(If you don't know me: I've worked as a technology consultant for over a decade, and in recent years graduated from the MATD programme and then consulted for Google on www.google.com/fonts - specifically on their font commissioning and publication.)
I thought I'd mention here in a new thread that I am collecting questions to put to the Google Fonts team, that will be answered in an interview on a major type blog soon.
I'm collecting the questions in this pad:
http://sync.in/qZyoJF90dC
Comments
The stats just reached 1 trillion https://www.google.com/fonts/#Analytics:total
Not everything there is the work of amateurs like me. There are many Google Fonts published that where made by experienced and reputable type designers like Steve Matteson, José Scaglione (current ATypI presindent) and Veronika Burian, Ale Paul, Carrois, Font Dinner, Ale LoCelso, Dario Muhafara and Eduardo Tunni, Pablo Cosgaya, Latinotype, Typesences, many Reading graduates and CDT-UBA graduates. There are also fonts by Adobe's Paul Hunt and Monotype's Dan Rathigan and Toshi Omagari. The Rosario font was hand hinted by Tim Ahrens via TypeKit. And Alegreya was a Letter2 winner (Peter Biľak, John Hudson, Akira Kobayashi, Gerry Leonidas and Fiona Ross where in the Jury, among others).
I've been pretty clear, I think, that I cut Google Fonts more slack than some of my colleagues, because I've got a pretty good idea of the circumstances under which the initiative started and the targets that encouraged them to favour quantity over quality. I think Google Fonts could be a good thing in the long term, but only if it can be built into something more than it is now in terms of a proper level of investment in professional font development. That, in turn, means demonstrating value in such an investment, so for more reasons than just reputation, Google Fonts needs to change its approach to building the collection.
An original design just for them.
Let’s see if it makes the cut in the January budget!
John and Nick, I will be very happy to see your fonts
published"included" at Google Fonts. And I really hope you and many more experienced and reputable designers are able to negotiate a good deal and release their fonts under a Libre license.from proprietary to OFL; most OFL fonts have been made commercially.
For anyone interested in being paid to allow their fonts to be included in Google Fonts, please email me - dcrossland@google.com
Pablo:
[demonstrating value in such an investment] I challenge that this is "easy to do" or even possible. Tell the formula.
Dave: I might pay to have "Advent Pro", bold in particular, Greek if possible, either fixed or removed before it destroys New Jersey.
ROI for each font = $ invested / views generated
John, what defines "associating" with Google Fonts? Would specifically making something they commissioned count?
If they fund you to develop a font for them, in more or less degree you become associated, if only for that particular project. And many of the big-boys and medium-size players of the type industry have made those deals to receive funding to release some of their fonts under OFL to be included on GF, disregarding Jackson's sentiment. And I'm very happy for that, and hopping that more and more of those deals continue to happen in the future, and more and more pro fonts gets released as OFL, and designers of those get properly compensated.
Also, Monotype and Adobe are associated too, by sharing tech developments and other resources... and those are the biggest ones on the industry...
ROI = $ invested / number of websites requesting the font.
Leaving the traffic generated by each website out of the equation.
But my "guess" is that they are more interested in total number of views per font, independently of the traffic source. Or my guess can be wrong... I don't know. You may have to ask Dave about it.
I mention this here because it's impossible for me to see how adding to the number of open source fonts will help the situation, or how anyone could expect to derive valuable "exposure" by offering fonts through Google Fonts, an largely uncurated collection of stuff. Anything placed there is inevitably degraded by association with a mass of unwashed and poorly fed work. I'm not even sure Google Fonts qualifies as "open source" by any reasonable definition, but may be just another file sharing site for fonts.
I don't suspect that Google Fonts is a case of malice aforethought, but the model does real harm nonetheless. (It wouldn't surprise me if, at some moment, someone in an official capacity at Google said, "Fonts? Why would anyone pay for fonts?") I can't quantify the damage--I don't think anyone can--but neither do I think anyone could argue that it does no harm to those who try to make a living selling the fruits of their labor.
And to young people: Hoping for "exposure" is the second-oldest self-deception on the planet. They ought to run public-service ads about "exposure." Like for condoms. That's it! Have an uncontrollable urge to trade your font for exposure? Cool down, Spartacus--use a condom.
Basically, these are 2 different business models:
1) You develop a font on your own (for free) and when you finish it you put it up for sale under a commercial license: If you are lucky you get many sales and you make money after a while.
2) You are paid upfront to develop a font. You have already made money, and then you release it under a Libre license, for free to the general public, since it was already paid to you.
Paul is a staff designer at Adobe, so got his pay check, and no one at Google was involved until it was ready to release and Adobe approached that Google Fonts team to release it in the GF api on the same day.
Steve is a staff designer at Monotype, so for his paycheck he made fonts commissioned by Google Internationalisation.
If you are serious, I will ask the folks working on it to email you their next update and you can give then some tips.
The more “model 2” fonts are produced, and the more those fonts are being used, the harder it gets for those who produce “model 1” fonts to sell their fonts. The more the market gets glutted with “model 2” fonts, the less “model 1” fonts get sold. The free “model 2” fonts, will crowd out the non-free “model 1” fonts.
If you produce “model 2” fonts, you might, perhaps, not care about those who produce “model 1” fonts. But for sure, those who produce “model 1” fonts will, in time, lose out, because they will sell less and less than what they would have sold in a world without “model 2” fonts. And perhaps, in time, when Google feels it has brought enough fonts to the market, they might stop supporting those who produce “model 2” fonts, or they might greatly reduce what they pay for those fonts.
The best ending of this story might be, that we would all depend for our livelihood on the few Googles of this world. The worst ending might be, that we would all be like piano manufacturers.
Of course, things might turn out differently — but this is a possible scenario.