Selling display cut of text family separately: Good or bad?

Eris Alar

I'm a font user (not designer) and I certainly search through my font list for inspiration. Also names near each other is a big help. the Girard collection from House is a good example of different designs working under the same name quite happily.

Christian Thalmann

Thanks for your feedback, Simon!

When you search through your font list, do you go alphabetically until you hit something that fits? That seems to be a common assumption among font-namers. Now, given that I'm pretty set on "Traction" as the family name, running the display version under the name "Attraction" would afford some early visibility to the family, rather than hiding all of it down among the T's...

Just looked at the Girard Fonts: Frankly, they look a bit too unrelated to me to go under one name... but Charcuterie by Laura Worthington is an example where it works well for me.

When you look through your font list, don't you see only one representative of each family, though? For instance, if you saw the Traction family listed in the chunky text cut, you might not realize there's a high-contrast display cut hidden in that sub-menu when you're scanning for display fonts.

Christian Thalmann

On the topic of going Google Fonts: I realized that if all Traction fonts were free, I couldn't offer them on MyFonts and wouldn't be eligible for Text Font of the Month, which is just a bit sad. I suppose I could still offer the basic weights (Regular, Bold, maybe even Light) for free, and sell the "Pro" version with more weights and the two display cuts on MyFonts? I believe that's what Alegreya does, too.

Dave, you said GF is mostly interested in families rather than individual fonts. How many cuts would you consider necessary to fill that niche...? Would it have to include the display cuts? I feel nobody is going to buy the Pro version if it just adds 2 weights over, like, 5 free ones. And if the Pro version is not going to have any commercial success, it's not going to benefit much from MyFonts' infrastructure.

Eris Alar

Hi Christian, Girard is the way it is for a reason, House made a beautiful book to accompany it which helps explain the fonts genesis, and once you read that it all makes sense.

I sometimes search alphabetically, but I usually start with a font I think is in the ballpark of what I'm wanting, then just scroll up or down from there. Also the new way the Adobe CC apps deal with the font menu means I actually search quite a bit as well (but that is because I am fairly familiar with my font library).

Also, I use MyFonts heaps as well, because it helps me see multiple fonts as once with a string of text I can set, so I often search it, then go to find the font in my library (if I have it). Keywords and tags are very helpful for my MyFonts searches.

In terms of paid vs free, my day job is with a non-profit, and while we have a small font budget, I use free fonts as appropriate, so any cheap/free fonts are usually seriously considered by us. One reason I use a bunch of the House fonts is that their pricing is good and their base license covers 10 users, which is important for our team. I tend to not get very many European fonts as the conversion of the Euro to Aussie $$$ is poor, so we often just can't afford them (or I try to buy them from MyFonts in US$$$).

We have started using the Typekit desktop fonts a lot more as well as they are 'free' with our CC subscription, so for us, great on the budget.

Personally, it annoys me when fonts that are linked to the same 'family' are named different. One example is Recovery and Black Monday (a distressed version of Recovery) by @James Puckett‌, I love the fonts, licensed them when they were released but find it frustrating they are not together in my font menu (sorry James!).

In terms of the font menu hiding weights, yes that happens, but the new search makes it less of an issue.

One way around the naming issue is to use two or three letters at the start, like what Typofonderie did with the AW Conqueror series.

I hope that helps a little.

Thomas Phinney

> You can request this but not require it.

Or make your own variant license, that is based on OFL. But that's probably too much work.

Dave Crossland

make your own variant license

If its incompatible with the OFL, its a non starter

Christian Thalmann

For the record, it seems that being paid by Google is now out of the picture (at least for a while) unless you happen to support Devanagari... so it's most likely going to be a regular commercial release at MyFonts after all. Maybe the Regular will be free anyway. Pity.

I've also been rethinking about the release politics again. Considering that I foresee Traction to shine more at large sizes than small ones, perhaps I should release the display cuts as "Traction" in the near future and add the text cuts as "Traction Text" later? (As opposed to "Traction Display" and "Traction", respectively?)

Thomas Phinney

Why not Traction Display and Traction Text?

It's not just politics/branding, but reducing confusion in the long run. I mean, if either one of the cuts is called just “Traction,” then down the road, when somebody refers to just “Traction” you will never be quite certain which style they mean. At least if they both have fully decriptive names, it is at least possible for somebody to specify one clearly and unambiguously. That also leaves the option to refer to the meta-family as “Traction” encompassing both.

Christian Thalmann

Thanks Thomas, good point!

While I like the cleanliness of a short, one-word name for a typeface, I agree that it's good to have unambiguous identifiers for all cuts. I guess they could still all have "Traction" as the family name, and something like "Text Semibold Italic" as instance name.

Thomas Phinney

To my mind, it is a related yet distinct question as to whether to unify or separate the families in the font menu. Keep them all under "Traction," or have separate Text and Display menu entries? How many styles are there of each sub-group?