Type pricing and licensing: as a tool or material?
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@Mark Simonson Agreed:
To me in Design self-expression happens in spite of you, versus being the purpose. BUT: no act of creating is pure Art or Design, always somewhere in between.0 -
A bit off-topic but: I agree, as you always have to refer to technical features, and/or limitations.JoyceKetterer said:@Alex Visi I hate to be pedantic and technical but the word "font" literally refers to the software. The word to describe the collection of glyphs is "typeface". I know, I know, that's not how anyone (including me) uses it in the day to day world. I point this out because, when we think about the business side of the things the technical meanings can be a useful framework on which to base decisions.
Personally, I never use the word "font" unless indicating the software and the specific computer files.
I seem to get the origin of the word has always been related to a specific point size+style of the typeface. I like the italian term which was used in lead, that is "serie" (series) as it is very explicative, less equivocal than "style". "Font", on the other side, is not equivocal in any way. Especially when used outside English it becomes very explanatory of the nature of digital type as software/files.0 -
So much of licensing conventions comes from early desktop publishing, where the end product was almost always print. In that case, the old “fonts as tools” model works pretty well. Unfortunately, everyone (end users, that is) got used to that model.
The difficulty with font licensing these days are all the different media and distribution mechanisms that have appeared in the last 25 years, and particularly in the last 10 years. Web, ebooks, mobile apps, and now web apps are all very mainstream parts of a design project. They used to be marginal and could be handled on a case-by-case basis, but now a client frequently wants rights to use a font in all these places (whether they really plan to or not). Trying to size up a typeface’s received value in this context is incredible complex and vague.
I mostly agree with Joyce’s approach, where a more traditional license allows a designer to use a font on their computers, produce traditional DTP things (print, rasterized art, maybe PDF), but also to insist that clients pay for the myriad distribution methods that will be used down the line.
I think there’s a lot of potential to simplify this for designers and their clients, but I’m not convinced that pegging cost to company size is the right metric. I think flat fees for app embedding are nice, although there’s something to be said for connecting it to distribution (i.e. popularity), which allows app designers to more easily use fonts in an app without wasting money on one that nobody ends up using.
But the stories about clients who don’t want the burden of monitoring their font licensing for years rings true. I’ve been on the receiving end of it. Whatever we can do to minimize that for customers is probably effort well-spent.5 -
Now I began thinking more of how to simplify licensing, but I have no experience whatsoever. The only thing I can think of now is having a Universal Licensing template and a way to manage License files, a better mechanism.
Can we have few Universal Licensing templates that can be shorten down to lists like this? https://choosealicense.com/appendix/ (I know these are Open Source license). Of course we'll need to make list of the criteria/attributes for font licensing. Universal means foundries and type designers can use the template, and license owners knows exactly what it allows and disallows. The license details will still be complex but we can easily get a summary.
I don't know if this borderline impossible or plain dumb idea.
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@Laurensius no, we can't. That would be illegal price fixing (even if everyone had their own pricing, having the same product list counts)2
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@Christopher Slye How much of that resistance do you think comes down to a belief that fonts are simple and that therefore anything complicated is inappropriate for fonts? I feel like I hear that a lot. It would also explain why the same customers are fine with other components of their brand requiring similar maintenance.1
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@JoyceKetterer I think that’s a big part of it! I also think (digital) fonts have always been regarded as trivial, less-valuable pieces of software because they’re so often deployed in quantities, or for free (e.g. system fonts). I’ve always thought fonts and songs are similar in this way. People like to collect them, trade them, share their favorites... “simple” is a good word association for this mentality. Lots of people just think it’s obnoxious to treat fonts as complex, valuable things.3
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@Christopher Slye yeah, and that's because they don't understand that fonts are objectively complex and expensive to make. That feels to me like the thing that would make the most difference if we could do some education. But I've no idea how to clear that hurdle.3
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I think that the explosion of lettering is giving lots of designers an education in how hard it is to draw letters. That helps them understand how much work it takes to design entire typefaces. And a smaller number of people are coming out of type design workshops and post-graduate programs. Hopefully they’re spreading the word about how complex all this stuff is.JoyceKetterer said:That feels to me like the thing that would make the most difference if we could do some education. But I've no idea how to clear that hurdle.
