- From: Amy van der Hiel <amy@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2022 15:30:14 -0400
- To: w3c-ac-members@w3.org
- Cc: Amy van der Hiel <amy@w3.org>, W3C Press Relations <w3t-pr@w3.org>, public-webfonts-wg@w3.org
Dear Advisory Committee Representatives,
On 25 April, W3C Web Fonts Working Group and MPEG will be recognized with a Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award for standardizing font technology for custom downloadable fonts and typography for web and TV devices. We will issue a press release on the day of the ceremony.
We have prepared a draft press release which is under embargo until 25 April 2022.
If your organization wishes to submit a Member testimonial, please do so ASAP and before EOD 20 April. Guidelines for Member testimonials are at: http://www.w3.org/2004/12/testimonial_pr-guidelines.html
If you would like to send a Member testimonial, the draft press release (text version below) that you can share with your Press/Comm departments under embargo is at:
https://www.w3.org/2022/04/pressrelease-woff-emmyaward.html.en.html
Please let us know if you would like to submit a testimonial and many congrats again to the WOFF WG.
Thank you.
best,
Amy van der Hiel
W3C Media Relations Coordinator
Text version of the press release:
==================================
[1]W3C Under embargo until 2022-04-25
[1] https://www.w3.org/
Changing the face of the web: W3C Web Fonts Working Group and MPEG
recognized with a Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award
__________________________________________________________
Read [2]testimonials from W3C Members
[3]Translations | [4]W3C Press Release Archive
__________________________________________________________
[3] https://www.w3.org/Press/Releases-2022#woff-emmyaward
[4] https://www.w3.org/Press/
[5]https://www.w3.org/ — 25 April 2022 — Today the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) Web Fonts Working Group and MPEG together
received a 2021 Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award for
standardizing font technology for custom downloadable fonts and
typography for web and TV devices.
[5] https://www.w3.org/
A new face of the web
Web Fonts have enhanced the way we see and read text on the
web, how we communicate; and they have literally changed the
typographic face of the web.
The invention of the World Wide Web has often been compared, in
its world-changing impact on society, to the invention of the
printing press in Europe. The pieces of moveable typeface used
by Gutenberg helped to lead to a revolution in the sharing of
information then, and Web Fonts have changed the way we see and
interact with information on the web now.
Chris Lilley, co-developer of Web Open Font Format (WOFF) and
Staff Contact of the W3C Web Fonts Working Group, said: “We can
often immediately identify, from the pointed heavy shapes in
the text of a gothic movie poster or the sleek lines of the
title of a futuristic sci-fi show, its genre. Web Fonts bring
this aesthetic experience, this added visual layer of
communication, more easily and more widely to the web. In
addition to aesthetic experience, fonts can bring identity to
the written word.”
A culmination of 25 years of work
This award for Web Fonts represents the culmination of a
quarter-century of work at the Web Consortium. In 1996, just 2
years after the World Wide Web Consortium was founded, Chris
Lilley, who accepted the Emmy® award for W3C, wrote a Rationale
for Fonts on the Web, noting: “ a solution for Fonts on the web
should be a framework, capable of supporting current and future
technologies (based on content negotiation between a knowing
and willing sender and recipient), and be implementable from
publically available specifications.” A year later, the W3C
Fonts working group released the first public draft of Web
Fonts, introducing the now-familiar @font-face CSS mechanism.
However, it would be decades of work in order to reach the
point where downloadable fonts could be easily licensed and
reliably used in any browser on laptops, mobile and TV.
Downloadable fonts were not previously common on the web. W3C
cleared many years of roadblocks and brought together
communities of web developers, browser and font vendors to find
a way forward. The new Web Fonts Working Group, established in
2009, addressed the lack of an interoperable font format and
font licensing through the creation in 2012 of an
industry-supported, DRM-free, open font format for the web
called “WOFF” (Web Open Font Format) whose version 2 –a
standard since 2018–, is deployed in all major web browsers and
now powers the vast majority (80%) of sites.
