Web Font Replacement: Typekit vs.  Cufon

typekitI’ve started to you Typekit on my site and various projects as a replacement for Cufon. So far it’s been really great and I have no regret’s.

That said there are a few advantages and disadvantages that are important to recognize for certain situations.

Advantages

  1. Faster and leaner

    The flicker time on page load with Typekit seems to be quicker and less noticeable than Cufon. The time involved in setting up Typekit is less as well.

  2. Better typographic control

    Font rendering is more reliable when combined with out of the box CSS. Typekit allows for better control of line-height and typography enhancements.

  3. No copyright issues

    You can rest easy knowing that all font’s abide to their original license agreement. You’re font replacement with Typekit is legit and supports the font community.

Disadvantages

  1. Limited number of font choices

    Though the library offered by TypeKit is extensive, it lacks some of the well known font’s I would love to use in my projects. Well known font’s like Franklin Gothic, Gotham, News Gothic, Meta and more aren’t the type of font’s that are likely to make it into their open library of choices.

  2. Poor display in Internet Explorer

    I’ve reverted to using web-safe fonts for all current versions of Internet Explorer since @font-face support just isn’t there yet. Cufon has more support at this time.

The Bottom Line

Overall I’m very happy I made the switch to Typekit and would recommend it for font replacement on the majority of my project. As an alternative I would suggest exploring Font Squirrel @font-face Generator. I’ve done this in circumstances where the company you’re working with has ownership of the font’s they use.

Font Squirrel will allow you to quickly setup all the details needed to support @font-face in various browser’s. I would ditch the support in Internet Explorer, it’s very pixelated and not worth it at the moment. A web safe font should suffice until Microsoft get’s their shit together.

Share Your Thoughts

Have any other suggestions or opinions? Feel free to comment, I do my best to get back to each and every comment.

Meet the Author

Kevin Leary, WordPress Consultant

I'm a freelance web developer and WordPress consultant in Boston, MA with 17 years of experience building websites and applications. View a portfolio of my work or request an estimate for your next project.