Trends in type

Charles Borges de Oliveira
Charles Borges de Oliveira Posts: 71
in Technique and Theory
I know this subject has been beaten to death but I am starting to see more and more new font releases hovering around the 10 to 25 dollar price range. I know that a lot of them are not high quality fonts but there are some that are. Yikes! Soon fonts are going to be $5 dollars. I blame it on the cellphone app mentality. I hope it doesn't get harder and harder to try to eek out a living as a type designer.

Comments

  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,995
    One way to look at it is that many new fonts are selling for only $10 to $25. Another way to look at it is that halfassed derivative display fonts that used to end up free on DaFont are instead being sold for $10 to $25. And like each wave of knockoff display type designers most of these people will fade out when they realize there isn’t much of a market for crappy knockoffs of Gotham/Proxima/Museo, Charcuterie, and Bombshell.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,210
    There will always be a market for distinctive, original work.
  • Charles Borges de Oliveira
    Charles Borges de Oliveira Posts: 71
    That is true James and Nick.
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited October 2014
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,210
    Those prices were geared to the cost of marketing in U&lc, and via direct mail.
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,458
    $79 was big bucks back then.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,210
    edited October 2014
    I bought a LaserWriter II NTX for $6000+ dollars. 300 dpi, 8.5 x 11, and it took 40 minutes to print a page of type (if lucky enough to not get a PostScript error). Those were the days! Oh well, whatever, never mind.
  • Yªssin Bªggªr
    Yªssin Bªggªr Posts: 73
    There are foundries out there selling fonts for over 150$ with success. The problem is to think the "myfonts model" is the only thing out there for you, and that you have to follow what others are doing.
    And +1 on what James Puckett said. Fonts created in a few weeks are barely worth the 10 or 20$ they're going for.
  • Martin Silvertant
    Martin Silvertant Posts: 166
    Fonts created in a few weeks are barely worth the 10 or 20$ they're going for.
    What's the evidence for that? I think it has to do more with where you look. Andreas Stötzner designed his typeface Crisis in one day. Certainly it would perform better with a longer deadline, but it goes to show you can certainly offer a certain degree of quality in less time. This is certainly true for display typefaces. I can't see this working for extended font families, so that leaves me to wonder what fonts you're looking at. Would these be the single font typefaces that bring nothing new to the table and try to emulate classics? If so, that's not the fonts I'm looking at. I can't really imagine anyone paying for these kind of fonts either.

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