How do I price a custom font?

Tré Seals

Hi all! I'm Tré Seals, and I run a font foundry called Vocal Type Co. I've only been doing this for 2 years, and I just got my first request for a custom font.

This client wants a custom version of one of my commercially available fonts (soft corners and modified proportions). The license would cover everything (desktop, web, app, ePub, merchandising, broadcasting) with 1-year exclusivity and 200 users.

I've never done anything like this before and was wondering if anyone has any recommendations on how to go about this.

P.S., this is my first post, so apologies if it's in the wrong place.

JoyceKetterer

Congratulations!

Especially since this is a custom mod of an existing font, price labor separately from licensing.  Just price the labor the way you would any of labor.  If the cost of your standard licensing tables plus the labor is higher than you want it to be, discount it as a separate line item. This way if they need something later they have a better idea of what your real prices are.  

Use you existing licensing documents.  If they want special terms make a miscellaneous addendum to alter your documents.  This sort of thing starts to matter as the years pass.  I learned the hard way that licensees with special documents are much harder to support years from now.  It's just paperwork management for you but it could also save you some money on legal fees because I find it's also easier to keep the client's attorney from completely rewriting your license that way.

Oh, and you'll want to rename the font something like "nameoffont_nameofclient".  This is one to talk to them about in advance.  As you know, character count is an issue with font names and the client is likely to have opinions about what they want it called.

Scott Briggs

@JoyceKetterer is bang on.

Nick Shinn

And also, when you rename the font, update the copyright info, e.g.  

Copyright (c) 2017 by Tré Seals. Published by Vocal Type Co. All rights reserved. Customized and extended for <client name here> by <Tré Seals/other>.

That way, in future people will know that it’s a legitimate derivation, if and when they open the font up.

Thomas Phinney

Right, so that would become (for instance):

Copyright © 2017, 2019 by Tré Seals

Also corrected the copyright symbol as well. At least for the USA, I have been told by an IP lawyer that a “c” in parentheses like (c) is meaningless, legally. The word “copyright” is meaningful by itself, though. Or the proper symbol ©.

Tré Seals

@JoyceKetterer @Scott Briggs  @Nick Shinn @Thomas Phinney

Thank you so much for the help everyone!! I really appreciate it.

On a similar note, does anyone have recommendations on how to scale prices? Or how/if the prices should vary between licenses?

Artur Schmal

Do you mean if there  difference between retail or custom licenses?

Thomas Phinney

Scale as in, depending on the number of users?

Tré Seals

@Artur Schmal @Thomas Phinney

I mean what kind of price difference should there be (if any at all) between desktop, web, app, ePub, and broadcasting licenses? For example, how House Industries charges more for a webfont license than a desktop license.

And then how would I go about scaling the price for these different licenses based on the number of users (desktop), page views per month (web), active users (app), etc.?

Jasper de Waard

You might have found these already, but I found these old threads incredibly helpful when I was in a similar situation as you are now:

- https://typedrawers.com/discussion/167/price-quotation-for-a-new-custom-font/p1
- https://typedrawers.com/discussion/1098/custom-font-design-pricing
- http://typedrawers.com/discussion/733/unlimited-licensing/p1

Edit: Great work btw! Vocal Type is one of those concepts you wish you would have thought of yourself

Claudio Piccinini

Tré Seals said:

P.S., this is my first post, so apologies if it's in the wrong place.

Unrelated but congratulations on the site, it’s beautiful how you present these typefaces. I also share the cultural approach for which type stems not merely from a concept or out of an intended use, but creates historical awareness.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Nice going!

One big thing to factor in is that the exclusivity period is unusually short... In fact I would try to sell them on a longer period.

Claudio Piccinini
I also share the cultural approach for which type stems not merely from a concept or out of an intended use, but creates historical awareness.

But users are generally not buying your good intentions, so a font can have a great story but still end up like it could have the opposite story... It's what people do with it that counts, and that comes essentially from how it looks.

https://twitter.com/hhpapazian/status/1098694436643528704

Claudio Piccinini

Hrant H. Papazian said:

But users are generally not buying your good intentions, so a font can have a great story but still end up like it could have the opposite story... It's what people do with it that counts, and that comes essentially from how it looks.

https://twitter.com/hhpapazian/status/1098694436643528704

I was not talking about good intentions, rather of approach.

Claudio Piccinini

And yes, that article was naive and showing a superficial approach (see Twitter).
Sad to see such a moralistic attitude towards designers. :-(

Tré Seals

Thank you very much for the kind words and the help @Jasper de Waard @Claudio Piccinini @Hrant H. Papazian .

Claudio Piccinini

Tré Seals said:

Thank you very much for the kind words and the help @Jasper de Waard @Claudio Piccinini @Hrant H. Papazian .

They’re deserved. It would be awesome if in the future you’d be able to enrich the research aspects beyond social equity issues and towards culture and history of thought in general. I find extremely fascinating when typefaces are produced for, and incarnate in relevant cultural and historical events.