TechSqueeze: Fonts, Typography, and Sex

I got your cufon right here.

​Anyone who is in the web design, print, or graphic design industries knows all about fonts. The rest of us usually don't give them much thought, really. I know I hadn't until attending last Thursday's Refresh Fort Lauderdale.  

The discussion that night was web fonts and typography. Most of the presentations were regarding fonts, how they're integrated into websites, and the technical aspects of font delivery. Dan Rubin gave great information on image replacement (side note: Google doesn't penalize when you do this), and some tools for getting other typefaces into visitors' browsers without forcing a download.

What impressed me the most were two things: the technology involved here and how sexual most of the font names (typefaces) sound.  

The tech is amazing mainly because web surfers likely never see this stuff and don't know it's there, let alone what it's doing or how cool it is that it exists in the first place. If you've been online for a while, like I have, you know that today's internet is a far cry from the old days. Things have definitely improved, and fast.

The font names are different. Font artists are an interesting subset of the graphics world. They aren't artists in the sense that they paint chapels or carve statues, and yet they aren't really graphics artists either. They're something else. I'm not sure of their background, but I have to guess it's French or Latin in origin. Why?  

Because everything these people do seems to hint at sex, mention sex, or allude to the act of seduction.

Do you think I'm kidding? Check out some of these typographical titles and you can be the judge:

Alba
Say it out loud. Throw in a Mediterranean accent while you're doing it. Think about Jessica as you say it... Yummy!

Mistral
Think about this one. Really think about it. I know, huh?

MuffeRaw
Do I have to explain this one?

Trajan
It's only one letter off. How much more blatant can you be?

VAG Rounded
Although I guess fully rounded isn't necessarily a good thing here, it is hard not to conjure up a visual.

I could have made the list huge. Really. There's a program called "Font Squirrel," and test fonts are called "Font Specimens." No kidding!

Not to mention some of the plug-in scripts and other things you can use for adding specialized fonts to your web pages. One of them is called "Cufon." (like did you puff the cuff-on for me)  Another is "Font-Face." With the dash, even. The favorite types of fonts right now? Open type faces.  

These people are blatant. It verges on pornography, really. I'm amazed that a lot of this font type stuff doesn't come with parental warning labels and V-chip ratings.  

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find out just how open this Georgia typeface really is.