What kind of impact did digital/social media have on fonts?
I was driving through an old part of town and noticing some "older" fonts in use on signage/branding (cooper, papyrus, etc). It just reminded me how "fixed" physical/printed items were before digital.
I guess there's just a conditioning now with the fluidness of digital, and I wondered if when brands really started to leverage digital outlets for communication if it helped drive more experimentation and adoption/licensing of fonts, or willingness to change more frequently (because it’s maybe “easier” to change).
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The biggest effect I’ve noticed social media having on fonts is the sudden prevalence of Hoefler Text in Facebook reel captions.
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... for those who sold fonts in the rise of digital, did it seem like there was more frequent purchasing compared to before digital?
I'm curious if there was a change in how often brands were willing to change/update fonts because digital allowed for more flexibility/less commitment (although may still impact identity system investments if changing too often).0 -
TikTok used Proxima Nova as its default for a few years (2020 until last year, when they commissioned a custom font).
I don’t know if social media specifically has had much effect on font sales for me (other than netting a big license from TikTok), but on-screen use of fonts (the web, apps, etc.) certainly has compared to when print was where fonts were mostly used.2 -
... for those who sold fonts in the rise of digital, did it seem like there was more frequent purchasing compared to before digital?I am not sure what you consider ‘the rise of digital’. Prior to the desktop publishing revolution of the 1980s and early 1990s, typesetting was done by professional typesetters working with specialised and very expensive machinery. In the later stages of that business model, the machines and the fonts were digital, but the machinery was still physically large and expensive to purchase and operate. Through all the technological generations of that business model—from hot metal, through phototype, and to early digital typesetting—the cost of manufacturing, shipping, and storing fonts decreased, but the costs of the whole system remained high, because it was the machines, not the fonts, that were the money maker for the type companies. Specific fonts were sometimes only manufactured to entice a customer or to seal a deal on the purchase of the machine.
With desktop publishing, everything changed, because both the dedicated machines and the professional typesetting business that had employed them disappeared very rapidly. All that was left was the fonts, i.e. what had previously been something of a loss leader for machine sales, now extremely cheap to manufacture, reproduce and deliver. The market for these fonts shifted from professional typesetters, firstly to graphic design professionals, and gradually to a broader market of casual font users.
I would say that, yes, this has resulted in more frequent purchasing—as well as in the proliferation of cheap, free, or pirated fonts—, but that is due to the specific technical innovations of the personal computer and printer combination—and latterly the Web—, rather than to digital per se.5 -
I would say that Söhne has certainly had a 'visibility lift' by being widely used in Medium posts (paired with Source Serif Pro). It is also used by OpenAI on its website, which has been pretty high profile :-)1
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Leaving aside the very big changes to the industry from the shift to digital fonts for desktop publishing, there was a huge shift with the rise of ecommerce on the web. Before then, it was relatively difficult for a designer or foundry to sell type, because distribution was awkward. A handful of established font distributors were the most attractive route for a designer to reach customers. Once a designer was able to build their own online store, handle their own payments, and easily distribute font files, it allowed many to thrive on their own terms, and it also allowed more designers to participate.
Despite all of the above, for a time there was still a benefit to distributing through established partners, because they generally had better quality control. Monotype, Adobe, FontShop, Font Bureau... they all knew the technology better, and that was important to users. Companies like Typekit figured out the tricks for reliable font rendering on the web in the early days. Over time, that expertise has been more widely dispersed. It’s much easier for a designer to learn how to properly build a font. The tools are better, the details are more easily found, browsers and devices are more reliable, and there are more educational programs. Larger distributors still have their benefits, but nobody truly needs them any more.
The web led to the proliferation of open source license models, and also to font subscription services. All of this accommodates many, many more designers than previously possible. All of that choice in the marketplace certainly changed how designers approach type selection and use — much farther beyond what was possible in the pre-web days of DTP.
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One big change was the eclipse of serif fonts.
Whereas before the www it was common wisdom that serifs were best for immersive reading of text, pixellation on low res screens changed that.
Suddenly, they looked dysfunctional and not “techy” enough, and wrong for so many jobs.
Also, we have seen the emergence of ultra-light faces, and grey text.
***
Adam, I’ve made a retrospective “slide show essay” that addresses the evolving context of my career as a type designer, with particular reference to generations of technology.
The 31-page PDF is best viewed in full screen mode, in landscape format on a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer.
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Nice essay, Nick. Thanks for that.0
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As a non-initiate observer, here is a belated comment on the digital environment, following on from some of the systemwide comments above. I hope it may be of some interest.
A major impact of digital, and the web, has been the emergence of large gravitational platforms, with network effects leading to concentration and market power dynamics (Amazon, Meta, Apple, Google,...). This often goes alongside workflow stickiness - using what is in the Microsoft or Apple environment, for example, or Shopify, Adobe, etc.
Google Fonts, Adobe and Monotype are three important platforms which show some of this concentration dynamic and market power in the font space. While each has a different business model and position, each has scaled their platforms to the network level where they effectively aggregate supply (fonts, foundries, designers) and demand (designers, publishers, website managers, and so on). We see the platform concentration familiar from the dynamics of the web in general. While their market power may be resisted by some, they channel a significant part of font distribution (what proportion, I don't know). Of course, this co-exists with a rich and diverse ecosystem of foundries/designers, and with a range of smaller aggregators and distributors (sometimes explicitly positioned as more community-focused alternatives).
They have different characteristics, again reflecting the dynamics of digital/network.
