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.
The discussion of blockchain fonts seems to me part of an on-topic proposal that a new International Association of Type Designers aimed at defending our interests ought to be a free association through technology; a new decentralized distribution platform technology where the % rates are code, and the code can not be changed without consent of those who are using it.
I was talking about a sustained "educational" campaign, like Here's why you should license directly from the publishers, rather than traditionally advertising individual fonts or foundries. Right now more and more of us are increasingly exasperated with the distribution platform grubby shenanigans, but we're just a few people with clear dogs in the fight. If we bring our concerns to light consistently and directly to our actual customers, we'd have some hope of changing the universal licensing mindset in favour of the independents.
I think education is extremely important, so is discoverability. As of right now, it seems that social media is a terrible way of launching a new product—even foundries with large social media followings seem to have much lower engagement than they did even a few years ago.
Also, are people really going to care about where they buy a typeface? A lot of people hate Amazon’s practices but still order from them. Sweatshop and slave labor have been issues for a long time but fast fashion companies still make a ton of money.
Exclusivity and brand cache definitely have an influence, and sure, some people might feel bad for the poor little guy who gets pushed around by Monotype, but I think good discoverability and some way to make purchasing or management easier are really what would matter to people.
If you join the IATD, you can no longer work for Big Tech, payroll or contract, although you may still have them work for you, as distributors.
So I could still have Google Fonts distribute my free fonts, I could just no longer have them pay me lots of money for my trouble...? But in exchange, something something blockchain. Got it.
Yeah, Nick’s idea is a non-starter based on a very narrow understanding of what the type business is and how it should function. If we don’t support a diverse font ecosystem in which people who make fonts can earn money in a variety of ways, we increase the risk of ending up not being able to earn money in any way.
Kris, similarly, assuming a decentralized and independent chain, the continued access and control of the database entry beyond the life of the initial game isn't useless, because other games can interact with it. The database lives on.
Since we’re all just typing words and concepts in support of a total fantasy scenario: yes, this could happen. A new publisher could make a new game that seamlessly incorporates the assets of a previously failed game. Just like in the real world.
I am closer to the idea that we don't really need an International Association of Type Designers, but an International Association of Independent Foundries.
For that, I think it will be necessary to define what an independent foundry is, establishing a limit that is neither too inclusive nor too exclusive, and then continue having discussions with the principals of the foundries involved, in a space that can be isolated from the interference and trolling of those individuals interested in preventing the formation of said association.
If I interpret correctly, this initiative would be a collective of font foundries. Members of this association would collectively determine the minimum standards that a font vendor must adhere to, via a democratic voting process. Once a consensus is reached, font distributors who do not meet these agreed-upon standards would be contacted and informed of our requirements.
In a situation where a vendor fails to comply within a specified timeframe, members would be obligated to request the removal of their fonts from the vendor's sales platform. Is my interpretation of the proposed process accurate?
As a business side person who doesn't have a kerning pair to my name I'm flabbergasted by this conversation. The only way that the font industry can ever mature into a real industry is if it has a true business ecosystem. It needs a real cohort of business professionals who understand it and support it. It also needs designers who have common understandings about basic things like the definitions of legibility, similarity, and character set. Put another way, it needs standards. It's totally fine that most designers don't have a mind for standards, that's why it needs business side people to guide the industry. The bigotry against business minded people in this thread is staggering. Not from everyone, obviously, but I read very little push back.
Btw, the question about "true cost for resellers" is also absurd. Of course there's no one cost. And the only answer it got "no one will say because it's super low" is straight up othering. Do you think my skill set has no value? Some of you clearly do think that. A good reseller can earn 50%. Definitely. I don't think we have good resellers at the moment but the fact remains that probably is what it costs to do a good job.
I see two possibilities emerging from this thread:
1. Setting up an association that demands certain standards from vendors, with the threat that the associated foundries will otherwise leave the vendor. This one seems like an empty threat to me, as others have pointed out most foundries simply do not have the luxury to pull out from major income sources. Legal questions aside.
2. Setting up a new vendor (or other way of getting fonts to customers) that meets certain standards. IF this new vendor is attractive to customers and foundries, Monotype could eventually be pushed out of the market. Agreeing on those standards and then setting up the infrastructure seems near impossible to me, BUT the advantage is that most big vendors at the moment seem to be suffering from mild to serious forms of mismanagement, and as a result are not doing very well for their foundries (or so most of us seem to think) or their customers (just my opinion, have you seen Myfonts recently?).
