Google recently released their font API and font directory in an effort to bring more fonts to a wide range of modern browsers. This is great news for web designers and developers tired of using the same old fonts. There are other ways to serve non-web fonts in your sites, such as sIFR, Cufon, and TypeKit, but now Google is making it even more simple and, best of all, free.
The current selection of fonts is limited, but a welcome enhancement to the web designer’s usual choices. I particularly enjoy Molengo and Droid Sans. The only thing lacking from Google’s new system of web font deployment are the openly licensed fonts for download. If you are in the habit of designing pages in Photoshop and then developing them in your browser you will want to have these fonts on your system. So I took the time to download all of the fonts as they were served up by the Google font API (so that they are the exact version that is being sent to your potential viewers). I organized and gathered all the licenses for each font and packaged them together into this zip file.
So go ahead and make the web a more beautiful place!
CODAweb Redesign
I recently helped the College Orchestra Directors Association launch a new website. The Project was a huge facelift in conjunction with an information architecture overhaul.
The old site was developed with a table based layout and among it’s biggest problems, it lacked a cohesive and persistent navigation. Users were often confused and frustrated when trying to find information and navigate the site.
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