For aesthetic reasons, I’m loving the Google Web Fonts home page because I really love the curves and details of ampersand symbols (but not the actual word ampersand…yuck). I’m always jealous of people that are able to write them beautifully when jotting a quick reminder or taking notes. Mine always look unbalanced and it takes way too much thought to write one out. However, the curious designer in me is frustrated that I can’t click on the featured &’s to see what font they are written in!

I’m a nerd…I know.

For practical reasons, I’m loving this Google service mainly because they offer SO many neat fonts to use on the web. I’m a strong believer that a particular font can make or break a website design, so in the past I’ve always chosen fonts that aren’t web-safe, forcing me to make images of the navigation items and headlines where I’ve used the specific font. Although there are sites like Cufón (used on my website) that take your fancy fonts and converts it into images using javascript and vector graphics, but it’s still an image—you can’t highlight it, you can’t copy and paste it, etc. With Google Web Fonts, the font you choose still remains a font on your site. You just plop in the code that Google provides for each font and it will render nicely on your site. Keep in mind though, that if EVERY word on your site is from Google Web Fonts, your page load time will be slower.