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I also agree with @James Puckett
@JoyceKetterer I think this is a marketing problem? It's also helpful to see why designers buy fonts. I found a great article that might help. https://medium.com/font-stuff/results-of-the-2019-font-purchasing-habits-survey-39339f591a6c
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The distribution of free fonts by the likes of Google, dafont, etc. certainly doesn't help to create an understanding of value in the consumer mind.4
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@Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.) I think it will be shocking to hear the cost of making "free" fonts available in Google Fonts that are commissioned by them. Dafont is even worse, it's free and poorer quality.
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Oliver, actually I think the wide availability of libre fonts has grown the overall marketplace by allowing more people to see the benefits of real web fonts, and go on to license other fonts. Imagining a world where no libre fonts are available, many less people would use different fonts as much.
Even with over 1,000 families, most people aren't satisfied with only libre fonts. As long as the price isn't onerous, they don't care about the licensing terms too much, they care about the typography. Their lack of interest in licensing terms is also the main reason why they fall out of compliance. The highest traffic web pages using libre fonts often also have licensed fonts.
Laurensius, I'm curious why you think it would be shocking, and if that's because you think it's very low or very high.
(This is also a real names forum, please update your profile to use your real name and append your foundry/trade name)2 -
It's possible to make a living releasing free fonts. My free-ish fonts come with a commercial use desktop license. They generate income from sales of non-free fonts in the same family as well as embedding licenses and donations. If I eliminated all of my typefaces which don't include free styles, I could still make a comfortable living. If I had released those fonts as open-source or flat-rate Google commission jobs they'd have earned much less. For example, my Steelfish typeface comes with seven free styles so you might underestimate its earning power but it could pay someone's rent. How is this good for type? I plan to spend the rest of 2021 improving my old fonts. Customers get free upgrades with improvements like primes, better features, cross-platform vertical metrics and general bug fixing.
I don't make free fonts as a philosophical thing—it's absolutely motivated by capitalism. There are cases where I know a typeface will perform better with no free styles, based on a feeling of likelihood of embedding. Textured, detailed typefaces don't sell embedding licenses and perform better if I charge for desktop. Anything that relies on OpenType ligatures or round-robin alternates doesn't sell embedding licenses. Anything thematically videogame adjacent will certainly do better as embedded as game companies seem to prototype with free fonts.Oliver, actually I think the wide availability of libre fonts has grown the overall marketplace by allowing more people to see the benefits of real web fonts, and go on to license other fonts.Sure, but TypeKit was already on the case.
What I think is bad about free fonts is personal use licenses or free fonts with vague terms. They're convenient for non-paying customers and a nuisance for professional designers, agencies and other paying customers—bad for the font business all around.
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@Dave Crossland Shocking as in really high. That it takes a lot of money to make a font. It's just Google paid for them to make it available for free (those commissioned by Google).
Btw, this is my real name, I go by Laurensius Studio (https://laurensi.us/studio) for my studio name thus the LS. I don't think I should write my name twice.
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Hi Laurensius, if that's the case could you please update your handle to your full name 'Laurensius Adi' as we use all full names on TypeDrawers. Thanks for your understanding.Laurensius said:Btw, this is my real name, I go by Laurensius Studio (https://laurensi.us/studio) for my studio name thus the LS. I don't think I should write my name twice.2 -
Ray, perhaps. One thing why perhaps not it's that Typekit was tiny. Everyone who would ever visit this website is in a bubble, and when everyone you know knows what you know, it can be hard to conceive of how few people overall knows that stuff.
So, I don't think it's a sure thing that web fonts would be ubiquitous today without libre web font options for everyone.
