Earlier we told you about how Monotype Imaging released more than 7,500 fonts, including over 2,200 available for free through Web Fonts with the goal of providing more choices and supporting more languages for web designers, brand managers and publishers. Yet, while web design may benefit from increased availability of fonts, what about those who design for mobile interfaces? How can you ensure the integrity of every serif and san serif?
How to Support Fonts on Mobile Devices
When asked how Fonts.com supported iPhone and iPad devices using their web fonts service, Steve Lee, product marketing manager for Monotype Imaging's creative professional division, answered.
According to Lee, their approach to Mobile Safari support is based upon simplicity and control. Simplicity to a designer is more than just ease of use, however. It’s about elegance and fine lines. Making it so that their designs hold up regardless of the interface is part of Fonts.com commitment.
Which brings us to control. Lee says that they give designers control over how they assign their fonts. Designers can assign CSS selectors to individual weight, rather than predetermining the weight and denying designers a way to control this themselves.
As it turns out, more control equals more stability. Lee says that having multiple weights defined in a font-family like in some other services…"will crash Safari in iPhone and iPad.”
Given that the Helvetica typeface family includes more than 50 fonts (weights) in Fonts.com’s web font solution, predefining CSS would cause more harm than good, despite the convenience. But since when were designers worried about convenience? They’re not, and so it makes sense to give them the flexibility to control their own CSS selectors, and ultimately their own designs.
Evolving from Print to Web to Mobile Design
It used to be that you designed for the web and hoped for the best when it came to mobile devices. Now that smartphones and tablets are more mainstream, designing for them is too. Just as we learned how to differentiate our web designs from print, so must we do them the same for mobile.
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