Author of the Webfont Handbook: https://xitter.cf/t.co/goF51MSiS7 Tweets on web typography and front-end development.

Copenhagen, Denmark
Joined September 2009
It’s here! Go buy the Webfont Handbook and learn about rendering, licensing & optimising your webfont loading! abookapart.com/products/webf…
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For the first time since 2007, you can buy fonts directly from my website again. Also, live, editable font previews. At last! marksimonson.com/fonts
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My latest typeface release is Dreamboat, based on the classic early twentieth century "bold script" style of lettering, still seen on logos for baseball teams, car companies, beer and soft drink brands. More info: marksimonson.com/notebook/vi… marksimonson.com/fonts/view/…
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Slightly over half of web fonts support (a significant subset of) the Latin writing system. Unfortunately, other writing systems are underrepresented on the web compared to their use in the world. almanac.httparchive.org/en/2…
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A whopping 73% of sites set -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased to change how text is rasterized on MacOS. Do people really dislike the default way MacOS rasterizes text, or are lots of people including CSS libraries that set it by default?
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I didn't check the numbers, but this might also make it the most used non-standard CSS property!
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Slightly over 99.99% of variable fonts use TrueType glyph outlines. Not a good look for the CFF2 format six years after it was standardized. Perhaps time to deprecate it? almanac.httparchive.org/en/2…
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Nearly 91% of web fonts use TrueType glyph outlines while only 9% use CFF glyph outlines. After compression TrueType and CFF based fonts have nearly identical file sizes (and for larger fonts TrueType outlines produce smaller compressed file sizes). almanac.httparchive.org/en/2…
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Roboto, Font Awesome, Noto Sans, Open Sans, and Lato are the most popular typefaces used on the web. Most of the top 20 are libre (thanks @GoogleFonts) or free fonts, with one notable exception: Proxima Nova by @marksimonson which is used on 1% of sites. almanac.httparchive.org/en/2…
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Another remarkable fact is that icon fonts are used on nearly 18% of websites! Most of this can be attributed to @FontAwesome (12.8%) and @_vect_ (IcoMoon; 1.5%).
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The median font size is 20 KiB for all fonts. Looking only at self-hosted fonts the median font sizes doubles to 40 KiB. There is also much less use of WOFF2 for self-hosted fonts (46%) versus overall (75%). Lots of file size savings left on the table! almanac.httparchive.org/en/2…
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Some, but not a lot, of growth in color font use. Likely causes are the ongoing disagreements over color font formats & (until recently) lack of browser support. OT-SVG is still the most popular color font format, but COLR is catching up fast. almanac.httparchive.org/en/2…
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Variable font usage has grown to an impressive 29% (up from 13%). About 97% of variable font usage is from @GoogleFonts; only 3% from self-hosting and other services. Most people use variable fonts for performance and not for their typographic potential. almanac.httparchive.org/en/2…
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Overall web font usage now at 84%! About 67% use a service _and_ self-host, while exclusive self-hosting is at 19%: almanac.httparchive.org/en/2… @GoogleFonts use has declined slightly for the first time, while @FontAwesome grew by 86% and @AdobeFonts grew by 24% over the last 3 years
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Thanks to @4x13, @svgeesus, @PixelAmbacht, and @jmsoleb for their amazing reviews, @TheGreenGreek for keeping things on track, Shaina Hantsis for editing and @kanmiobasa for help with the analysis. Finally, a big shoutout to the @HTTPArchive team for making all of this possible.
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Powerful, passionate address from Zelensky tonight. Switching from Ukrainian to Russian he addresses mothers of soldiers who committed horrific war crimes in Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, asking how they raised “butchers,” and he tells Moscow to see how it’s orders are being fulfilled.
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Say hello to Google Fonts Knowledge! Today we launch a library of original guides to the world of typography, created in collaboration with typographic experts around the world, to enable designers and developers to choose and use type with purpose. fonts.google.com/knowledge
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Bradley Initials DJR is my first release to come with a COLRv1 variant, which takes advantage of SVG-like features such as gradients but without the large filesize and inflexibility of embedded images. tools.djr.com/misc/bradley-i…
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