I strongly agree with Joyce. What this conversation needs is exactly what it is fighting: a business-minded person, preferably WITHOUT a kerning pair to their name. The question should not be: how big of a % are foundries willing to give away? But instead: what do we expect a vendor to deliver, and what % would allow that to happen?
Yeah, Nick’s idea is a non-starter based on a very narrow understanding of what the type business is and how it should function.
My proposal was based not on understanding, but on principle. If you work for a font-distributing monopolist, whether salary or fee, you are in a compromised position. Should a type designer with that kind of conflict of interest be a member of the IATD? I don’t think so.
And if having IATD after a designer’s name were to indicate the standard Joyce mentions, and become the norm, that would cast an unfavourable light on designers without that qualification, to the extent that self-respecting designers would not work for the monopolists, in any capacity, because that would be to the detriment of their reputation, as being against the interests of the bulk of their peers. This is something of the principle behind design organizations such as the AIGA and RGD, for instance forbidding spec work that undermines the profession in general.
I started the comments to this thread by representing my interests, as someone whose income is made primarily from licence sales through distributors. I also do commissioned work, but not for font distributors. The only work I’ve ever done for a company that is also a font distributor is one font for Google, just to see what that would be like. My proposal was not “wilfully” exclusionary, it was more of the “people like me” nature.
As a business side person who doesn't have a kerning pair to my name I'm flabbergasted by this conversation. The only way that the font industry can ever mature into a real industry is if it has a true business ecosystem. It needs a real cohort of business professionals who understand it and support it. It also needs designers who have common understandings about basic things like the definitions of legibility, similarity, and character set. Put another way, it needs standards. It's totally fine that most designers don't have a mind for standards, that's why it needs business side people to guide the industry. The bigotry against business minded people in this thread is staggering. Not from everyone, obviously, but I read very little push back.
Btw, the question about "true cost for resellers" is also absurd. Of course there's no one cost. And the only answer it got "no one will say because it's super low" is straight up othering. Do you think my skill set has no value? Some of you clearly do think that. A good reseller can earn 50%. Definitely. I don't think we have good resellers at the moment but the fact remains that probably is what it costs to do a good job.
Regarding to #2 from @Jasper de Waard answer above (which I find the most acceptable so far), I have one question to all.
If all of sudden one vendor appears as the saver of our problems and that vendor requests big part of cake, let's say 80% of all license sales in first, let's say 3 years in order to get things moving (from website, servers, employees to marketing, accounting etc.) – would you join and sell there? Would you be able to sacrifice your earnings for a sake of overall, let's say investments into one vendor?
Or let's go even further and let's say you'll get 1% of ownerships of that vendor. Would that be interesting to you?
I hesitated until now to respond to this discussion, mainly because the initial poster’s “identity” is a no-brainer for my sense and his proposal is ridiculous naïve. No one needs a “type designers union” pretending to fight against capitalists like MT, those folks would only be laughing about it until they faint.
Type designers like me who want to earn some revenue out of licences do not sit in the same boat like type hobbyists who flood the market with more or less poorly executed fonts and thus actually destroy that market. (They are free to do so, of course, but I’m not in the band supporting them.)
The core problem for us who seek to earn money is the dependence on contracts. For the seek of outreach we sell the potentials of our work and our contractual power to a monopolist and then he is in the position to screw us as he likes.
The way to solve this conundrum is to operationally seperate contracting from outreach. If that could be managed, there is a chance. If not, then I’ll retire happily from font business.
What about thinking of the Etsy model of online business? This works like a downtown arcade hosting hundreds of little seperate shops. There everyone can open his own shop under his own branding. Presentation and pricing is entirely in one’s own hand. The platform’s owner provides the infrastructure and just takes a little fee for putting an item in the shopwindow, but does not own anything. That ‘arcade’ may also be littered with cheep crap, but the point is, there is no contract between the shopkeeper and the platform holder, hence there is nothing the platformist could ever sell to a monopolist one day.
The idea of establishing (technical) standards is important, but I have a hard time imagening how good font design practices would be managed and uphold in a real scenario. It would require a standardisation authority body and those who form it are in a powerful position opposite to all the others.
Such a 'storefront but not vendor' idea does appeal to me, also because it simplifies the money streams. I wonder why Etsy only allows the selling of physical goods though, perhaps there are legal complications with this concept?
