Typekit and Legibility

I got into a conversation about Typekit on Twitter the other day, and Paul Battley hinted that he didn’t really see the point:

[snip 'tweet' cannot be found]

Typekit doesn’t seem to work on Chrome-based browsers, or Mobile Safari (so that means the iPhone, and probably Android). That’s a shame, but I expect that Typekit will address the issue, if only for the desktop-bound browsers, but Paul’s comment about legibility got me thinking.

I suspect what Paul thinks is important is getting to the meat of a site - the actual information - without any unnecessary hinderances. It’s a goal I can fully support.

It’s Web 2.0, right?

Good websites let you consume their data in any way you like. This one has an atom feed, but you can also slurpt the HTML and do what you like with that. All of the content is available individually (or just the text, or even the raw snip), and the full posts are in the feed, so you’re genuinely able to consume this site in any way you please. However, if you actually visit directly in a browser, I have an opportunity to add an extra dimension to that experience, aesthetically. That’s what Typekit assists with.

It’s certainly easy to produce a difficult-to-read version of this content using Typekit, and I may have achieved just that here. I think the point is that this is my domain (in both senses of the word), and it’s employed as a medium for expressing myself, both intellectually and visually.