Some introductions are in order after inviting these, our latest foundries to FontShop. Get a good look at their libraries, or start here with a peek at what each is up to.

When hosting your own webfonts, reducing their number and size to only what you need can make a huge difference in your site’s performance. In fact, depending on how your site is set up, webfonts can even go so far as to block the browser’s page rendering process—meaning that until they’re completely finished downloading, no text is displayed at all.

Two typographic terms that are frequently confused with each other are kerning and tracking. This is understandable – they both mean adding or subtracting space between characters. Yet there is a big difference. Kerning is adding or subtracting space between two individual characters, to correct the spacing in problematic character pairs, as seen in the previous episodes Adventures in Space: Spacing and Kerning. Tracking however is the name for altering the spacing in a sequence of characters.

The good stuff will cost you. Though some of our foundries offer single weights of their best type­faces at no charge, transferring some of the designs’ potential future value to you, here in the present. All set?

Our irregularly published review of album sleeve design and typography looks at the artwork for recent releases by Boosie BadAzz, NZCA Lines, Rachel Platten, Villagers, Skunk Anansie, Anderson .Paak, The Anchoress, Lucinda Williams, Adrian Younge, and Alex Smoke.