Most graphic designers are interested in typography, but the same cannot be said about web designers, at least not in relation to level of interest. When taking on new projects, many web designers take on a functional approach to typography; they want to strike the right balance between readability, responsive design, page loading times, and overall thematic styling. For many graphic designers, typography presents its own set of aesthetics, and a few professionals end up being drawn to font design.
In the past, getting into typography meant pursuing a career or at least a partnership with major type foundries or studios. These days, we have quite a few digital design tools and major platforms such as Google Fonts. It is now easier than ever for web designers who catch the typography bug to find a cure and create their own font families.
The open-source element of Google Fonts makes it ideal for font designers to submit their projects for widespread adoption. If you want to make typography a significant part of your career, launching a font family on Google Fonts can be a nice addition to your resume and portfolio; however, you should also arm yourself with patience. For some reason, Google Fonts can take a very long time to add new families, and there is no way to determine why some designs take longer than others.
Kosal Sen, a Philadelphia-based typographer, recently saw his humanist sans serif family added to Google Fonts, but not after waiting five years. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why it took Sen so long to get approved; he followed all the proper GitHub steps, and the responsible parties at Google Fonts were responsive insofar as assigning tasks to the project, but it still took half decade.
All in all, the time has never been better than now for web designers to pursue typography. The FontBakery community on GitHub is not only very active but also counts with the participation of major foundries that have been around for more than a century. As for design tools, a combination of pencil sketches and FontLab Studio is highly recommended.
