There was a day when web designers had about ten fonts to choose from that they knew would display correctly on the web. It was a dark, desperate time. Don’t get me wrong, some of these fonts are pretty solid screen fonts; Georgia, Verdana and Trebuchet MS being my personal favorites. They read well and look decent. However, a handful of utilitarian fonts isn’t good for designing attractive, unique websites. Up until now, the go-to methods for getting a unique font on your website were to embed images or *shudders* use Flash. Thankfully, modern web technologies are making this a thing of the past.

CSS2 introduced a rule called @font-face that allows browser to download a font and render a webpage with it. However there was never a consensus on which font file format (alliteration!) to use on the web, so @font-face never took off… until now. Modern browsers now include support for most font file formats (I’ll never tire of saying that) and the web is starting to be a much nicer place for us typophiles.

Why is the ability to embed fonts into websites so awesome? Because there are now hundreds of fonts that you can use on the web and the list is growing every day. If one of your clients has a unique font as part of their branding, you can now use that font when building their website. If you want to make your blog have some extra pop, you can use a wild display font for your h1’s and h2’s. The world is your oyster, my friends.

Now you’re asking, “Where do I start!?” First, Six Revisions has a fantastic write up about @font-face and using fonts on the web. Read it. Next, go find some great web-ready fonts! The foundry FontFont makes some of the best fonts around. I must recommend FF Meta as a the most readable sans-serif you ever did see and FF Tisa as a delightfully personable serif. You should check out FontFont’s whole web font offering as well as Google’s open source web font offering. Enjoy.

We all need an escape. For me and probably 85% of the people I know that escape has quickly become Panem, the post-apocalyptic setting of the Hunger Games trilogy.

Whether you’re Team Peeta or Team Gale, if you’ve picked up one of these books you know what I’m talking about. “Love” doesn’t even begin to describe how we feel about this story – Mild to moderate obsession is more like it. It’s got everything we want in a book: Action! Adventure! Love! And the icing on the cake? The Powers that Be have decided to turn this trilogy into a movie!

The first movie premieres on March 23^rd so if you haven’t read the book yet, do yourself a favor and start now. Or, if you’re a nerd like me, re-read book 1 so that every last detail is fresh in your memory when you hit that midnight showing.

Welcome to the Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favor.

How many people actually watch the Super Bowl for the game? I personally watch it for the commercials. Doritos Man’s Best Friend commercial gets me every time. What was your favorite?

If you’re like me, sometimes a good toe tapper is all that will get you through a particularly tedious task. This song, *Up Up Up* by Givers is a catchy little pop number with a pretty epic final 30 seconds. If you like this, grab the whole album. It’s a winner.

…coffee edition.