Best Of

I teach undergraduate and graduate students (mostly communication design) at an art academy in Germany and I am very sure all of them but maybe the very beginners have/horde collections of (free) fonts I don’t want to know how and where they got them from. But I am to blame for that, too, at least in parts, because I want them to exercise choosing (the right) typefaces as much as possible, and to look beyond the tellerrand of fonts that come with their OS or Adobe applications (these are actually almost banned by me). We have quite a big collection of classic (boring) typefaces (Font Folio and URW) and some hands full of newer fonts, but I also want them to learn themselves how to research what type foundries and offerings are out there, what fonts cost, how they can find the right typeface for their design (not one for the whole group), and also how to test these typefaces and make mockups without having the font files. Some developed really impressive skills in photoshopping MyFonts gifs and hacking FontShops rendering machine for their copy.

I like your idea of assigning a collection of fonts, and especially the class-room-mulit-user idea (if I understood it correctly). But at the end of the day it all boils down to art schools without tuition fee, like in Germany, don’t have the funds to buy font licenses on a regular basis. The problem is not so much to get a license for 1–5 computers but to estimate and oversee bulk licenses, and come up with the budget for it. The students are usually using their own laptops in school. We for instance don’t have any school workstations or computer pools anymore where I would install the fonts. How many seats do I have to get with a changing number of students between 4 and 30? Are the foundries OK with the students installing them on their private computes, not the school machines? We don’t have a bookstore and our school is very small. Nobody wants to do the extra admin work, even I am not keen on that although I would do everything I possibly can to mediate in this matter.

Of course, students buy paper, computers, pencils and books for school, too, but in very few instances are they willing to pay for font licenses for school assignments (some older students are starting to, though, my graduands did for their own final projects for instance). They want to try out the fonts before, and I can understand that. It is only reasonably experienced designers who can judge a typeface by its specimen and imaging how it will behave in their real life environment, in their given language, before buying the cat in the bag. Stephen started this thread of foundry discounts on here, that is very helpful and I passed this on to the students. But honestly – they are not really helped with 10% off, they’d need at least 50% off to convince them. And then you have the problem again of what happens when they graduate. Are they to keep the license forever they paid at a student rate? Webfonts with trial licenses are at an advantage here, and I guess that all font-serving technologies could implement a testing-deal for matriculated students quite easily. Less so the small independent foundries I especially want the students to get to know of.

The best I seem to can do at the moment is emphasize and repeat every single day that it may be OK “to show me this idea with this font now”, but whenever they do something for the outside world or get paid for a design, they absolutely have to have their own license for the fonts they use. I tell them about my typedesigner friends and how they worked on these fonts for years and need to make a living off of them. And I tell them how I obtained my collection of typefaces – by whenever I was asked to do something for a friend, family member or NGO for free, I said I would agree to go without payment but they have to pay for the font license. That always worked (and now I have quite a collection of script fonts :/ ).

I just watched Young Type Lovers Anonymous. It got me thinking about how a font foundry might provide discounted licensing to students based on the courses they take.

I do offer a student discount through TypeTrust, but I don't advertise it and do not receive many requests. I'm generally suspicious of the offer being exploited similarly to the way any recent (or not-so-recent) grad might flash a school ID for a discounted ticket at a movie theater or theme park, etc. I can only assume that some of my fonts are being shared among students for school projects, and that many of these fonts continue to be used after graduation which is when my concern hardens. I might agree that font licensing seems too expensive for a student’s budget—even with a hefty discount, but I hope the following proposition might be a viable approach to dissuade software piracy, and foster a professional respect among young type users, their instructors, and type designers.

I haven't been a student for a while, I've never taught any college course, and I haven't even had any involvement in academia for quite a while, so I'd like to hear if this approach might actually work in the academic sphere.

Fonts as Course Requirements
Instructors who write their own syllabi might choose and assign textbooks or supplies as part of the course materials. As far as I understand it, these items are ordered in bulk from the publishers/distributors and sold to the students through the university bookstore. In a similar way, could a collection of relevant typefaces be assigned as required materials? One benefit might be that every student completes each assignment with the same tools, which narrows the focus of grading/critiques to how they have used the typefaces, rather than what typefaces they have chosen to use. (I assume this would be most beneficial in first-year foundation coursework.)

Instructor Participation: Typeface Selection and License Request
This approach would absolutely require due diligence on the part of the instructor, and the school as well if all purchases might go through the bookstore. (I'll get to that below.) A typographically informed design instructor (the only kind to have) would know what current/popular/quality typefaces will provide the most potential for good design, a good variety of project applications, and the ultimate goal of good student portfolios. The instructor could even present a wider selection of vetted typefaces to the class for discussion and final selection per assignment, which might even present an excellent exercise in real-world typographic decision-making and type awareness: having the students actively participate in the selection, budgeting, and purchasing of font licenses.

Foundry Participation: Classroom Discounts
From the font foundry side, one multi-user license would be drafted to cover the whole class. The cost of that license would then be shared among the students taking the course at a fraction of the base license price. Apply an educational discount, and the price per student on any current, professional-quality font wouldn't be more than a few bucks. And how much do textbooks cost? Add up the license cost for the collection of fonts that the instructor has assigned. The total might still only come to the average price of a textbook or any heap of assigned tools and studio course materials. The foundry could also set the specific terms of the license. Would it extend to cover use outside of class, or outside of school, or for post-graduation freelance work? I'd say YES to all these. (I still have the compass and French curves I had to buy at art school in 1993.)

