Typekit for the masses

Back in May of this year, a new and potentially revolutionary web service was announced that could change the way we literally see the web. That service was Typekit, and the idea is to offer a subscription service so that web designers can include fonts that aren't available on the browsers computer.

The technology (I think!) is a combination of the @font-face CSS and JavaScript which enables the actual fonts to be downloaded.

Obviously, there's a question of copyright - you can't just have people downloading fonts which they otherwise would have to pay hundreds of pounds for - “While it’s technically quite easy to link to fonts, it’s legally more nuanced.”. This is one of the key areas for Typekit, making the system secure enough so that type foundries will feel comfortable offering their fonts for subscription.

Which led me to think, there should be far fewer issues with offering the same service for Free Open Source fonts, such as those DejaVu, Droid, FreeSans, Vera etc. You wouldn't even have to download the free fonts to your server if they were hosted by someone like the Open Font Library.

I'll rustle something up and get on the case ;)