I Love Typography Shop

Stephen Coles

In case you missed it, John Boardley’s I Love Typography just partnered with Nadine Chahine and Julia Hiles to launch a new font shop, starting with 40 foundries, many of whom are represented on TypeDrawers. This adds a significant player to the retail market and another traditional distribution alternative (next to Fontspring, MyFonts, Type Network, etc.), alongside the novel models introduced by Fontstand and Future Fonts. I posted my own thoughts on Twitter, but I’m interested to hear what others think.

The press release.

Stuart Sandler

Are all 40 foundries OK with ILT using actual web fonts for site-wide test-drive features?

Stephen Coles

I imagine they gave permission for that. I think the conventional wisdom has favored accessibility/usability over restrictions in recent years.

Eris Alar

I'm happy for anything that helps people find and license more type and look forward to seeing how this unfolds. 

Chris Lozos

Congrats to the new crew!!!

Ramiro Espinoza

Steve Heller has interviewed Nadine about the project: https://www.printmag.com/post/the-daily-heller-i-love-you-love-we-love-typography

Oliver Weiss (Walden Font Co.)

Stuart Sandler said:

Are all 40 foundries OK with ILT using actual web fonts for site-wide test-drive features?

Of course, I'd expect the site to make a reasonable effort to protect the fonts, but a determined individual will be able to extract the webfont files, no matter what you do to obfuscate them. These people wouldn't have bought my fonts anyway, so I don't really care. 

Nick Curtis

What's the vig?

Stephen Coles

Where do you read that? Are you thinking of http://vllg.com/?

Thomas Phinney

I suspect Nick is asking what percentage of sales ILT takes and how much the foundries get.

Vig is often short for vigorish, which can means the house take on (usually illicit) gambling winnings, or the high interest charges on a loan from the kinds of people who hurt you if you don’t make your payments.

I infer that Nick does not have a high opinion of resellers.  

Stephen Coles

Wow, I learned a new word today. Thanks, Thomas!

Marc Oxborrow

Stephen, you may need to (re)watch The Sopranos.

Nick Curtis

Thomas,

Resellers has been the sine qua non of my entire professional career. My only beef with a  reseller was nine years ago on the now-defunct Typophile forum, when the reseller wanted 60% of my licensing fees. Do you recall that thread and how things turned out?