Asset managers for corporate licensees – “normals" or font people?
KP Mawhood
Posts: 296
I'm researching font management to help define a role for higher management.
But I'm also interested from an ethical standpoint:
– Should this be a dedicated font management role (e.g. Pearson, Penguin Random House, maybe others?);
– Should this role is a subset of an asset / permissions management role? Pros and cons;
– Should this role be undertaken by a member of the type community? Pros and cons.
But I'm also interested from an ethical standpoint:
– Should this be a dedicated font management role (e.g. Pearson, Penguin Random House, maybe others?);
– Should this role is a subset of an asset / permissions management role? Pros and cons;
– Should this role be undertaken by a member of the type community? Pros and cons.
Tagged:
1
Comments
-
I think Program Management people (often called "Producers" in Creative Industries) usually handle this sort of thing; I'd be surprised if it required a dedicated role even at a publisher like PRH.Members of the type community tend to want to spend their time drawing type, not doing business administration; but domain knowledge is always helpful. Perhaps someone with paralegal contract and copyright training would be better suited.1
-
^ Insightful.1
-
The user and all related content has been deleted.2
-
I'd actually be fascinated to know if there are several of these dedicated roles. Pearson and Penguin Random House both have Global Font Managers.1
-
James, great to know! Is that person a "type person"?0
-
The user and all related content has been deleted.0
-
It is important, I think, that the person have a strong understanding of print, web and ebook workflows and the font handling involved, so they can understand how the EULAs interact with that. I agree with Dave that they don't have to be a font person for that purpose—somebody with more of a book production background might be well suited.
That said, if the person is also serving as a broader consultant on font purchasing, and not just licensing per se, a lot of other knowledge could come into play. An understanding of Unicode, languages and character sets, font embedding... all sorts of things.
1 -
I've encountered a lot of digital librarians but only one dedicated font manager other than @Katy Mawhood.
I've never had any reason to think that the digital librarians do an inferior job and I would imagine that it's harder to make an entire job out of just managing fonts.1 -
I have often seen Production Managers with type as part of their job.2
-
Speaking as one of those Global Font Managers (Pearson), aside from my successor at PRH, I have not heard of anyone else that focuses solely on fonts and digital typography. I came into the role (when I was at DK/Penguin) completely by accident as part of a digital archiving role but the responsibilities for fonts soon took over and it became my sole responsibility.
Pretty much everything I learned came from teaching myself by talking to type designers and foundries, reading whatever books I could get my hands on, tinkering with FontLab and by directly engaging with the type community on Typophile and more rarely in person. With two young children I find that I do not have the time or energy I had previously to fully engage online but I am no less excited by type.
For me the job has emerged alongside the large-scale adoption of digital workflows in publishing and is equal parts license compliance, problem-solving, type design (really basic stuff) and guidance on the issues Thomas mentioned above; but particularly digital usage, embedding, Unicode and languages. I have always loved the community that exists around type, both in terms of the type community and the designers and developers that use it but I was lucky to find this position and completely by chance at first.6 -
@Karl Stange
What kind of workflows do you have for license compliance? For example, we have a list of 5,000 fonts which we broadly license for print and PDF.- Our designers' font use is locked down by our font management server.
- Our typesetters are instructed to license these 5,000 fonts, and we conduct quarterly reports (e.g. 5% sample of all titles) to assure compliance.
0 -
@Katy Mawhood
Sorry, I completely missed this!
It sounds like you have a very similar set-up to us, with font management (FEX) used to manage desktop deployment and fairly expansive licensing in place to cover extended rights for digital usage (PDF, other ebook formats, web platform and app embedding) as well self-hosting rights for web fonts. Compliance reporting is conducted within specific business areas.
We also have a limited amount of 3rd party licensing but we are increasingly trying to move away from it.
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 43 Introductions
- 3.7K Typeface Design
- 802 Font Technology
- 1K Technique and Theory
- 618 Type Business
- 444 Type Design Critiques
- 542 Type Design Software
- 30 Punchcutting
- 136 Lettering and Calligraphy
- 83 Technique and Theory
- 53 Lettering Critiques
- 483 Typography
- 301 History of Typography
- 114 Education
- 68 Resources
- 499 Announcements
- 80 Events
- 105 Job Postings
- 148 Type Releases
- 165 Miscellaneous News
- 269 About TypeDrawers
- 53 TypeDrawers Announcements
- 116 Suggestions and Bug Reports