Can Acumin Variable Concept be licensed?

J. Bridges

Can Acumin Variable Concept be licensed? If so, where? All I can find are free for personal use or non-variable versions at MyFonts or Adobe fonts. I tried activating the regular versions at Adobe fonts but it is not matching the font in an Adobe Illustrator file that someone sent me. Thanks!

Christopher Slye

To the best of my knowledge, no, it is only available along with certain Creative Cloud apps (and it should not be available “free for personal use” anywhere outside of that). The “concept” VFs are probably never going to be available for standalone licensing — although I am looking forward to their full-featured versions being available one of these days.

I am under the impression that it should come along with any current installation of Adobe Illustrator (via Creative Cloud). Are you saying you don’t see it in your font menu there?

Justin Penner

My copy of Acumin Variable Concept is located in:

/Applications/Adobe InDesign 2022/Resources/Required/fonts/AcuminVariableConcept.otf

Illustrator does not have a folder of fonts like this, but I am able to use Acumin Var in Illustrator on my machine, so maybe you just need to install InDesign? I'm not sure if those InDesign fonts are shared with all Adobe apps, or if there's another copy of Acumin Var hiding somewhere on my system.

J. Bridges

No. It is in my font menu. I was just not sure where it came from and if I had a license to use it for commercial work.

Justin Penner

Not a lawyer, but my take on this would be that any fonts found in that folder were distributed as part of your Creative Cloud software and should fall under Adobe's General Terms of Use. I think they would be considered as "content files" defined in section 3.6:

3.6 Content Files. “Content Files” means Adobe assets provided as part of the Services and Software. Unless documentation or specific licenses (including but not limited to Additional Terms) state otherwise, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, and non-transferable license to use the Content Files to create your end use (i.e., the derivative application or product authored by you) into which the Content Files, or derivations thereof, are embedded for your use (“End Use”). You may modify the Content Files prior to embedding them in the End Use. You may reproduce and distribute Content Files only in connection with your End Use, however, under no circumstances can you distribute the Content Files on a stand-alone basis, outside of the End Use.

That sounds like a fairly permissive license if you apply it to fonts.

Christopher Slye

Use of fonts that are bundled with Adobe software is actually covered by the Software additional terms — currently in Section 2.1 “Font Software”. The license allows commercial use. (Or more precisely, it doesn’t disallow it.)