Six Months of Six

2012 was a big year. We launched Squarespace 6, announced the public beta of our Developer Platform, and introduced new and exciting iOS apps to help you do what you do better. We survived the largest Atlantic hurricane on record. We were awarded the #2 Best Place to Work in New York City and snagged a Silver Stevie Award for outstanding customer support. And we’re still going strong.

Better. Faster. Stronger.

Since we launched Squarespace 6 last summer, we’ve been working tirelessly to integrate new features, add beautiful templates, and improve the platform. Some highlights include:

• New Templates. From Aviator to Montauk, we’ve introduced more templates that showcase clean design and ultra-flexible functionality.

• Advanced Galleries. We’re happy to report all galleries and gallery blocks now support videos. Bring on those high school film projects and tearjerker wedding videos!

• Folder Navigation. It’s easy to add a drop-down menu to any part of your navigation – just put your pages in a folder in your Website Manager. It’s as simple as that. 

• Improved File Management and RSS. Our RSS capabilities now play nicely with Flipboard as well as iTunes. The new file management UI lets you easily upload, manage, and replace your files.

• Enhanced Social Integration. Not only have we added new services including LinkedIn, Dribbble, and 500px, we’ve also added a Social Links block to easily add social icons to a page. Finally, you can now push a page to your personal Facebook account and automatically share updates on Tumblr. 

• Google-friendly SEO Enhancements. We have optimized your websites for Google Sitemaps, Google Image Search, and Google Author Rank, ensuring your website is always front and center in search results.

There’s much more to come in the year ahead.

We’re kicking 2013 off with a killer new Typekit integration plus a few big surprises – so stay in touch. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and add us on Google+ to keep up with the latest news and updates from Squarespace. 

We hope you’re having a wonderful start to the new year and look forward to seeing all the brilliant things you’ll create with Squarespace in the days to come. As always, thank you for your continued support.

Squarespace + Typekit: 65 Professional Fonts for Free

Today, we are pleased to announce a partnership with Typekit, the leader in providing high-quality hosted fonts to websites. Our new partnership makes more than 65 Typekit fonts immediately available to all Squarespace customers at no additional charge.

Typography plays an elemental role in establishing the personality and tone of your website. Fonts on the web have historically lagged behind what has been available to desktop publishers due to complex licensing restrictions and platform formats. Typekit removes those barriers and ensures your website can use licensed, beautiful typography.

You can find the new Typekit fonts in your Style Editor listed under each drop-down menu in the Typography section. This is in addition to the entire Google Web Fonts library already available on the platform.

Already a Typekit customer?

You can also easily use any of Typekit’s other fonts on Squarespace if you have a Typekit account. From Typekit, simply create a kit and enter the kit ID in your site settings area. The Style Editor will automatically replace our default fonts with the fonts in your kit, so you can visually select the fonts you’ve integrated.

We’re always working hard to improve your experience with Squarespace and would love to hear from you. Have another integration you’d like to suggest? Send us a tweet @squarespace!

Introducing David Lee, Chief Creative Officer

Today, we are excited to welcome David Lee to our team as Squarespace’s new Chief Creative Officer. David joins Squarespace from TBWA Worldwide, where he served as Worldwide Digital Executive Creative Director for more than three years. Earlier in his career, David worked as a Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy and AKQA, and as an Art Director at Sid Lee.

Since inception, Squarespace has worked to produce timeless designs and put them directly into the hands of our customers. By actively seeking out and joining forces with world-class design talent, we can continue to push the boundaries of what is possible on the web. I am personally looking forward to partnering with David to bring an unparalleled level of refinement to Squarespace and our products.

In addition to overseeing the digital creative output for the worldwide TBWA network, David acted as President and Chief Creative Officer of Pilot.is, a design and technology group within the firm that creates products living at the intersection of marketing and engineering. He was also instrumental in creating Projeqt, a dynamic web presentation platform that powers thousands of high-profile portfolios.

Throughout his career, David received countless industry awards for his work, including the Cannes Cyber Lions, Direct Lions, SXSW Interactive, One Show, LIAA, D&AD, The Webby Awards, New York Festivals, Eurobest, and Digital Marketing Awards. His work has also been featured in magazines such as Contagious, Communication Arts, and Applied Arts.

Please join us in welcoming David to the Squarespace team.

Squarespace x Seth Godin: The Icarus Deception

The commonly understood moral of the story of Icarus is to play it safe, to obey authority. Don't fly too close to the sun. In world-renowned marketer Seth Godin's new book, The Icarus Deception, he makes the case for forging your own path, pushing beyond what is expected, and connecting with other humans by making your art–whatever it may be.

At Squarespace, we value creative thinking in everything we do, and strive to serve the creative community with powerful tools at fair prices. Our platform has been designed to enable publishers, designers, illustrators, foodies, fashion designers, musicians, and scientists to create a beautiful and easy way to share what they do with the world around them.

We connected with Seth Godin when he was beginning to build his social platform on Squarespace 6. When we discovered the goal behind the project, we knew we had to support it.

In addition to co-producing a film to help tell his story, we've also helped develop a new template based on the design and functionality of flyclosertothesun.com. The larger Squarespace community will be able to use the Icarus template to share their own ideas and creations later in 2013.

We hope that this project helps inspire you to make something and share it with the world.