At TypoBerlin a new font sales channel has been announced, initially aimed at desktop licensing, with
many of the top independent foundries involved:https://fontstand.com
The FS initials seems to me a bit of an inside joke, following the acquisition of FontShop last year in a way that many type designers were very unhappy about.
The Fontstand pricing model offers users to license the font for 1 month at 10% of the unlimited time usage license, and if users renew the monthly license for 12 months then it becomes an unlimited usage license (thus paying 20% more than an unlimited license costs up front.)
This contrasts with Spotify-like continuous monthly licensing; paying continuously makes sense for web font services, since the service has to be running continuously too, but for desktop fonts the case seems less clearcut.
It also contrasts with classic unlimited-time licensing, which is unattractive for users who only want to use a type family for a brief time.
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It also give smaller companies and students, who maybe don’t have a large budget to use quality fonts easier, something which IMHO is so much better than shopping a font at 90% discount and get a Gotham-clone.
Maybe it will also make designers who seldom try new fonts at all to try something new, this could be a positive “side-effect” perhaps.
All in all, it’s a great collection of foundries on Fontstand. From my point of view, we all have something in common; we try very, very hard to create authentic typefaces.
It is nice to see a desktop font renting service. It is more like a leasing I think.
It really seems to be a good choice for designers; you can rent the font for a month and present the alternative to the client. If the client signed with you, he will buy font.
FontYou is launching a similar service
If they adopt a rental sales model and scoop up all the foundries excluded from fontstand, I guess they could offer higher volume and offer independent designers a more serious leverage over distributors who take a higher cut.
I wonder of FontSpring and FontBros will offer similar app channels
I was pleased to see Fontstand launch with 21 foundries already available through the app.
One of the images they're showing includes one of my typefaces...
Because it’s for both managing the users’ font collection and accessing whatever Font You is selling. I’m not sure if that’s attractive or not. Back when font files were prone to inexplicable corruption it would have made sense to just clear the local files and reload from a remote server, but does that still matter?
I don’t see how FontYou expects to build this with only €25,000. Unless most of the work is already done and they just need the money to launch. Like Stewf said, they need to work on communication.
Aha, you are in this? Sorry did not see that.
I read again and tried hard to understand what they want...
Do they want people to pay them to build this tool where the users later can buy their fonts? I mean if that works, it’s kind of amazing.
Pretty sure they don't need the money. http://www.adhugger.net/2014/06/09/fontyou-promotes-typography-with-a-platform-dedicated-to-typelovers/
That explains why they’re only asking for €25,000 on Kickstarter. It’s just a stunt.
That’s one of the reasons Fontstand is so appealing: it’s quite obvious what it does and why it’s useful. That clarity comes not only from the simplicity of the product, but in the way it is presented.
Maybe the prices of the foundries affiliated at Fontstand right now are on the expensive side of the current average price and losing market against the 90% being offered (a real issue these days for everyone)? In my case a display font offered a 10% of the price could produce the same damage that this kind of discounts.
Some foundries there are not offering the display fonts of their catalogues and some others like House are only offering the PLINC stuff that was conceived to be offered first a different model too and not sure if it worked.
Just saying.
There are many ways to get a font you don’t own, webfont rip etc etc. In the end pirates are pirates, you want to make things as convenient as possible for people who will actually buy your font because most pirates don’t want to buy anyway so most of them will use another font they can find if they can’t pirate yours, etc.
It’s the same debate in the video games industry: some publishers add very invasive copy protection to their games – in the end these games are still on torrents and only the legit buyers are damaged.
Though, for your users, that may require more explicit language in the Fontstand agreement that any published commercial work requires a full license, and that may be contrary to the Fontstand concept.
And I do agree that your users differ from those of many foundries in the ’stand. Along with that, a Sudtipos script is different than a multi-weight family. Your $79-per-style pricing is the same as many pro foundries, but your users generally only need the one font, whereas the standard use of a multi-weight text or display family requires at least 2–3 styles, so the barrier for entry is usually at least $150 and often around $500–1000.
First: the free trial fonts in Fontstand don’t contain the letter F and f.
Second: convert to outlines loses all spacing, kerning, hinting, and OT feature data. Not so attractive in my book.
I understand Ale’s point of view that for his typefaces Fontstand might not be an ideal model. I don’t argue with that.