The Brads - Typekit
June 1st, 2009
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Brad Colbow is an independent web designer and illustrator living in Cleveland Ohio. He is the owner of Colbow Design and creator of the web comic, The Brads. If you’re looking for fun and practical website design Contact Me.
Website © 2010 Brad Colbow. The Brads is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License
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Bridget Stewart
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pmPure Awesome. How very Dielman to mock XP, elitist snob that he is.
Michael
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pmCute cartoon, thanks.
Is there any reason why using your own javascript encoding of css @font-face URLs wouldn’t be enough? I have a very good encoder tool I use for e-mail addresses, which seems indestructible. Then the fonts can be well hidden on a server. Here is a draft sample: http://www.jhsf.org/volunteer-center/
Stomme poes
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pm“it needs sliced up”?
Ah web fonts, the dream that just won’t quite die.
kyle steed
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pm@Brad - looking forward to seeing you navigate down this road of a more descriptive/in-depth humor. I like it because it educates and at the same time pokes fun. Great work man.
Josh Walsh
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pmThis totally reminds me of the discussion we had about this a year and a half ago…
http://www.designinginteractive.com/design/embedded-fonts-a-bad-idea/
The post is dated and much of it irrelevant now, but still interesting to reflect back.
Stephen Coles
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pmHah! Nice little jab, and sorta the same one I was making when @font-face was announced over a year ago.
Lori Boos
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pmI love this one. The twist at the end is funny.
Brad Colbow
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pm@Joe, I like that word. I’ve been writing more and more like this lately, curios to see what people think.
Joe Fiorini
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pmOne word: edutainment!
Harmony
June 1, 2009 at 2:00 pm@Brad well I actually read this whole thing through AND enjoyed it
I think this format could definately work for telling the web community about important-stuff-they-need-to-know (TM) in a format which is quick, fun, and interesting.
Brad Colbow
June 2, 2009 at 2:00 pm@Stephen @Josh - The font issue was a big one back when flash was introduced. People were using hard to read fonts everywhere, it will only be compounded once the browser is tasked with rendering it.
@Kyle, @Harmony - Thanks guys I definitely have more like this one in the pipeline.
@Stomme - “Sliced Up” means to take a design from Photoshop and convert it to HTML. I’ve used it for years, not sure what other people refer to that process as.
@Michael - That is a great question. I don’t see why not. My concern is that if anyone can embed fonts using @font-face why would they pay for a service to do it legitimately for them. I think a lot of us designers who pour a lot of time and effort into our craft understand the value of a good typeface and all the work that goes into it. I also think that’s only 10% of the web design community. I think Typekit is a great step forward, but I also thinks it only solves part of the problem the foundries face.
Doug Young
June 3, 2009 at 2:00 pmLotta grammar errors in here: “But this font is unreadable” is not a question, “It needs sliced up” is not a sentence, and it should be “soon browsers.”
Vladimir Cvetic
June 3, 2009 at 2:00 pmInside info, slogan of typekit will be:
“From idiots to idiots”
Typekit CEO:
“Personal portfolios need to fallow modern PC games with system requirements and porn sites with amount of internet traffic they generate. That’s why we built this brilliant project, not only that you will use up to 10 times more javascript but your visitors will need consume up to 10 times more bandwidth.”
80% of web designers are screaming, crying and applauding the other 20% would do the same but their hands are stuck in their pants.
liam
June 3, 2009 at 2:00 pmAmazing, very VERY good once again. Very well put.
Brad Colbow
June 4, 2009 at 2:00 pmThanks for the heads up Doug, always hate when I miss the typos.
Thanks Liam, glad you liked it.
Gem
June 6, 2009 at 2:00 pmLove it love it love it
Dennison Uy
June 15, 2009 at 2:00 pmI got lost in the last two panels :( Typekit looks promising though!
Brad Colbow
June 15, 2009 at 2:00 pm@dennison - That was one of my biggest concerns with this strip, It goes from informative to a joke in those last couple panels. It does get a bit jumbled. I also learned from my commentators that the term “sliced up” isn’t used universally.
jorde
June 16, 2009 at 2:00 pmIt should be known to most designers. At least to anyone who design interfaces (GUI’s and websites, etc)
Anyway I found this a really good comic, it was easy to keep up with, and the twist at the end put a smirk on my face
Keep it up!
——-
Xeos Creative
May 5, 2010 at 2:15 pmFunny, but Typekit is kind of a rip-off. Subscribing explaining to the client why you have to subscribe to a font library is going to be very difficult, when the technology itself is free. Do we hide stock images behind subscription-based javascript code?