Some members of this forum have expressed their interest in helping to found a new International Association of Type Designers aimed at defending our interests, providing legal advice, and combining strategies to counter abuses and monopolistic practices in the font market.
If you are also interested in this initiative, share your proposals here.
Comments
I propose that anyone who has designed and published four typefaces be eligible for membership, except present employees or contractors of Monotype, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Adobe, as those businesses are not owned by type designers.
At this point, we might be at the beginning of a paradigm shift, where is important to know that there are many independent type designers (probably the majority) who feel a similar way and who dare to believe that a better type market is possible. That energy is rising and it's evident, and starting to become the movement. We should speak, to our followers and customers that it is already happening!
I don't see this as trivial negotiations about percentages, because recent events in the type industry showed that the game is not only about the profit but more and more about control.
As per a bit more specific proposals, my current perspective is that decentralization of the market is our goal, so the foundry websites become more important. That would unburden the association of myriad technical problems since foundries already manage all of that for themselves, and put the accent of the new attitude.
That would also lead to more appreciation for classic affiliate marketing which is way cheaper than font stores.
This suggests to me not only an organisation to provide a structural framework for information sharing, cost sharing, advocacy, etc., but also specific technologies to enable decentralised entities to compete effectively in a market that has clearly favoured centralisation: a kind of fediverse of fonts. We could have, for example, technologies to aggregate participating foundries’ offerings in a single search environment to challenge the dominance of one-stop-shopping sites like MyFonts, and technologies to provide customers with low-friction purchase paths from within that search environment.
And if subscription font services do become overwhelmingly the norm for users, as I hope will not be the case to the detriment of a more diverse font ecosystem, we need to seriously consider—now rather than later—what a collectively owned subscription service would look like and how it could be funded.
That opens ten new questions, and that's why I vote for more of an ideological than technical stance in the first phase until the idea gains momentum. A small website or Medium article with a very concise manifesto could be a good start to communicating the problem with the rest of the world and raising awareness. Here we could try to more or less agree on the text.
John's proposal that we need a kind of independent font browser is an idea with nice potential. It could be maintained through fair affiliate link percentages. I guess it could be non-profit, just a fair amount for the stable and decent functionality and maintenance.
However, one important issue with every browser is the algorithm of presented results, since the search algorithms are elements of centralization. That's something to be worked out.
As per ideas about browser functionality, indie foundries could fill out the form while submitting the fonts to the search base, choosing the search parameters about the style, licensing, etc.
Also, a reasonable initial fee per uploaded font may serve as a threshold preventing generic and very low-quality uploads and could fund the human quality check.
I don’t mean to imply that a formal association isn’t ultimately something to consider—I agree with Nadine that structures provide longevity—, but I believe structures should come about to maintain and advance the practical initiatives, not precede them.
I protect my identity because monopolistic corporations often retaliate against those who oppose them.
I think this project is really important and I don't want to be an obstacle for it to continue.
My hope is for an intersectional organization with lots of transparency.
Maybe it’d be nice if people chime in with what is important to them; we start a running list of those things, then we can figure out the legality of it once we have something of guide to follow.
EDIT:
Before any talk of how to structure this or any other organizational matters, we really should establish what it is that independent designers want—that means listening to a lot of voices, including a lot of people not present on this forum. If that’s not clear, the type of organization isn’t going to matter.
Ownership is eveything.
I too subscribe to the Marx maxim, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."
Groucho of course.
https://fonts.google.com/?query=Nick+Shinn
The vast majority of the contractors for Google Fonts are small independent type designers, not even foundries, and it seems to me that Adobe Fonts is also stacked high with independents.
So this proposal seems to exclude almost everyone already within arms reach of making a living drawing type. Without the fonts they make that customers want to buy, I doubt there's enough revenue volume for a new distributor to break even.
It's fine with me if I'm not invited to the cabal meetings, and it's fine with me if you think Google Fonts doesn't support independent type designers, and you won't collaborate on libre software projects that would help you.
But y'all been sleeping on https://type.world 🤣
Anyway, so no, I didn’t ask people what their needs were when I created Type.World as a font installation software. I conceived it as a tool to aid font installation for a custom project where rapid font updates had to be delivered to the graphic designers. Then I grew the idea into the federated solution that it is today. It started as a naive idea and the rest is history.
There's more to it, though. If you go to https://www.patreon.com/typeWorld and click on "Show more" under the illustration under "About Type.World", you will find that I had also envisioned a search engine (called FairFonts), that would lead customers from a central interface to each foundry’s own online shop, then have their new fonts install instantly in the Type.World app. (Never mind the outdated setup of example companies there)
To reduce the friction around creating new logins for each foundry, I had already made "Type.World Sign In" (https://type.world/developer/docs/signin/) so that only a single user account can be used for the entire ecosystem. Do watch the video there. These are not mockups, this is live.