“Web Fonts heighten consumer experience and give web
professionals greater aesthetic and creative choices. In many
ways, though we often take fonts for granted, they act as a
visual language in themselves. Fonts can be both medium and
message.” stated Vladimir Levantovsky, Chair of the W3C Web
Fonts Working Group.
Making Web Fonts on the web work for everyone
Web Fonts enable people to use fonts on demand over the web,
without requiring installation in the operating system. The
technology developed by the W3C Web Fonts Working Group
significantly improves compression efficiency and lowers
network bandwidth. The Brotli compressor used in WOFF2 is so
efficient that it was also adopted into HTTP, providing
benefits to the web for HTML, CSS and Javascript files as
well.
At the start of the web, using web core font pack was the only
option and many sites looked the same. To us today, the text on
some older websites look a bit drab and almost funny. Now,
thanks to WOFF, we have a wide range of open, easy to use fonts
which make it easier for designers and creators to express
themselves, share meaning and bring greater richness and
creativity to the web.
This is the third Emmy® Award in Technical & Engineering that
the Web Consortium has won. In 2016 W3C was recognized with a
Technical and Engineering Emmy® for the Timed Text Markup
Language (TTML) standard that helps ensure that the needs of
people with disabilities, particularly people who are deaf or
hard of hearing, are addressed and in 2018 W3C received a
Technical and Engineering Emmy® for worldwide media standard
enabling a Full TV Experience on the Web, bringing videos to
the Web with HTML5.
About the World Wide Web Consortium
The mission of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead
the Web to its full potential by creating technical standards
and guidelines to ensure that the Web remains open, accessible,
and interoperable for everyone around the globe. W3C well-known
standards HTML and CSS are the foundational technologies upon
which websites are built. W3C works on ensuring that all
foundational Web technologies meet the needs of civil society,
in areas such as accessibility, internationalization, security,
and privacy. W3C also provides the standards that undergird the
infrastructure for modern businesses leveraging the Web, in
areas such as entertainment, communications, digital
publishing, and financial services. That work is created in the
open, provided for free and under the groundbreaking W3C Patent
Policy.
W3C's vision for "One Web" brings together thousands of
dedicated technologists representing more than 400 [6]Member
organizations and dozens of industry sectors. W3C is jointly
hosted by the [7]MIT Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the
[8]European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics
(ERCIM) headquartered in France, [9]Keio University in Japan
and [10]Beihang University in China. For more information see
[11]https://www.w3.org/.
[6] https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List
[7] https://www.csail.mit.edu/
[8] https://www.ercim.eu/
[9] https://www.keio.ac.jp/
[10] https://ev.buaa.edu.cn/
[11] https://www.w3.org/
End Press Release
Media Contact
Amy van der Hiel, W3C Media Relations Coordinator
<[12]w3t-pr@w3.org>
mailto:w3t-pr@w3.org
+1.617.253.5628 (US, Eastern Time)
__________________________________________________________
Testimonials from W3C members
[13]@@Member@@ • [14]@@Member@@ • [15]@@Member@@ •
[16]@@Member@@ • [17]@@Member@@
[13] https://www.w3.org/2022/04/pressrelease-woff-emmyaward.html.en.html
[14] https://www.w3.org/2022/04/pressrelease-woff-emmyaward.html.en.html
[15] https://www.w3.org/2022/04/pressrelease-woff-emmyaward.html.en.html
[16] https://www.w3.org/2022/04/pressrelease-woff-emmyaward.html.en.html
[17] https://www.w3.org/2022/04/pressrelease-woff-emmyaward.html.en.html
@@Member@@
@@Message@@
Member representative name, title
@@Member@@
@@Message@@
Member representative name, title
@@Member@@
@@Message@@
Member representative name, title
@@Member@@
@@Message@@
Member representative name, title
@@Member@@
@@Message@@
Member representative name, title
__________________________________________________________
[18]Translations | [19]W3C Press Release Archive
[18] https://www.w3.org/2022#woff-emmyaward
[19] https://www.w3.org/Press/
Received on Wednesday, 13 April 2022 19:30:17 UTC