Typography has always been key in any print design and graphic design, but in the world of the web, in the past, we’ve been harnessed to only a few usable fonts that are supported across most platforms.  If we wanted to step out of these limited fonts we had to use images to replace fonts and then to make those images translate to search engines in the same fashion as actual text was a real pain and resulted in extra time and $$.  Well it seems that times are a changing and more fonts are becoming available for use across the internet and within browsers, enter @font-face CSS property.  Font suppliers are now beginning to license fonts primarily for web use.  It’s a major step forward for us as web designers and allows us to create the flare we are looking for while still complying with SEO standards.  Don’t get me wrong it’s not full proof as of yet and there are licensing costs, but it’s a foot in the door and a step forward.  A List Apart published a great article on the @font-face movement; http://www.alistapart.com/articles/on-web-typography/ .

Beyond this movement there are still only a select number of fonts that work across all platforms and are packaged with most operating systems.  (why do we care about operating systems (Windows, Mac OS) because we can only use fonts that are packaged with the operating system that the user has, if they don’t have the font installed on their computer then it won’t show up in their browser)  Below is a list of supported fonts that work on nearly every browser.  If one of the below doesn’t work on your computer than you can see why this is such a pesky issue.