fonts, all available as web fonts
- Font Squirrel - free, even for commercial use. mixed quality.
- MyFonts Top Web Fonts - large directory of fonts
- Lost Type - high-quality fonts, some available pay-as-you-want for personal use
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
[MUSIC]
0:00
With all this talk about fonts,
0:05
you're probably itching to get
some new ones of your own.
0:06
You're probably familiar with the standard
set of fonts that come on your computer.
0:10
These are called system fonts and
Android, iOS, Windows, and
0:15
Mac each have a different selection.
0:20
These are immediately
usable on your computer,
0:23
although there's a relatively
small selection.
0:26
If you do decide to design
with those system font,
0:30
when it's time to develop it with code,
you can either find a web font that allows
0:33
everyone to see the font,
even if they don't have it installed or
0:37
you can create what's called
a font stack in your code.
0:42
It's a list that tells
the browser which fonts to use.
0:46
For example, you may prefer Helvetica,
which is available on all Macs but
0:49
not all Windows computers.
0:54
So you can add Ariel as a fallback
0:57
which is available on nearly
every Windows computer.
1:00
Luckily system fonts
aren't the only option.
1:03
There are tons of fonts available for
download and they're easy to install.
1:07
Here's how to install a font.
1:13
Find a font foundry, or
a font distributor website.
1:15
Then sort by the features you
are looking for, more on that later.
1:19
When you find the one, download and
install it on your computer.
1:24
You may notice there is more
than one file per font style.
1:47
This can happen if there
are different formats.
1:51
Here are the common font formats OpenType,
TrueType,
1:55
EOT, WOFF, WOFF2, and SVG.
2:01
Files with an OTF extension
are open type fonts.
2:06
This is the preferred format because it
includes the most customization options,
2:10
and has widespread
support across platforms.
2:15
Files with a TTF extension
are true type fonts,
2:18
this is what was used before
the open type format.
2:22
While they still work well, they don't
have the extras that open type fonts have.
2:27
Files within EOT extension use
a format created by Microsoft.
2:33
They're meant to be used on the web,
however,
2:37
they only work in Internet Explorer.
2:40
WOFF files are the preferred format for
web fonts.
2:44
These files are compressed
which means they load faster.
2:47
WOFF2 is a newer iteration of WOFF,
2:50
the difference is that
they're more compressed.
2:55
It's well supported across
all the major browsers.
2:57
If you're targeting Internet Explorer or
older browser versions,
3:01
WOFF has the most support.
3:05
SVG fonts are not recommended
3:07
unless you're trying to support
very old versions of Safari.
3:11
Check out the teacher's notes for websites
where you can find fonts to download.
3:16
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up