School Participation: University Bookstore Distribution
This approach would be most effective with school/bookstore participation. The licensing could be handled in bulk and purchased by the bookstore, an accurate and approved cost to the individual student could be calculated, and the foundry or type designer would receive a single payment per semester based on how many students are taking the courses. Everyone would be appropriately covered under a single legitimate end user license, and perhaps the school might provide a roster of covered students if the foundry requires.

Since I'm so out of touch with academia, I've been wondering whether schools have yet adopted any system of eBook distribution in place of hardcopy textbook sales, and if there's already a third-party provider of eBook licensing for academic use. If there's already a system in place to handle the distribution and licensing of electronic goods, font distribution wouldn't really be any different.

- - -

Let me know what you think. I'd like to hear some perspectives from other foundries and type designers, but more importantly from design instructors and students.

Isn’t the x-height thing just bullshit?

It could be, but if that is the case it is really old. The execution of several of the RE serif faces followed the general proportions of 6-7 point ATF and Linotype serif text faces, which had enlarged lower cases, not just x height. I.e. they are really wide and openly spaced as well. There is a picture of one of these on our mini site, fontbureau.com/readingedge.

The two most unbullshitic things about masters for small sizes is that they appear larger small and appear confused large, and second, when in the presence of low resolution, they gather more pixels for any given pixel per em than your average master.

As for the Pabloian 7, 8 or 9 px x ht, I would hesitate to add an absolute l.c. pixel ht to a font spec for small masters to avoid forcing all small masters into a mold. 7, an odd number, can sometimes prove more readable than 8, if 9 is just too big for some kind of text style, but we will see as more people do them.

And of course, we will see how these effect web font popularity lists as they each have their own offerings of specialty text faces... I assume...

My initial impression is that this font looks lousy. I've made some lousy fonts in my time so I sure can spot 'em. It's a font where some letters are creative and experimental and others and staid and old fashioned.

And don't put Museo down. Museo and Arial are examples of fonts which are maligned by people who will probably never make a font nearly as good as either of those. Font professionals know how good both of those fonts are so, go malign Museo on Reddit or something.

I don' t think you've committed to those seed letters enough. Instead of worrying whether or not you look like Museo, really think about harmonizing those other letters with the seed letters. If it turns out that you can't, then you need to go back an make compromises with your seed letters. The seed letter strategy can work but before you start, you'd better make sure those seed letters are at least consistent with one another. But let's assume that they are.

When you designed the V. You chose to put a full serif on the right. But your k, has already established an unseriffed treatment for that type of stroke. The left stroke doesn't have any precedent in the seed letters, so you can do whatever you like. But the right stroke, should follow the seed letter unless there's a practical reason why it shouldn't. Legibility can be a reason for making boring decisions, but you've already established with your g, that you intend to push the legibility boundaries a bit . . . why be so safe with the rest of the letters?

In the lowercase g, you've established that a certain type of hook that would lend itself to the top of the C, c and G, rather than the old-fashion treatment you went with. The S and s don't relate to the seed letters in any way.

Why did you decide to include serifs on the top left at the x-height of some of the lowercase letters? That doesn't harmonize with any of your seed characters and even makes them seem out of place. That mid-height ear on your g is interesting. Make sure the other letters play nicely with it.

In your lowercase g, you established a thicker stroke in the curve of the top left of the lower bowl. Yet this is the only place it shows up.

The curved tail on the Q doesn't relate to anything else in the font. Certainly not the seed letters.

The traditional, old-fashioned serif on the question mark doesn't relate to your seed letters.

When you do a font with seed letters, the process isn't much different than making a font based on a logo. You start with a set of well designed letters and you clean them up, you alter them to make sure they harmonize with one another in any combination. Then you add a letter. You it in different combinations and ensure that it harmonizes with the seed letters and gradually, you end up with an alphabet where everything works together. But when you start making decisions based on factors other that those seed letters, you start to run into trouble. That when you have to decide whether or not you're going to go back and make some compromises with those seed letters, or work harder to come up with a better idea. For example, if a V with no serif on the left stroke looks bad next to an A with serifs on both sides, maybe you have to rethink the A? Maybe a square A, a humped A or an A nobody's thought of yet.

The Font Testing Page is a tool primarily intended for type designers and independent foundries. It can also be used by art directors, graphic designers, teachers and students interested in seeing how a typeface works on the web.

There is a short video at:


Operation is simple:
- First, you must accept the request from the browser.
- Then drag the font you want to try to the upper area of the Testing Page.

Below you will find 8 buttons: Headlines, Text, Lowercase Only, Adhesion Only, Caps, All Caps, Layout and Kern.
- Headlines: Displays examples: 72, 60, 48, 36 and 30 to 12.
- Text: Displays text blocks, from 20 to 10.
- Lowercase only: Displays examples of 72, 60, 48, 36, 30, 24, 18 and 16 to 10.
- Adhesion only: Shows examples using only 'adhesion' text. Intended for the early stages on a typeface design.
- Caps: Displays examples of words in Sentence Case at 60.
- All Caps: Displays examples of words in All-Caps at 60.
- Layout: Displays examples of Headline, Subhead and Body text.
- Kern: Displays examples of combinations of letters and miscellaneous signs.

Use it freely at:
http://www.impallari.com/testing/
- Requires Firefox 3.6+/Chrome 13+
- 100% safe: Your fonts are only stored in your own browser 'localStorage'.
- Nothings gets uploaded to the server.

By Pablo Impallari (impallari.com) and Pablo Cosgaya (omnibus-type.com).
Based on Fontdrag (fontdragr.com) and Dave Crossland's FontTest.