Top all-time · #866
The Typekit Blog
Company blog · blog.typekit.comdesignweb
The Typekit Blog is the company blog at blog.typekit.com, writing about design and web. Since 2009, 78 different Hacker News readers have linked it 92 times, most often “Variable fonts, a new kind of font for flexible design”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 33 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Typekit's blog posts explain web type technology such as font hinting and rendering, variable fonts, and the design of typefaces like Source Code Pro. HN commenters mostly link them as references for font details.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter found the blog posts on the designs of Source Code Pro and JetBrains Mono interesting.1
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 33 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Variable fonts, a new kind of font for flexible design4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-09-14
- Flexible typography with CSS locks4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-08-19
- Introducing Source Han Sans: An open source Pan-CJK typeface3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-07-15
- How Typekit works3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-07-23
- Open source font: Source Code Pro (2012)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-10-06
- Typekit/Adobe introduces free service: Adobe Edge Web Fonts2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-24
- A closer look at TrueType hinting2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-16
- Fonts that render well on the web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-12-30
- Adobe acquires Typekit2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-10-03
- /2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silver-anniversary-story-how-the-originals-endured-in-an-ever-changing-industry/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-29
What Hacker News says?
it's easy enough to edit web fonts to include only necessary characters, but most EULAs won't allow for this. any font licensed under the SIL open font license is fine, though you may have to change the font's name if it has a reserved font name (check the license file). this makes a huge difference (fonts under 10k), but no one ever bothers to do it. not sure if inlining them as base64 in your CSS and serving with…
Comment linking /2016/09/14/variable-fonts-a-new-kind-of-font-for-flexible-design/
on “Web fonts, boy, I don't know”Submitted Adobe acquires Typekit as a story · 179 points
HN discussionWhile not as in depth... the Source Code Pro announcement page touched on some of those - http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/source-code-pro/
Comment linking /2012/09/24/source-code-pro/
on “Dev Fonts”Submitted Adobe + Typekit to bring legendary typefaces to the web as a story · 68 points
HN discussionThere's some CJK sample on Adobe Typekit blog http://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/15/introducing-source-han-sa...
Comment linking /2014/07/15/introducing-source-han-sans/
on “Google Noto Fonts”Submitted Introducing Typekit as a story · 38 points
HN discussionnice work. a large family like this is very well suited to be a variable font[1] -- even the slabs could be an axis. 1. https://blog.typekit.com/2016/09/14/variable-fonts-a-new-kin...
Comment linking /2016/09/14/variable-fonts-a-new-kind-of-font-for-flexible-design/
on “Iosevka – A Typeface for Code, from Code”Submitted Introducing Source Serif: A new open source typeface from Adobe as a story · 26 points
HN discussionA side note about that website. Thin and Extra-Thin fonts have no place in web design (there are some exceptions in huge title text). They are an unnecessary burden for people with limited eyesight and elderly people[1]. Even for me, on my 1366x768 screen (which is still the single most common resolution for cheap notebooks, dear HiDPI web designers[2]), the bullet text is hardly readable, the copyright line is comp…
Comment linking /2013/05/01/hi-dpi-typography/
on “Svelte – A UI framework that compiles into tiny standalone JavaScript modules”Submitted Typekit and Google Announce Open Source Collaboration as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSource Code Pro was my go to for a long time ( https://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/source-code-pro/ gets into the design of it) - the 1Il|iO0oB8 set is where its most interesting to me (and why I liked it). However, when Jetbrains Mono came out, I switched my code editors to it (IntelliJ was trivial) - https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/ (and no, I don't like ligatures). The slightly larger lowercase high at the same…
Comment linking /2012/09/24/source-code-pro/
