A client has ordered some modifications to one of my typefaces. The changes are minor and will be made to a couple of glyphs only. How do you usually handle the family name on these occasions? Do you add the client name to the original family name? Or do you add some sort of differentiator like “Alt”, “B” or “Custom”?
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Someone recently asked me to modify the ogonek accents in one of my fonts — you may recall the thread. I duly modified the position and design of the accents, and uploaded a new version, fixing a few more bugs in the process.
Even Microsoft made some changes to their fonts with Windows updates to fix some bugs, but they have not changed the font names: Verdana, Arial, etc., have had the same names for more than a decade.
I think you disagree only because you're thinking about a different scenario entirely.
@Dave Crossland
Space Mono is (eventually, I hope) going to get a fixed "M" and "W"* but even though that won't be an insignificant change, I doubt the font will be renamed...
* https://github.com/googlefonts/spacemono/issues/1
Several years ago, when Font Bureau made a major update to the Benton Sans family, there was a lot of debate about the pros and cons of having the family name change slightly (from “BentonSans” to “Benton Sans”).
All of the familiar arguments arose — including preventing the possibility of documents that depend upon features in the new full-featured OT fonts from opening with older fonts installed and without warning of the mismatch (an argument for name change) versus causing confusion and hassle in updating existing documents (an argument for keeping the same family name).
The decision was made to update the family name.
As you can imagine, updating specimen documents that had contained around 128 fonts (prior to merger of SC styles) to roughly 80 fully-featured OT fonts was a daunting prospect. The Adobe Find Font… interface is very cumbersome at that scale. Which is when I developed my InDesign script.
I then suggested to sales & customer support staff to make the offer to clients that we could provide them the script to update legacy InDesign documents, as a courtesy. I don’t know if anyone ever took advantage of the offer.
Even Microsoft made some changes to their fonts with Windows updates to fix some bugs, but they have not changed the font names: Verdana, Arial, etc., have had the same names for more than a decade.
I have customized fonts for my own use using stylistic sets, so as to keep backward compatibility. I thought styles were standard for alternate shapes. Is there anything precluding such a solution when dealing with clients? If the font name is not changed, but the style is not available, then the font is clearly not the right one. And if the style is there, and if the font is guaranteed to behave like the original when the style is not active, then what other problem can be caused by not renaming than having to uninstall before installing the right copy when needed?
However, what if they don't want to explain to their employees that they must edit all of their documents to change the font to the customised one? The system admin can uninstall the original font, and install the new one, then the employees get a load of missing font errors! Or, do they keep both versions installed?
Since the fonts are always for in-house use, there's probably no chance of conflicts. I suppose a company using a Custom font could merge with another company using a different Custom version of the same font. Oh no, what have I done?!?
Third parties – such a freelance designers, printers, banner makers, web developers – need to use these fonts too. In these cases a lot of confusion/frustration is avoided if the customised fonts are clearly named differently.
For this very reason we think it is best to add the name of the client to the font name.
I’ve been told by a lawyer for a company I used to work woth that, if Nameoffont is a registered trademark, then putting anything new before Nameoffont weakens the trademark holder’s claim to that trademark, however slightly. So, a client might want Nameofclient_Nameoffont, but that was not something this lawyer could sign off on.
(Of course, I should add here that I am not a lawyer, and this post should not be misconstrued as actual advice, since I do not have an understanding of how laws surrounding trademarks in any jurisdiction are specifically applied.)
I have a recollection from when we first started doing this that the underscore is important (as opposed to just having a space) but I've long forgotten the research that lead us to this convention. We never looked supper closely into the legal aspects of this naming convention so I can't speak with confidence about whether this is actually true about the trademark.
I would argue that it doesn't matter. This convention works for us and our clients and has been really useful as a license compliance tool. We sometimes require clients who have very large group licenses for less than the full family (especially if their license covers contractors) to have a renamed font using this convention even if there are no modifications.
I think it is super important to guard the name of our font as associated with the retail build. Fonts get around, even those that are not top sellers, and we want to make certain that there is no misunderstanding about what the retail version is.
I'm sure there are some clients who will be really annoyed by having to change some layouts once but they are not the majority and, even if they were, they aren't being reasonable. The clients who commission a modification to our fonts are often among the most high profile users of that given font. The risk to the font brand if the retail build brand gets diluted is a far bigger deal than the inconvenience of a little work at the front end for the client. Such damage to the brand can't be repaired.
1. Changed vertical metrics so the descenders don't get cut off in versions of word processing software that are not exactly new but which came out more recently than Jubilat
2. additional latin language support like Vietnamese
3. wider spacing in the middle widths so it will work well in text settings and not be an exclusively display font
Since this will not be backwards compatible with the current version we had planned on releasing it as a 2 build, as in the menu will read "Jubilat2" or possibly "Jubilat 2". We plan on giving the 2 build for free to all customers who have the current build, supporting the current build for a year or two but not selling it, and then eventually phasing out the old build while trying to be as nice about it as possible.
This has been a plan for quite a while so we have talked to a few people about it before we settled on this naming but I don't think there was anyone at Microsoft on our list. What it amounted to was that there are really no good options and this seemed like the best of the bad.
It should be said that the point of the new build isn't simply to improve known issues with the current build. We are hoping to increase its sales - especially with item #3. Jubiliat has always done well for what it is (highly display serif font) and we think that it can do more if it's more broadly useful. So, the naming is important in that it will effect messaging to customers who might have passed on Jubilat before and could take a second look.
What do you think?
But ultimately if the metrics are changing I think a rename is appropriate so customers are able to opt in to content reflow.
(I also published a lot of families as "Something One" which are single style families intended to be expanded later, but are not the Regular Roman style of what that family will be, so likely the rerelease full family will then be simply "Something" rather than "Something Two")
@SiDaniels It's not so much a question of whether this is an upgrade to something like a Pro (which you could argue it is because of the expanded language support) as the precedent we've already set when we did an Omnes Pro build. When we did that we also added language support (and moved over to OTF) but the metrics were backwards compatible. We want to differentiate this more since it will require changes to layouts.
@Dave Crossland Good idea! Our company style guide is to spell out numbers one to ten already so it fits with the brand. I know that @EbenSorkin will raise concerns about character count for custom builds though.
@Dan Reynolds It shows how busy we are with Halyard that none of us thought of Neue Jubilat. It's also a good idea, though has more characters than @Dave Crossland's idea. But it has a flare to it that I like.
@PabloImpallari I appreciate the creative thinking. However, the bar for a new optical size name is higher with us, as the foundry of the man who designed Freight (though we don't own it ourselves). This will make more sense in a few weeks when our new release, Halyard, comes out. It has three optical sizes - each designed separately.