Author fonts!

[pegkerr]

OMIGOSH THIS IS SO COOL!

Found this at Quill & Quire:

Have you ever wished you could write like Jane Austen? Now you can – at least in appearance. The plot, characters and wit still depend on you, but Quillblog has found a website that provides a font based on the handwriting of Jane Austen. The font includes the basic upper and lower case letters, plus a couple extras such as accented letters, percent signs, and, surprisingly, an @ symbol. (For those who wish to give their e-mail address an Austenian look) Austen’s handwriting ranks number 24 on the site’s top 100, which also includes fonts inspired by Frédéric Chopin and Salvador Dali.

Now how would this work, if I actually wanted to use the font, say in my LiveJournal? (Or, given my layout, I might want to use one of the Tolkien-inspired fonts.) Can you download a font and apply it to your LiveJournal and people who viewed the LiveJournal would see your page in that font? [Can someone direct the technically clueless to resources that would help me figure this out?]

Comments

[eeyorerin]

In order to see a specific font on a Web page (any Web page), the user has to have that specific font on their computer. So for what you're proposing to work, you'd have to ensure that everyone who looks at your journal had that font, which isn't very likely. Still, if you wanted, you could set your journal to the Jane Austen font and also specify other fonts for users who don't have that one. That would mean that you or anyone else who has the font would see the Jane Austen-style writing, and people who don't would see the content in a font that they do have.

If you just wanted to use a specific font for, say, headings, you could make image files of the words that would be in the headings using that specific font and put them on your LiveJournal, and then people would be able to see the font because it would be an image.

Does this make sense?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I see. That makes sense. Thanks!

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

As the previous commenter said, sorry, won't work.

I'm not an expert on LJ styles, but for the web in general you can specify a list in priority order of what fonts to use, and the first font on that list that's installed on the viewer's computer will be used. So you could at least make it appear in that font for anybody who had that font installed, and then specify what to fall back to.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'm certain to skim over your journal if I have to read it in someone's (even my) handwriting.

K.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

As noted, it won't be viewable to most people unless they too have the font....and even then, a lot of people read through their friends list, so the font won't necessarily be enabled there if you set it through your normal styles.

As for the text itself: I'm a graphic designer, and when reading large chunks of text on the web I prefer a clean serif or san serif fonts. If I were going to use the fancy font at all, I would use it in pull quotes. (Rather like your user icons with the LotR quotes.) Maybe you can make a set of Austen icons....I think that would work better. (And indeed, I do like reading those icons.) On the few occasions I chance to read somebody's text in script fonts (or everybody's favourites of Diablo and Copperplate and Papyrus) I cringe and give up after a few lines. It's hard on my eyes after a long day of staring at the computer.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Now there's an excellent idea. I could make a bunch of Austen icons!

[90-percent-sure.livejournal.com]

Pia Frauss basically found a handwritten letter by Jane Austen, and then redrew each character by hand.

P22 does my favorite handwriting-recreation font, Cezanne, (Open type, god love 'em) and they also did Davinci, based on his handwriting.

All fonts that I love, but never use, because you can't read them. :-/

[handgun.livejournal.com]

that font is very pretty, but very difficult to read. imagine how large of a font size you would need to make it legible!

I thought the Jane Austen icon idea like your LOTR ones is awesome.