What Etsy doesn't do very much in my experience is marketing. Or have I just not been targeted? For a storefront to compete with Monotype, I would think that some heavy investments in marketing are necessary. Individual foundries often lack the know-how and scale to make such investments worthwile, so I expect that marketing will have to come from Fontsy (see what I did there?). Thus, Fontsy would probably require a bigger cut than people have come to expect from Etsy to succeed.
The Fontdue people may be interested in development. I would just like to reiterate that I think the whole operation would do best if it was ran by people with experience in ecommerce and business, who themselves have no fonts to speak of in the game. Also, running the show does not necessarily mean owning the show.
How do you prevent Fontsy from becoming another Monotipsy?
- This thread is more important than we can realize now. Getting 3K views for a few days means there are a lot of people taking an eye on this.
- Despite the general impression, communication is at the top level giving a variety of viewpoints. We should be proud of the level of responsibility and expertise shown here.
- The fact that this kind of discussion is 20 years old is a sign that the problem won't go away and not a sign that nothing can't be done. If we do nothing it will be worse than it is now, not even the same.
- The idea of many different points of action is great. However, that doesn't exclude the idea of the umbrella organization. We should remember that we are a small community and that fragmentation enabled our current undesirable position. "NGOs" will push the Umbrella, and vice versa. Customers' habits showed that they need one place (that's why they stick with big distributors), but we want to be that place.
- My opinion is that the IATD won't be in a situation to request their members to give up partnerships with big tech and distributors. At least not until it has to offer something in return. We are trying to open more space for indie designers, not to limit us further. (BTW, I respect Nick's input, it strongly encouraged the thread).
- There are two main methods here: 1) Developing new tools and tech solutions and 2) Spreading the word about the new paradigm making it a new standard. Both methods are indispensable and only could work together.
- Prepare your emotions for the long run. This is still the incubator phase, we are not aiming for a perfect solution right now, just building the alternative. But people are starting to think and envision. Private messages are already being exchanged etc.
Regarding to #2 from @Jasper de Waard answer above (which I find the most acceptable so far), I have one question to all.
If all of sudden one vendor appears as the saver of our problems and that vendor requests big part of cake, let's say 80% of all license sales in first, let's say 3 years in order to get things moving (from website, servers, employees to marketing, accounting etc.) – would you join and sell there? Would you be able to sacrifice your earnings for a sake of overall, let's say investments into one vendor?
Or let's go even further and let's say you'll get 1% of ownerships of that vendor. Would that be interesting to you?
It is an interesting idea to support the new platform with the large cut at the start, getting a small part of ownership or some other benefit in return.
It raises many questions and would require some clear provisions about the future, ownership, decision-making, etc. to prevent abuse and fraud. Also, the numbers might be different (3 years is too long in my opinion, 1% is too much I guess), but I think that the general idea has potential, because type designers invest fonts, not money.
One more potential partner is Gumroad. They might be interesting as they have a pretty developed infrastructure for selling digital goods. It's not tailored for fonts specifically, but the development of the platform is very dynamic and I would say pretty transparent since Sahil (CEO) regularly schedules meetings where you can propose new features, etc. If IATD as an entity approach Gumorad, they might be interested in enabling font tester, licensing options, special terms...It might be a great opportunity for both parties.
Kris, similarly, assuming a decentralized and independent chain, the continued access and control of the database entry beyond the life of the initial game isn't useless, because other games can interact with it. The database lives on.
Since we’re all just typing words and concepts in support of a total fantasy scenario: yes, this could happen. A new publisher could make a new game that seamlessly incorporates the assets of a previously failed game. Just like in the real world.
Eli Heuer tells me the Treasure game ecosystem is built around this idea:
It's also, as I understand it, the basic idea behind web3, where you login to any web3 app using a wallet and all the on-chain assets from web3 apps you've used previously that are associated with your wallet are available to the new app.
And for the record, Ramiro, I am not at all interested in preventing the formation of any associations discussed here; just the opposite.
In fact I'll be so happy to see one or more emerge, and I've put my money where my mouth is in supporting the development of https://type.world - as I've said above, I believe it is a necessary technological basis of such associations, which they can mutually benefit from sharing.
While Nick frames GF as a monopoly, I can't grasp it: the whole point of libre licensing is to avoid monopolies on development. Libre licensing, libre society, libre marketplaces
… Etsy only allows the selling of physical goods …
Etsy also enables the distribution of digital goods (files), although the focus is clearly on physical items. There is plenty of fonts available already, although 99% of it being wedding-scripty-50-fonts-bundles at $6,78.