on “Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing”Submitted Introducing Source Han Sans: An open source Pan-CJK typeface as a story · 9 points
HN discussionI believe the Source family only recently got smallcaps, in 2017: https://blog.typekit.com/2017/01/10/introducing-source-serif... So you need to upgrade. The Gothic drop cap is nothing to do with Source, but it is from Deutsche Zierschrift, one of 5 drop cap fonts (Cheshire Initials, Deutsche Zierschrift, Goudy Initialen, Kanzlei Initialen, & Yinit). In one of the clever performance tricks we use ( https://www.gwern…
Comment linking /2017/01/10/introducing-source-serif-2-0/
on “My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s”Submitted Type rendering: operating systems as a story · 8 points
HN discussionWell by gosh, I am old enough to remember Adobe Multiple Masters… https://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silv... …a technology which went absolutely nowhere. Makes me glad to see Helvetica is now available as variable, as well as a non-trivial number of open-source fonts. https://fonts.google.com/?vfonly=true&sort=popularity (Still waiting for Roboto, though. Slab and mono are there, the main sans i…
Comment linking /2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silver-anniversary-story-how-the-originals-endured-in-an-ever-changing-industry/
on “Helvetica Now Variable”Submitted Variable fonts, a new kind of font for flexible design as a story · 5 points
HN discussionJust what my eyes told me when I looked at the page. Looking now at the Typekit site (where the font comes from) I see that Adelle, indeed, is not recommended for body text by Typekit, only for headings. The Typekit site offers some short explanations about what these recommendations mean: Fonts recommended for paragraph text: “Recommended for continuous text at small sizes, these fonts possess a generous x-height a…
Comment linking /2010/12/17/type-rendering-review-and-fonts-that-render-well/
on “The new Git-scm.com”Submitted Combining Typefaces: Free guide to great typography as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis is similar to how TypeKit serve their fonts. They wrote a blog post explaining their reasoning: http://blog.typekit.com/2011/08/11/better-web-font-loading-w...
Comment linking /2011/08/11/better-web-font-loading-with-javascript/
on “Adobe Edge Web Fonts”Submitted Source Sans Pro 2.0 as a story · 5 points
HN discussionYou're right, but you're about a year late. http://blog.typekit.com/2011/10/03/adobe-acquires-typekit/
Comment linking /2011/10/03/adobe-acquires-typekit/
on “Adobe Edge Web Fonts”Submitted Better web font loading with JavaScript as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTheir linked blog mentions a partnership with Google regarding some of the fonts offered. http://blog.typekit.com/2012/09/24/introducing-adobe-edge-we... With that said and paranoia of external asset serving/hosting, does anyone know if these fonts can be self-hosted?
Comment linking /2012/09/24/introducing-adobe-edge-web-fonts/
on “Adobe Edge Web Fonts”Submitted Flexible typography with CSS locks as a story · 3 points
HN discussionTypekit seems to be trying to get foundries to care about this, every now and then types get improved, like this: http://blog.typekit.com/2011/03/16/skolar-web-hinted-for-bet...
Comment linking /2011/03/16/skolar-web-hinted-for-better-screen-rendering/
on “New Google Web Fonts Interface”Submitted New from Adobe Type: Open-sourced font development tools as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI don't see how that would affect a screenshot—the difference is clearly visible in screenshots. Furthermore the differences between Mac, Linux, and Window font rendering are widely discussed on the internet. I think I just prefer the way that Apple chose to render fonts. This blog post seems to lay out the tradeoff between, at least, Windows and Mac font rendering: https://blog.typekit.com/2010/10/15/type-rendering…
Comment linking /2010/10/15/type-rendering-operating-systems/
on “Fractional scales, fonts and hinting”Submitted Kerning on the Web as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAdobe used to have this feature in their typeface format and type design tools in the 1990s. The format was called “Multiple Master”, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts and http://blog.typekit.com/2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silve... . (Metafont also has this feature.) In practice, type designers found that making such fonts took dramatically more work, and typographers/publishers weren’t wil…
Comment linking /2014/07/30/the-adobe-originals-silver-anniversary-story-how-the-originals-endured-in-an-ever-changing-industry/
on “Apple’s New San Francisco Fonts”Submitted Understanding Letters as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
