monotype application turnaround time?

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

I put in a foundry partner application with monotype (myfonts.com) and haven't heard anything in a while. Does anybody how long these usually take to process? 

Thanks,

Oliver

Justin Penner

There might be a backlog – they recently took down their application system for a few weeks while they were setting up a new system.

I applied just before the old system (a Google Form) was taken down, and I never got notified when my foundry account was set up. I just happened to notice (a month after applying) that my MyFonts account had some new items in the "Hello, Justin" dropdown menu at the top. So I found the link to the Foundry Platform and entered my MyFonts login/password and it worked.

Paul Hanslow

IIRC they were backlogged after Christmas and had minimal staff on deck (possibly due to Covid also?). I was informed of this by a fellow type designer trying to get their application approved to enable selling on MyFonts.  

John Hudson

had minimal staff on deck

Monotype laid off a bunch of people (including type designers).

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

I just got my approval message, so it took about a week. That's not bad at all. 

Chris Lozos

Perhaps the people who own what is left of Monotype [and all they have devoured] have resigned themself to profit milking with bare minimum new investment? Are there ANY "Type" people left or just scavengers picking decaying bones for profit?

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

I suppose they, as much as anyone else in the business, are feeling the pressure of free fonts on one hand, and walled gardens on the other. And while the argument that free fonts aren't worth the hassle if you want quality is still true, people who appreciate that fact seem to be growing scarcer (and many free fonts nowadays are very good). 

As it is, I feel I'm only making money because I do off-trend stuff for a niche audience, and commissions. Any hopes I may have had of giving up my day job have long evaporated. 

JoyceKetterer

@Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.) The group of people who can making a living exclusively off fonts has always been small.  Always. My studio is in that group and even I can't exactly say how to duplicate it. 

I do think the key is retail fonts rather than custom work, but you still need to establish an audience.  A font that will get real traction with us might not somewhere else (and vis versa) and even then they take 4ish years from release to make money. 

The big argument for a platform like myfonts is that it can be an aggregator and eliminate the need to find that audience.  However, I don't really believe that myfonts works for font designers on the whole, but then I've also never tried to sell licenses there.  I think the big problem is that most of the money these days is in embedding and they don't let you issue your own embedding license (which means you can't enforce violations yourself, which is a major income stream for a successful font).

That said, the start up costs for your own foundry are considerable, with maintenance still pretty high.  I think our overhead works out to more than the cut we'd likely pay monotype if we had the same sales (which we wouldn't per the prior paragraph).  There's a way in which i don't care where I would if the money went to monotype because I like my small tightly knit team. We can do well running on momentum but I don't even know if it would be possible to create a Darden Studio if we started now.  The industry is in such a state of flux that you might not get the needed many years of runway to establish yourself.  

BUT I don't think free fonts are the problem.  I think the problem is much more complicated.

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

Yeah... I had plans to first put some stuff up that doesn't sell all that well on my own site, to test the waters. Their take is substantial, so I'll have to consider carefully if it's worth putting up my plums, as it were.

JoyceKetterer

@Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.) It's not a real test if you aren't using your best stuff.

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

Sure. I'm just more concerned about what happens once something is in their clutches, as it were. I may be a bit too paranoid about letting my IP out of my control. But one of my strengths is my licensing model (which is focused on putting fonts into people's hands, not on setting them up to be sued). I have a reputation for that with my customers, and I don't want to see that ruined because MT is "going to bat on my behalf". Perhaps I just need to read the foundry agreement more carefully. 

K Pease

I do recall that what I signed said that offering the same font elsewhere for a lower price than you sell it on MyFonts is not allowed. I imagine that hasn't changed. So I see how that would hinder your flexibility in handing out fonts as you see fit. But the consequences of a dispute would at most be getting kicked off the platform.