The beginning of the end

Jasper de Waard

http://www.monotype.com/blog/articles/monotype-partners-with-adobe-to-deliver-premium-type-to-more-creative-professionals/

So now a load of FontFont type families are available on the fly to prettymuch any professional designer. I know you'll say there is always room for indies, but that room seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Who will buy type, when so many great types are available in one package?

Jens Kutilek

Here’s the link to the foundry page on Typekit. What’s odd is that some complete families can be synced ‘for free’ with CC, while in others you have to pay extra for some styles.

Nick Shinn

If something can only be acquired by paying for it, people will pay.

Discriminating typographers appreciate the subtle differences between typefaces.

Ergo, there will always be a market for original typefaces. 

Having said that, I must admit that my new types don’t sell as well as my older, established ones; I realize that I could make more money by spending less time making fonts and more time marketing them—and while I have always pursued ideas that interest me, perhaps what interests me now doesn’t interest others as much as what did in the past.

It seems that if a typeface can gain some traction in the marketplace when it is fresh, it will continue to sell. 

The trick is to produce a design with just the right amount of novelty, make sure that it is well exposed, and that it will catch people’s attention by being relevant to contemporary design issues.

Beyond that, there are one’s brand and reputation to consider, which, along with the typefaces themselves, form a complex impression in the public’s mind.

James Puckett

There will always be room for indie type designers. The problem is that ten thousand people are trying to fit into that room and only five of them have designs that are interesting and original.

John Savard

I don't see anything in there about a change in the price of the font licenses.

I'll grant you that an increase in convenience will make some difference. But compared to

a) Google Fonts, and

b) all those Bitstream look-alikes to the most popular well-established typefaces available cheaply with Corel software,

this seems to be a relatively small threat to the type design field.

Thomas Phinney

John Savard said:

I don't see anything in there about a change in the price of the font licenses.

????

At least a couple of the FF families are available in "free plans" and are thus free for limited web use. At least a few FF fonts included are available for "desktop sync" (regular desktop font usage) to anybody with a Creative Cloud subscription.

So, that is a noticeable pricing change, IMO.

Just getting in with Typekit at all is a significant experiment for Monotype. I will be very curious to watch the next several years....