Many of you are familiar with free or open source tools that convert standard desktop files into the formats used on the web, or with web fonts services that allow you to upload your own fonts directly. Any commercial web font service must be certain not to run afoul of those requirements when preparing fonts for use on the web. Specifically, many licenses prohibit the licensee from redistributing any version of the font file to a third party, or from putting the font files on servers accessible to the general public.
This usually is not the case: most commercial desktop font licenses do not permit the licensee to use the font on the web.
Many people assume that if their company has already licensed a font for use in their branding, they already have the license they need to use the font on the web. However, the individual attention that must be paid to each of these agreements can make them time-consuming to complete. These relationships make it possible for us to offer one of the broadest and most diverse libraries in the industry. Today, more than 60 major commercial and independent foundries have license agreements with Typekit. The foundry must first agree that they want their fonts to be available this way, and then work with us to create a license agreement that works for both sides. Before we can offer a font via the Typekit library, it must first be licensed to us by the issuing type designer or foundry. The most important obstacle between you and your new font is licensing. We’re continually working with new fonts and foundries, and in this post we wanted to share some of the details with you about what’s involved when we add a new font to the Typekit library. We love hearing these requests from you, since they help us understand which foundries, designs, and designers are most popular with our customers, so please keep them coming!
Every day, our customers write us asking if we can add specific new fonts to the Typekit library it might be a font that they’ve chosen for a project, that is part of their corporate identity, or that they’ve custom-designed for a client.