New Fonts, Early Access, and More

Over the last few months, we’ve been busy adding support for web fonts to Google documents and Google presentations. Today, we’re adding seven font families in Google Web Fonts, a new tool to compare similar fonts, and an early access program to get feedback on non-latin scripts in development.

When you choose a new font, you want it to look good for all your readers, regardless of the platform or browser they’re using. To help make fonts look better in more places, we’re starting to hint more families in Google Web Fonts, thanks to the ttfautohint project, which automates this process. Amarante, Capriola, Courgette, and Quando were hinted using this tool.

Eagle Lake expands on our existing collection of calligraphic font styles, and you can use Metal Mania to bring out your inner guitarist. We’re also very excited to be including a special contribution from our friends over at Adobe - Source Sans Pro, their first open source type family.

As the number of fonts in Google Web Fonts continues to grow, it’s becoming harder to select the right font from among many potential choices. To make this process easier, you can now easily compare two fonts side by side using the new comparison tool. Just add a few fonts to your collection, select Review, and click on the Compare tab at the top.



You can then overlay glyphs from each font on top of each other, and use the slider to transition between fonts to see the differences between them more clearly.

Non-latin fonts can be more complex than latin fonts, both as designs and as font software, which often require more time to develop and polish. The designers of these fonts may not be native readers, and we’re hoping for your feedback to help them understand where their fonts need improvement. You can try them out by downloading them from the Google Web Fonts early access page.

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager