After 3 years in the making, I’m thrilled to launch
Font Proofer: a tool for typeface designers to test their work-in-progress fonts. For too many years (decades?) the process of making, editing, and reusing proof documents has been tedious, error prone, and reliant on an unwieldy assortment of tools and scripts.
One of my main goals is for Font Proofer to become a sustainable, community-supported project. I’ve self-funded its development so far, inspired by the overwhelming enthusiasm in response to my demos at TypeLab and ATypI Tech Talks—while aware that sustainability is rare in our small industry. Too many font production tools end up abandoned. I want to ensure that Font Proofer can exist for many years to come—not scraping by as a side project, but as a well-maintained, constantly-improving tool that you can depend on.
I can’t wait to hear what you think!
Peter
Comments
Disappointed that it doesn’t work on Big Sur.
Personally I found the upgrade from Big Sur to Monterey was pretty seamless, even for an older Mac.
https://calendly.com/peternowell/font-proofer-webinar
Looks great!
Requires Macintosh...
Le sigh....
I'd be happy to test and purchase a Windows version. But alas, I can't really use this. Best of luck, though; it looks gorgeous.
Font Proofer looks like a useful tool, and the website indicates a lot of future feature plans. Is it worth $240 US per year? I don’t know yet.
Eagerly anticipating the webinar on the 16th.
And I agree about the frequent updates, @John Hudson. The tool today is only 1/3 of what it has the potential to be, and a subscription incentivizes those ongoing improvements. I've tried to set everything up so the ambitious roadmap can become a reality if there are enough designers who join me on this journey.
If Font Proofer was only going to improve incrementally over the next year or two, a fixed cost could make sense. But imagine buying iMovie today, then in a year or two it evolves into Final Cut Pro. If you have a perpetual license, does that mean you should pay the Final Cut Pro price now? No way. I can't sell what doesn't exist yet. That pricing model just doesn't fit a product during a growth spurt. And it doesn't incentivize improvement.
I know that doing things differently can be uncomfortable, but the status quo for font tool pricing is simply not working most of the time. Most toolmakers can barely justify the time to work on their project. Font Proofer is an experiment to try some new approaches to sustainability, and if you believe in the vision and roadmap, I hope we can make that future a reality together.