Let me tell you how it was received, tho. My perception is that none of the independent type designers and foundries want to collaborate. Each foundry wants to be viewed as entirely independent of everyone else. Many foundries told me that they would love to use Type.World if they could brand it entirely themselves (a certain level of branding is already baked into the protocol tho but that's not enough) and the app could only be used for their own fonts. Meaning that users would end up with one app per foundry.
It was perceived as unacceptable that a small foundry could be seen standing next to another one in such an ecosystem.
Which honestly I find a bit dumb from a fighting-against-centralization angle; never mind the effort that goes into creating and maintaining such an app and technology.
Also, no one saw the added value in the smooth user experience I created for customers. I learnt that the independent type industry is entirely self-serving and not customer-serving — a great disappointment and a mindset I don't share.
Today, I still believe that Type.World and everything else there is a great idea, but the technology behind is already outdated or was conceived wrong. Meanwhile I've developed an idea that offloads the entire backend architecture of the tool to the blockchain, and I'm getting closer to experimenting with a prototype. That would solve several issues: It would dramatically reduce the implementation effort for foundries, complete the decentralization, and resolve the revenue stream for both the service as well as an additional revenue channel for foundries. (I was told that Type.World is not interesting because it creates work but no addition revenue for a foundry, so my wording "additional revenue for a foundry" is under the situation that Type.World is a burden. In a true federation, that would of course turn into "primary revenue channel").
Under this new idea, there would be a unified store front (but still be decentral, ask for details), and the revenue would be distributed instantly between the stakeholders with automatic accounting. Pure internet magic.
If anyone wants to hear more, they need to express their genuine interest.
On typo.social I've already subjected myself to so much derogatory behaviour for even mentioning general interest in blockchain (not even discussing any of the above) that I'm very weary of even discussing any more of it in public.
I'm a technical person and I don't understand the needs of foundries very well it seems, as has already been expressed abundantly clear to me by people in this very thread (but on other occasions; if you don't remember doing it, I don't mean you). Yes, I didn't ask around enough what people want, but I also didn't receive any input despite asking for it. Feel free to continue to bash me for it and not collaborate on a solution.
The entire conversation around improving the existence of independent type designers and foundries has been all talk, zero action so far. I'm in the action department.
I'm okay with making mistakes, and I'm about to pull the plug on Type.World. $4 on Patreon every month is what I got. Anyone can resurrect it. The source code is here: https://github.com/typeworld
I am not okay with receiving derogatory behaviour for it. And I have no interest anymore in pushing any new technology or ideas on people who want faster horses.
My experience with Type.World was that everyone wanted to get served the perfect solution on a gold platter (which is the capitalist convenience mindset), and at the same time receive a greater revenue cut than they currently do under capitalism.
No one understood that the capitalist convenience (from the publisher angle) is what we want to leave behind us, and that, in order for getting a bigger slice of your revenue, you have to put in your own work and collaborate.
And that's the true uphill battle that I'm unwilling to fight any longer. Not even the basic understanding for the need for collaboration is there.
Dave is not the first one in this forum who used the word “cartel”. The discussions here walk a fine line. I find the idea of excluding designers who take “big company” commissions startling. So many questions: At what point is a company qualified as too big to be barred by this club? What about the designers now working at Monotype due to their boss selling their previously independent foundry? What about the designers who sell their partial IP to Monotype, or those who sell to Google and making their fonts available under OFL? Do you bar designers at Changzhou SinoType, Arphic (now owned by Morisawa), Sandoll, Iwata, because their companies have collaborated with Adobe and Google to release the world’s first open source pan-CJK fonts? In such dynamic landscape, who gets to draw the line?
I'm happy to hear suggestions for working condition improvements!
I wouldn't dwell on the spurious cartel talk, or make it a sticking point. People who are saying the big companies shouldn't be part of an independents' initiative have just been stung by the infiltration via sponsorship and lobbying they've seen happen with other trade organizations over the decades. Any group formed with clear guidelines and enough focus can easily instate guards against such things.
I think that's probably the lack of adoption issue @yanone is having. People are reluctant to change the way their own custom sites work in order to integrate outside tech. In Canada Type's case, we just need to figure out what needs to be done and how much trouble it is to do it.
The documentation he already provided seemed extensive to me, plus all the source code is there - and he had an open door for such calls. I understand the phone did not ring.
Perhaps this is a vignette example of what he said about the widespread basic understanding of collaboration being lacking.