I always thought printed paper specimens are beautiful things and, as a typographer, I love designing them, studying them, criticizing them, and admiring the work that goes into creating them. As a graphic design student, I loved collecting them.
Realistically, they are expensive to produce and a lot of work to design, though. For those of you who BUY fonts, how do you make your decision? I am willing to guess that you decide online, not based on a specimen you might have received. From those of you who sell fonts over big platforms like MyFonts, FontShop, & co ... did making a printed specimen ever directly help sales? Better yet, do any of you still use the big FontBook?
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Yes! What the heck has happened to PDF specimens lately? Seems like hardly anyone makes them for new releases. I can understand not producing printed specimens except for special circumstances; the cost is quite prohibitive. But I, for one, always look for a PDF. And I am always disappointed when one seems not to be available. Online testers are not a substitute, IMO.
However, warming to the subject, may I say that my foundry continues to publish the occasional printed piece—primarily for the goody bags of type and design conferences.
I don’t bother to try and figure out what effect they have.
I also take out ads in Eye magazine and Slanted, from time to time.
I continue to produce downloadable PDFs for each Shinntype release, at the 8½" x 11" size, as my primary market is North America.
I am! A user and a maker.
@Chris Lozos
I purchase FontBureau fonts regardless, but seeing the beautiful webtype specimens Nick has made have definitely persuaded me to look at those typefaces in ways I hadn't before. Obviously I'm always looking at the quality of the typeface.
I also use those specimens to show art directors and other not-as-type-savvy designers the versatility of a typeface. Good specimens, in conclusion, have definitely helped me sell licenses to clients.
Good point!
For me personally, printed specimens reinforce a foundry's/person's credibility. I still think you need to be able to use your own type in a beautiful way, even if you hire outside designers. A foundry that creates beautiful specimens shows me that they appreciate typography as well as type design, which is a big plus, and it helps me trust them more.
Apart from that, collections of type specimens are a nice piece of history :-)
Alphabets to Order by Alastair Johnston of Poltroon Press is a brilliant treatise on this genre in the 19th century.
I addressed the subject in my specimen for FF Oneleigh of 1999 (which was printed), including a short essay on page 2.
For the foundry, I think they're not just cool objects to produce but they also help reaching more people.
But these people are often influencers for those who do buy fonts.
What I find useful in any (print/web/PDF) specimen is if they show a realistic combination of styles such as continuous text with some words or sentences in italic/corresponding bold weights/small caps.
Many ‘templated’ PDF specimens fail to show this. They show strictly one style each, and it doesn’t help the buyer judge how the styles in a typeface work together.
We started producing printed specimens in 2011, and we see our recognition grow since. But as Veronica says it is hard to say how it directly relates to font sales.
I buy fonts, Latin fonts, though I have made some in the past. The Hebrew fonts I use, which appear in much of my work, I make myself.
For us book designers—or anyone who handles lengthy texts—seeing text types put through their paces is essential for deciding on type purchases. We need to judge a type’s range of usable sizes, how it justifies in typical line lengths, how its color reacts with various leading, and most importantly get a sense of its internal spacing. A word space set to an inappropriate width can ruin one’s view of the whole thing, though it can be fixed easily. It has to be seen in print, and while I respect Nina Stössinger’s point of view, I feel it is possible to make a judgment based on laser prints made from PDFs—if you have the right kind of laser printer with real Adobe PostScript, one which you know from experience will deliver a result that is a reasonable predictor of how the type will look in offset printing. (I currently use a Xerox 6510.) Such specimens may be boring to some, but it’s what they need to be.
Why make text fonts if you don’t show how they perform in texts? Indra is quite correct: print people want to see specimens. In the world of text, function supersedes style—which is not to say that style doesn’t matter, but to try to sell a text type in the same way one sells a display type is a serious mistake. Some potential buyers won’t take it seriously, they’ll pass it by. For me, at least, it is even more true for sans serif types than for, say, Old Style types. Perhaps it’s because there’s less to catch my eye in just a small number of letters. There are also too many of them—more than anyone can digest. Sites like MyFonts simply don’t work for text types, unless you’ve come to buy something you saw in print elsewhere.
These decisions cannot be made online, neither can they be made from cleverly designed printed pieces or PDFs that don’t show paragraphs and full pages. Book designers might not be the most prolific buyers of fonts, but if use is measured in linear meters, we are the most prolific users.
I am trying to think of one calligraphic type designer in particular, who passed away at least 5 years ago, maybe 10?….