As a lover of fonts, I’m always on the constant lookout for sites that will not only give me fonts–hopefully for free–but sites that will push my knowledge and love of fonts even further.
Not too long ago I came across The League of Moveable Type; a website that not only prominently displays beautiful free fonts for everyone to download, but a website that challenges font developers to create free fonts for designers to use in their projects. They are “calling to raise the standards of the web-design world” by starting an open-source type movement in which font designers make a contribution to the community by releasing some–even one–high quality, complete font for free. Their ultimate goal is improving the standards of typography all around, especially on the web.
Another way they are doing this is by creating a way for designers to use any font they want in their work instead of relying on the standard fonts which reside on the viewers computer. There’s a push for new commands in CSS that would allow web designers to choose their own fonts so no matter who’s viewing the website–no matter how few fonts they have on their computer–they will see the website the way it was intended. In their own words, “@font-face is a fairly new addition to web styling, letting a designer specify the location of their own font files. Instead of having to design with just a handful of web-friendly fonts, we’ll be able to use any typeface we desire.” It would be a great thing for all web designers, and something that I have wanted in some of my endeavors as well.
Enough of this web business! What does this website hold for the rest of us? Well, besides pushing the boundaries of creativity through fonts and the fact that they are pushing a way to allow everyone to view a piece of art the way the designer wanted them to view it. Besides the whole open-source type movement thing where they are trying to get high quality and complete fonts for free, they also publish a blog that is chock full of great knowledge on how to improve your eye for great fonts and your skills on creating great typography in your projects either through links to other great sites or through in-blog posts.
Finally, the same group who created The League of Moveable Type is working on a new, secret project. They are working on a social font manager called Lettercase. Not much is known about this project other than the tagline on the website which reads “Find. Preview. Collaborate. Share with your most trusted colleagues. Lettercase will revolutionize how you work on your fonts.” Pull from that what you will. What I’m getting out of it is instead of sloshing through multiple websites in search of a font that fits your needs, you could open up an application–like your twitter client–ask your friends about a font and have them share one with you. Or if you’re working on a font and want some help finishing a certain part of the font you ask your friends, share the font with them and they help you finish it. All of this at the speed of the internet. It’s a beautiful thing.
Of course, that’s just speculation on my part. I don’t really have any inside knowledge on the product, but I can tell you what I would like to see. I’ll tell you more when–or if–I get accepted into the Beta test they have running on their website right now.
Regardless, you should really check out both of these websites to see what they’re all about. All you have to lose are your bad habits.
Owner: A Good Company (Caroline & Micah)
Website: http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com & http://www.lettercaseapp.com
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