Laurensius, got it. Good to hear
A while ago I / google fonts had a bad reputation for not paying enough, although these days I think we are at the top of the market... I've always wanted to land generous deals between google fonts and designers, but I've also always been constrained by the budget available to the team, much more so in the early years.
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So, I don't think it's a sure thing that web fonts would be ubiquitous today without libre web font options for everyone.Hmm. My memory is that pre-2009 almost the entire Web was Verdana, and after 2009 Verdana was almost nowhere. The uptake of webfonts was incredibly rapid as soon as the format was agreed, and the format was agreed because it suited multiple license types so foundries were willing to start licensing for web use. The ubiquity to which Google Fonts has contributed is, um, the ubiquity of Google Fonts.
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IIRC, the uptake of web fonts was just a few percent per year for the first couple of years, peaked at something like 15%/year in the middle 3-4 years of peak growth (when it broke 50%) and then declined again in the typical S-shaped adoption curve.
By 2016 “real web fonts” had taken over most of the web.
It did not seem all that rapid or shocking to me at the time. But the 1-2 punch of Typekit pricing and then Google Fonts having a curated free collection meant that there was less cash in the market than I expected.5 -
I don't think the data supports that at all - for me this just demonstrates the bubble effect I described 2 -
That may well be the case.1
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I would love to see the data you refer to, Dave. I’m sure Google has some real numbers, but I’m not sure how they would prove your point. There is no doubt that the total number of websites using webfonts accelerated after Google Fonts launched, and that’s no surprise. But I don’t see how you can be so sure that Google was the specific cause that led to the licensing of more commercial webfonts.
It seems to me more like correlation, not causation. At the same time that Google Fonts was growing, so were the number of options from other sources. In my experience, webfonts took off in 2011–12 during which most foundries finally joined the early pioneers and offered webfont options for new releases. That’s when they really started to feel viable to professional designers.
Just for reference, Fonts In Use is not a comprehensive record by any means, but it gives some indication of this jump in popularity of commercial webfonts. The number of uses tagged with webfonts increased dramatically in those years, along with the number of foundries and sources represented.
2007: 2 webfont uses out of 114 uses (2%)
2008: 1/145 (<1%)
2009: 2/161 (1%)
2010: 8/278 (3%)
2011: 29/474 (6%)
2012: 106/835 (13%)
2013: 161/981 (16%)
2014: 89/963 (9%) We began to omit the webfonts tag at this point as it became the standard method for delivering type online.
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I call my fonts ”working tools for working professionals,” and price them accordingly—which is to say, cheap enough to acquire many.As far as pricing goes for "enterprise" licensing, I go by the size of the group being served by the tools—which is to say, the Art/Design team, not every Tom. Dick and Harry on the payroll.3
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What data does NOT support my claim that it took years and years before web fonts became the standard method for delivering type online, and it was not a incredibly rapid change as soon as woff1 was agreed on?
Your own data shows even in 2011 it was a small fraction
I expect Httparchive data would also show this, I believe they published a graph of web font adoption. Maybe Alexa also. Its been a few years since I looked at these public data. Nothing internal to Google needed0 -
Can you show me a "new trend" that doesn't have a large cohort of people advocating for it years before? Everything is always slow until it's suddenly fast. As a white person, I'd not heard of Juneteenth till last year and now it's a city holiday for which parking rules are suspended.3
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@Dave Crossland I’m sorry, I guess I misunderstood you. I thought you meant the data proves libre fonts specifically gave rise to an increase of commercial webfont use. My point is that it was the broader availability of commercial webfonts from various foundries that increased their use.
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I call my fonts Working tools for working people; hence, the choice of font should aid and abet the message, not detract from it.
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Déjà-vu all over again…
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From memory, some of your fonts were the first commercial ones I paid for, largely because I had been using your free type in the late 90s/early 00s and trusted you/them. So your plan worked on me haRay Larabie said:It's possible to make a living releasing free fonts. My free-ish fonts come with a commercial use desktop license. They generate income from sales of non-free fonts in the same family as well as embedding licenses and donations.1
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