Views on testing fonts?

Paul Smith

I am interested to hear views on offering fonts for testing purposes?

I am often asked can I supply my font software so the designer, design company or agency can test the font out before making a decision whether to purchase.

In most cases these tests will be shown to the client as part of a presentation pitch.

Although I've agreed to this on many occasions I've found it rarely results in a sale.

This is a bit like the debate over the ethics of designers free-pitching.

All views welcome.

JoyceKetterer

Bruno Maag has publicly said many times that when he started giving away free renamed testing versions of his fonts that he tripled sales.  

Thierry Blancpain

We started our trial fonts program with one family, and that family’s sale quadrupled quarter over quarter (!) afterwards. That surely also has to do with us being a young foundry with lots of growth potential (it’s easier to have high growth % when you’re small), but it’s also a testament to the efficiency of trial fonts. After that we started offering trials for all of our fonts.

When you don’t offer your customers a way to test your fonts, you’re factually making them download illegal versions of your fonts just so that they can sell it to their clients and pay you afterwards. My go-to phrase about this topic is that my job is making our customers’ and potential customers’ life better. Any time I spend on trying to curb illegal usage is lost time that I could have better spent on making our company and offerings better.

It’s a bit more complex if you’re selling display faces, but for more branding / text oriented foundries, trial fonts like ours, or taking part in something like Fontstand, is definitely and absolutely worth it.

Thomas Phinney

“This is a bit like the debate over the ethics of designers free-pitching.”

Hmmm. Unlike free pitching, you are not doing a bunch of extra work for free. But that said, one might feel that the customer is getting extra value from the trial.

I think that the general point being made by those wanting to allow free trials is probably valid, that customers are unlikely to buy fonts just to try out because they are sort of interested.

I am fairly sure that the individual foundries currently allowing free trials, if they are doing professional level fonts, benefit from it and gain more sales. People will trial their fonts and not others, and will buy them preferentially.

To me, the next interesting question is, if everyone allows free trials, will that increase sales, decrease sales, or will sales stay about the same, compared to nobody allowing free trials? I imagine it would be increasing the market. The “risk” to the customer is lower if they trial the fonts and know they work well in the design, so they are more likely to go for a new font in that situation.

I note that this thinking is in regard to pro-level fonts sold to designers doing commercial work. For somebody whose main audience is, say, scrapbookers, things might be quite different.

Nina Stössinger

Thierry Blancpain said:

When you don’t offer your customers a way to test your fonts, you’re factually making them download illegal versions of your fonts just so that they can sell it to their clients and pay you afterwards.

Hold your horses there... I’m pretty sure I’m not the only typographer that actually uses testers to make mockups, prints specimens and things, and if things get more serious actually, yes, licenses one style to test in context and propose to clients. I don’t deny that offering trial fonts makes things easier, but honestly, this is a *bit* strong.

There’s also a point in here about education, about talking to typographers and discussing the various options they have for mocking things up, other than just going ahead and giving them the maximum of what they might want. (In my world, this has something to do with the ongoing quest to drive home the point that fonts have value, and can’t just be copied/downloaded/whathaveyou freely.)

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Thierry Blancpain

Nina Stössinger said:

Thierry Blancpain said:

When you don’t offer your customers a way to test your fonts, you’re factually making them download illegal versions of your fonts just so that they can sell it to their clients and pay you afterwards.

Hold your horses there... I’m pretty sure I’m not the only typographer that actually uses testers to make mockups, prints specimens and things, and if things get more serious actually, yes, licenses one style to test in context and propose to clients. I don’t deny that offering trial fonts makes things easier, but honestly, this is a *bit* strong.

There’s also a point in here about education, about talking to typographers and discussing the various options they have for mocking things up, other than just going ahead and giving them the maximum of what they might want. (In my world, this has something to do with the ongoing quest to drive home the point that fonts have value, and can’t just be copied/downloaded/whathaveyou freely.)

Agreed, that was a bit over the top in how absolutely I phrased it.

But the fact is that there’s a lot of people who want to pay for type but also don’t feel as strongly about type as you or I do, and will either not consider our foundry’s type or consider it through torrented fonts before licensing. I don’t think offering trial fonts diminishes the value of our type at all. I strongly believe it enhances its usefulness in the eyes of our customers, which in the end is how its intrinsic value is turned into income for our type designers and our foundry.

We still offer PDF specimens, we still have a typetester on our page, but there’s no denying that trial fonts, even with a limited character set, are way more useful to most people than a website’s type tester that will most of the time have a pattern in the background or so to disincentivize screenshotted usage. And if trials aren’t available, many people will feel okay about illegally downloading versions so they can present it to their clients and then pay for the type that gets chosen. I’m not saying I agree with that, but that’s definitely a reality.

Michael Jarboe

Are most trial fonts limited in character set or with some functionality (OT features) stripped and renamed (font name and metadata)? I guess this would vary quite a bit amongst foundries.

Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh

The question I always ask is, "What do you think the difference is between testing a font and using a font?" Everyone seems to have different answer. Some designers want to 'test' a font all the way until their client has approved and paid for everything. Others just want to show comps to their boss. 

To me, it comes down to what the value is to the customer of "testing" a font. Some companies, like small publishers or in house design teams, might get to buy new fonts once a decade. They aren't getting any value from "testing" a font, they're simply evaluating it. 

Other companies, like brand consultancies, make their money developing and presenting design concepts to customers. Those projects are often structured with x number of design directions and n number of revisions. It's very normal for these projects get killed or hung up before seeing the light of day. These companies can potentially get a lot of value from "testing" a font. 

My solution to reconcile this has been to offer test licenses that are time-limited and restricted to internal testing only. If the customer wants to use the font in a presentation to a client, they need to purchase a license. 

I don't offer test licenses to everyone who asks, some customers get directed to Fontstand. And I usually make the process deliberately slow, it's surprise how often someone will just purchase a license rather than wait for a reply or deal with signing a contract. Like James, I convert a little more than 50%. 

JoyceKetterer

@Jackson Cavanaugh I think that the only reasonable measure is the only observable one - when the work goes live.  I know that feels really permissive but I'm all about enforceable rules and I don't think it's possible to enforce a rule any sooner.  

Dave Crossland

http://blog.fontspring.com/2016/01/introducing-demo-fonts/ worth mentioning as a recent development on this topic