Laura's custom font for DB Export

Dominion Breweries asked us to rebuild the DB Export website with the help of Colenso BBDO’s creative team. We accepted the challenge and the site is now one of our biggest success stories. We had a great crew, the build process was smooth and the site launched on time.

One of the challenges we faced was the typography used in much of the site. Colenso had a great-looking crusty texture laid over the heading font. Somehow we had to translate this to the web. Our options were:

• Use images; meaning lots of ongoing work for the designer (me!), and not ideal.
• Use Flash; slightly more viable, but lots of initial work for the developer, and not great for mobile devices or iOS.
• Or, how about we create an actual font and install it on the site? That could work.

The task turned out to be easier than I thought. I based the font on an existing typeface and with High Logic's FontCreator, created the DB Export Yourself font, now in use on the DB Export site. We embedded the font using Cufón, a popular Javascript tool for using non-standard fonts online.

It was a challenge for me, but a whole lot of fun. I gained some great experience and have a new found respect for all type designers.