Preface

This document was originally tweeted out as a thread which provides a little more context. Just to reiterate, this document contains my singular opinion on what I like to see on a type foundry’s website, and behaves more as an idealized wish list rather than a set of expectations I hold foundries to.

I also wrote this fairly casually, so I tried to keep things light. I hope you don’t mistake any sassiness for nastiness. 🥺✨

General

Don’t make my computer fans spin

• Please, I am begging you. If you want to go crazy on a mini-site (like gt-zirkon.com) go for it! But please don’t make your home page so complicated that it makes my computer fans spin.
• Hot tip: SHUT OFF ANIMATIONS THAT AREN’T VISBLE
  • Sorry, but I had to shout. Because if I can’t leave a tab of your website open while I do other stuff because your nine thousand animations are making my computer want to launch itself into the sun then we have a problem.

Show me the fonts in full words

• This can the font name or literally any other word, but I do NOT want to browse your fonts by looking at “Aa” repeated across the screen.
  • I hate to throw anyone under the bus, but I find Typofonderie’s and DSType’s websites so hard to browse.

Type testers

Live type (not static images)

• If you are too scared to host your own fonts, then why the hell do you even sell web fonts?
• Show me how they render on screen as actual fonts! (No .png, no .svg!)

CSS Editor

• Commercial Type has this feature and I love it! I used it all of the time.
• Worth noting that this feature may not be necessary depending on how robust you make your type tester. See everything below.
• Why do I use this?

  • Most type testers don’t allow enough precision in type size, leading or tracking, or they don’t tell you what the value is being shown. For example, I might set the following:

    font-size: 21px; # sometimes I can't get to this exact value
    line-height: 1.35;
    letter-spacing: 0.05em;
    

  • I also use the custom css to preview font features because there have been instances on Commercial Type’s website where some features didn’t work using their Open Type dropdown or it was missing some stylistic alts.

Custom values

• Let me type in the font size/line-height/letter spacing I want to preview. You can keep your slider if you want, but I find that they often lack precision. So let me edit the value if I want to.

OpenType Features

• Let me play with literally all of the OpenType features that your font has to offer, not just the stylistic alternates. I want figure positions, swashes, case sensitivity, everything!
• GIVE THEM NAMES
  • ❌ Stylistic Set 1
  • ✅ Single story a