woodwing

Web Fonts May Be the Key for Magazines on the iPad (and all the Rest of the Digital Platforms)

Following Apple's iPad launch, I was struck by the juxtaposition of two observations by the commentators. Firstly, several noted the failure of the Flash component in the demo of the New York Times pages; apparently, like its cousins the iPod Touch and the iPhone, the iPad does not play Flash content. Secondly, as detailed in the extreme by a post at Gawker, there was no glitzy demo of magazine content.

These two observations are related because one of the distinguishing features of both magazines and Flash is typography that is much superior to standard online fare. Therefore, the absence of both at the iPad launch gives rise to the question, how will fabulous typography and fabulous magazine experiences be delivered to this and similar platforms?

I suspect a key part of the answer is a remarkable technology called "Web fonts" whose transition into the online mainstream is sure to be accelerated by the iPad rollout. Much like online ads, Web fonts are served dynamically and contextually from special servers that are different from the source of a Web page that uses them.  The fonts are married to the content and rendered in the browser. A companion technology to this dance of servers is a special font compression technology that makes these font downloads very fast.

With access to server inventories of possibly thousands of fonts, designers will be able to jump well beyond the limitations of the "core fonts" . Web fonts give them the tools to take a giant step up in quality and make Web pages that rival the typographical quality of magazines in print.

There is a positive feed-back loop in this emerging environment. Because Web fonts are dynamically loaded they can be protected, and that means the font foundries can sell and/or rent their creations. Since they can earn they will invest, and more and more and better and better fonts will be made available. More and better fonts will give rise to even better designs.

My bet is that we are on the cusp of stunning new digital presences for magazines, and not just for the mobile platforms. The essential point about Web fonts is that at the end of the day the content is delivered in vanilla HTML.

Fans of good design are in for a smorgasbord of treats.

3 relevant links:
A full introduction to the Web font technology is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_fonts
An account of Microsoft's Core font initiative is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web
Gawker's rant, "Print Media's Big Tablet Letdown" is here:
http://gawker.com/5458343/print-medias-big-tablet-letdown