It seems to me that Google in particular exercises a kind of cultural power: the free and convenient distribution of fonts has created considerable volume of use around its popular fonts. A while ago Fonts Ninja claimed that 65% of websites use one of these: Roboto, Montserrat, Open Sans, or Lato, the four most popular fonts on Google. (ROMOLA - Roboto, Open Sans, MOntserrat, LAto.)
Adobe Fonts are importantly available in many designer workflows, have a subscription model and are easily deployed. I am interested that one occasionally sees discussions about Adobe fonts on Youtube roundups or elsewhere that misleadingly refers to them as 'free' because of this ready availability as part of the overall Adobe offer/workflow. Other workflow platforms may give chosen fonts lift and visibility - if they are defaults in Shopify, say, or Medium, or ...
Monotype is an example of the market consolidation we have seen in the web/digital era. It consolidates important IP through acquisition. It reminds me of Elsevier in the scholarly communication space, and there are other analogues, with similar love/hate dynamics.
In summary, it seems to me that the rise of web/digital has created significant systemwide platform and workflow dynamics in this domain as in others, as well providing opportunities for greater distribution of free and for-fee fonts.
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I don’t dispute your analysis, lorcand, except to point out that the OP asked about the decade 2000–2010, when Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts weren’t yet in existence.
For earlier “free” fonts, there were a few in the first days of desktop publishing—the “core” TrueType fonts, and those that came with the Apple LaserWriter, but the biggest influx came with the replacement of floppy discs by CDs, for the distribution and installation of e.g. Corel and Adobe applications. A lot of free fonts were packed onto those CDs, quality stuff, if not exactly au courant. CDs did provide some opportunity to designers such as myself—I received royalties for several years from Bitstream for a large CD collection they put out which included some Shinntype fonts.
In the decade pre-WWW, and into the oughts, new type specimen books might include a CD with fonts, and there were even magazines that were published with font CDs.
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Nick, I completely agree with the general thrust of your discussion, but I would suggest that almost all your references to “free fonts” should be to “bundled fonts,” which are not exactly free in either sense of the word.
In the latter part of 2000-2010, Adobe actually moved toward bundling fewer rather than more fonts, coming down from a high point of about 220 fonts (IIRC) in the first half of that.
Corel long escalated their bundles as well, but with much larger font counts. Some snapshots:
- 4.2, 1993, 614 fonts
- 5, 1994, 849 fonts
- 9, 1999, 1344 fonts (the peak)
- 11, 2002, 1196 fonts
- 12, 2004, 1196 fonts1 -
Oh come on Thomas, they were free, as in “didn’t cost anything to acquire.”
Adobe had been releasing apps on floppies, and then when they switched to CDs, BOOM, suddenly there was a lot of vacant disk space, so it was filled with all kinds of free stuff that I wasn’t expecting, didn’t ask for, didn’t need, and was not why I bought the thing.
In fact, I had already paid to licence Adobe Garamond and Berthold Bodoni Antiqua.
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Bundled is a very different value story than free.
First, the fonts themselves were not libre in license terms, as in restricting what one could do with them.
Second, Adobe Illustrator was expensive, and nowhere near free.
Don’t get me wrong, the bundled fonts were arguably worth the price of admission to the user buying Adobe products, and even more so for Corel (cheaper app, many more fonts). But very different than “free”; I paid for multiple versions of CorelDraw almost entirely to get the fonts. They were a bargain, but not free.
Anyway, apologies to OP for thread drift!0 -
First, yes free is not libre. Free, as in “without cost,” the standard meaning.
Second, Illustrator was indeed expensive, but I was paying for an upgrade to something that was pretty much a professional requirement, which I would have bought without the free fonts, which were in fact a surprise. In that situation, where one intends to buy something, and the seller throws in some extra stuff of their choice at no extra charge, what would one call that but “free”?0 -
I think the most important social media impact on fonts was the expansion of language coverage, as the need for global fonts emerged.3
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Good point Pablo.
Also, before that, the sheer size of OpenType fonts made such language diversity possible.
I recall when the format was introduced, I became intrigued with making all the features I could now incorporate, and all the languages.
At the same time, apart from John D. Berry’s Language Culture Type (2002), some printed Paratype specimens, and a weekend seminar in New York with Maxim Zhukov, being able to tackle Cyrillic and Greek would not have been possible without the Typophile web site, which is where a lot of problems were hashed out.0 -
Nick Shinn said:First, yes free is not libre. Free, as in “without cost,” the standard meaning.=
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@PabloImpallariI think the most important social media impact on fonts was the expansion of language coverage, as the need for global fonts emerged.Internationalisation in software and fonts preceded social media; indeed, I would say that social media platforms became global, rather than being localised, because they could be built on top of internationalisation infrastructure built into the Web and operating systems. We’d focused our business on providing fonts for internationalisation since the mid-1990s.4
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@André G. IsaakI assure you that the bundle cost me money.Yes, the bundled fonts had value to you, because they could be licensed elsewhere for a greater cost.
However, it was not possible to licence Illustrator without the fonts (the application was only provided on CDs with the fonts &c. bundled), therefore the fonts were free to Illustrator licensees.0 -
I think the advent of social media has significantly impacted the world of fonts, particularly in terms of website traffic. In the past, font enthusiasts like myself would routinely visit bookmarked sites of foundries and distributors to stay updated on new releases. I had a dedicated folder of these bookmarks and checked in regularly.
However, with the rise of social media, this behavior has shifted. Nowadays, people encounter fonts based on what algorithms choose to display—be it popular content or paid promotions. This shift has driven designers to create typefaces with more gimmicks, hooks, and compelling stories to capture attention.
While it's hard to say whether this change is inherently good or bad, it is undeniably different from the landscape of 20 years ago.
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