Prior to launching our new site, we investigated and played around with the idea of utilizing Fonts.com new web-based (often referred to as “cloud computing” in some circles) font delivery service. While the notion of being able to specify typefaces beyond the web standards Verdana, Trebuchet, Georgia and Times is highly appealing, in execution the service created noticeable gaps in loading time for pages as the fonts were loaded from Fonts.com servers.
In an ideal world where broadband delivery speed did not vary by ISP or access device, the Fonts.com service makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, in our current real world, waiting several seconds for a page to load can seem like eternity in user time. Hence, we decided to forgo using the Fonts.com service until delivery speeds are in the “instantaneous” range.
However, as the cloud-computing paradigm begins to take hold, there will be more and more services like Fonts.com delivering a wider and broader range of services applicable not only to web designers/developers like ourselves, but to professionals in many sectors and industries.
Update: April 25, 2013—Since this post was first published two years ago, web font technology has matured to the point where we now routinely incorporate a variety of typefaces in the sites we’ve recently and/or are currently designing/developing.