( CNET ) -- In an attempt to move beyond drab typography on the Web , Google on Wednesday released 18 freely usable fonts and an open-source tool designed to smooth over browser issues in displaying downloaded fonts . A number of Web designers -- if not all readers -- are excited that newer browsers support downloadable fonts so sites can use more than the handful that it 's safe to assume are installed already on people 's computers . For every eyeball-searing grunge font and blood-pressure-raising instance of Comic Sans , there 's a tasteful use of an artful logo or distinctive text . But font licensing rules mean a Web designer ca n't necessarily upload any old font for a site . This is where Google 's move , announced at its Google I/O conference , comes in . The company released 18 fonts and also announced an interface that lets Web sites use them . `` Google has been working with a number of talented font designers to produce a varied collection of high quality open source fonts for the Google Font Directory , '' said Raph Levien and David Kuettel of the Google Font API team in a blog post . `` With the Google Font API , using these fonts on your web page is almost as easy as using the standard set of so-called `` web-safe '' fonts that come installed on most computers . '' The way to Web fonts was paved with the Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS ) formatting standard and more recently the Web Open Font Format technology that helped encourage Web typography support from traditional font licensing companies . But even with those foundations , there are copyright concerns that might put off Web developers . Google 's fonts are free of copyright restrictions , though . `` Since all the fonts are open source , you can use them any way you like . We also have a separate project hosted on Google Code for downloading the original font files . Since they 're open source , they can be used for just about any purpose , including for print , '' the Google font team members said . In addition , Google announced an open-source project called WebFont Loader to supply Web developers with code to deal with differences in how browsers handle downloaded Web fonts . The software , a collaboration with Small Batch 's TypeKit project , includes JavaScript code to control how Web pages display types for a uniform experience across different browsers , Google said .
Newer browsers support downloadable fonts so users can use more . Google worked with a team of talented font designers to produce a varied collection . Google announces an open - source project called WebFont ##s .