Fontdue appeals to me, Creative Market as well. Looks all very attractive. I guess the future is in such places which operate without subjection and slavery contracts. Myfonts get no new fonts from me since 5 years. And the MF place looks desperate outdated and uninspiring.
I have Clements Numbers there, a tiny little "numbers-only" font, having 355 sales so far. In the old days, priced as $12, I used to get $6 out of each sale. Now I've only get $2.40 which is ridiculous. ($3.60 taxes, $6 for CM)
I'm about to remove it from there and sell it on my own website. In the meantime I have increased the price to $20, about a week ago.
----------------------------------------
On the other side: - The interface for managing the shop and uploading the fonts/products is nice. - The fact that buyers can leave ratings and comments is also nice. - Users can "follow" you, and get notified of new released, also a nice feature.
CM used to be good, and once you are approved you have full control over your shop (new products, edits, product removal, version updates with notification to customers). The contract was pretty decent IIRC.
But Pablo's numbers are right. Also, it can happen that a font gets 12 views in total in 4 months. They heavily rely on an algorithm, which more or less serves as an amplifier of the external traffic.
The marketing manager I used to contact earlier about different collaborations is not answering emails anymore. Seems they are less toward designers and more toward profit since Dribble, and Fontspring came into play.
Etsy has no font-specific technical interface of course. You just upload a few images and fill in description fields, thats it. On the other hand, Etsy charges ¢20 for one item being for sale for 4 months and takes ca. 10% off the sale.
While Nick frames GF as a monopoly, I can't grasp it:
I suggest you hire a web site developer in anytown, and ask them to design a web site for a small business or hobby. They will likely use WordPress and Google/Adobe fonts.
That is the effect that the corporate concentration of Big Tech has on the marketplace. It has shut out the community at large of type designers from earning money from font licence sales to the vast majority of 800 million web sites that use WordPress. By paying a few a small fee.
And who decides what those GF fonts will be, designed by whom? Isn’t it you?
That’s the exclusive control that “monopoly” means (although I use the term incorrectly, rather than oligopoly, which is a bit of a mouthful).
Why do we even need distributors? A distribution platform consists of two main parts: a discovery platform to search/browse/filter to find the right font for your project, and an e-commerce platform to process transactions.
We already have many cheap and easy alternatives for e-commerce, like Fontdue/FoundryCore/LttrShop/Gumroad. The only really valuable thing we get from distributors is access to a potential audience, and the audience comes to them simply because they have a large library and their discovery platform enables designers to easily find the right fonts for their project. In exchange for a potential audience, they extort 50–75% of our revenue, while other far more monstrous companies like Apple are criticized for demanding 15–30% from iOS app developers.
If we indie foundries want to collectively take control of our own future, we will build a discovery platform that rivals the major platforms that graphic designers and other font buyers go to like Adobe Fonts, Google Fonts, MyFonts, Creative Market, Fontspring. E-commerce doesn't need to be a part of it, if the platform simply links to the foundry's preferred e-commerce page.
This idea of a discovery platform has been discussed here several times, and attempted by several developers in our community, so there is definitely potential for this to happen with a small group of focused individuals (in the spirit of Nadine's comment) to develop it openly with support from the type community.
(Edit: sorry, I don't know why my paragraph spacing is suddenly larger than everyone else's)
Comments
"Code is law".
Yeah, Nick’s idea is a non-starter based on a very narrow understanding of what the type business is and how it should function. If we don’t support a diverse font ecosystem in which people who make fonts can earn money in a variety of ways, we increase the risk of ending up not being able to earn money in any way.
If I interpret correctly, this initiative would be a collective of font foundries. Members of this association would collectively determine the minimum standards that a font vendor must adhere to, via a democratic voting process. Once a consensus is reached, font distributors who do not meet these agreed-upon standards would be contacted and informed of our requirements.
In a situation where a vendor fails to comply within a specified timeframe, members would be obligated to request the removal of their fonts from the vendor's sales platform. Is my interpretation of the proposed process accurate?
Btw, the question about "true cost for resellers" is also absurd. Of course there's no one cost. And the only answer it got "no one will say because it's super low" is straight up othering. Do you think my skill set has no value? Some of you clearly do think that. A good reseller can earn 50%. Definitely. I don't think we have good resellers at the moment but the fact remains that probably is what it costs to do a good job.
