Until recent history, the folks working in print were having all the fun with fonts. On the digital side, web designers have had to resort to workarounds and text-filled images to even come close to the richly diverse fonts available to print designers.

But the good folks at Google are working to change that, one open source code at a time. In May, they launched the Google Font API and an accompanying Google Font Directory, allowing free access to a library of web fonts and making it easy for web designers to apply them to any web page.

The high-quality, totally open-source fonts are designed to work in most browsers and are licensed so that they can be used anywhere, from personal blogs to big time eCommerce sites. To apply the fonts, just use the effortless Google Font API, which is compatible with versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, and even Internet Explorer.

Web fonts have to be downloaded to the site visitor’s computer before they display, meaning there could be some lag time on the initial visit. But Google notes that once their Font API becomes widely used, most users will already have the fonts cached. However, it’s still recommended to have a default “safe” font that displays if there are issues.

All in all though, this sounds like a huge plus for web designers, offering more creative flexibility. And Google’s hoping that the library will only continue to grow–if you’ve got a killer font design up your sleeve, contact them about contributing!

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