1. Setting up an association that demands certain standards from vendors, with the threat that the associated foundries will otherwise leave the vendor. This one seems like an empty threat to me, as others have pointed out most foundries simply do not have the luxury to pull out from major income sources. Legal questions aside.
2. Setting up a new vendor (or other way of getting fonts to customers) that meets certain standards. IF this new vendor is attractive to customers and foundries, Monotype could eventually be pushed out of the market. Agreeing on those standards and then setting up the infrastructure seems near impossible to me, BUT the advantage is that most big vendors at the moment seem to be suffering from mild to serious forms of mismanagement, and as a result are not doing very well for their foundries (or so most of us seem to think) or their customers (just my opinion, have you seen Myfonts recently?).
I strongly agree with Joyce. What this conversation needs is exactly what it is fighting: a business-minded person, preferably WITHOUT a kerning pair to their name. The question should not be: how big of a % are foundries willing to give away? But instead: what do we expect a vendor to deliver, and what % would allow that to happen?
I'll see you folks around.
My proposal was based not on understanding, but on principle. If you work for a font-distributing monopolist, whether salary or fee, you are in a compromised position. Should a type designer with that kind of conflict of interest be a member of the IATD? I don’t think so.
And if having IATD after a designer’s name were to indicate the standard Joyce mentions, and become the norm, that would cast an unfavourable light on designers without that qualification, to the extent that self-respecting designers would not work for the monopolists, in any capacity, because that would be to the detriment of their reputation, as being against the interests of the bulk of their peers. This is something of the principle behind design organizations such as the AIGA and RGD, for instance forbidding spec work that undermines the profession in general.
I started the comments to this thread by representing my interests, as someone whose income is made primarily from licence sales through distributors. I also do commissioned work, but not for font distributors. The only work I’ve ever done for a company that is also a font distributor is one font for Google, just to see what that would be like. My proposal was not “wilfully” exclusionary, it was more of the “people like me” nature.
Apart from disagreeing with various opinions stated here, I agree 100% with what @Nadine Chahine said about working groups not an association.
If all of sudden one vendor appears as the saver of our problems and that vendor requests big part of cake, let's say 80% of all license sales in first, let's say 3 years in order to get things moving (from website, servers, employees to marketing, accounting etc.) – would you join and sell there? Would you be able to sacrifice your earnings for a sake of overall, let's say investments into one vendor?
Or let's go even further and let's say you'll get 1% of ownerships of that vendor. Would that be interesting to you?
Type designers like me who want to earn some revenue out of licences do not sit in the same boat like type hobbyists who flood the market with more or less poorly executed fonts and thus actually destroy that market. (They are free to do so, of course, but I’m not in the band supporting them.)
The core problem for us who seek to earn money is the dependence on contracts. For the seek of outreach we sell the potentials of our work and our contractual power to a monopolist and then he is in the position to screw us as he likes.
The way to solve this conundrum is to operationally seperate contracting from outreach. If that could be managed, there is a chance. If not, then I’ll retire happily from font business.
What about thinking of the Etsy model of online business? This works like a downtown arcade hosting hundreds of little seperate shops. There everyone can open his own shop under his own branding. Presentation and pricing is entirely in one’s own hand. The platform’s owner provides the infrastructure and just takes a little fee for putting an item in the shopwindow, but does not own anything. That ‘arcade’ may also be littered with cheep crap, but the point is, there is no contract between the shopkeeper and the platform holder, hence there is nothing the platformist could ever sell to a monopolist one day.
The idea of establishing (technical) standards is important, but I have a hard time imagening how good font design practices would be managed and uphold in a real scenario. It would require a standardisation authority body and those who form it are in a powerful position opposite to all the others.
What Etsy doesn't do very much in my experience is marketing. Or have I just not been targeted? For a storefront to compete with Monotype, I would think that some heavy investments in marketing are necessary. Individual foundries often lack the know-how and scale to make such investments worthwile, so I expect that marketing will have to come from Fontsy (see what I did there?). Thus, Fontsy would probably require a bigger cut than people have come to expect from Etsy to succeed.
The Fontdue people may be interested in development. I would just like to reiterate that I think the whole operation would do best if it was ran by people with experience in ecommerce and business, who themselves have no fonts to speak of in the game. Also, running the show does not necessarily mean owning the show.
How do you prevent Fontsy from becoming another Monotipsy?
- Despite the general impression, communication is at the top level giving a variety of viewpoints. We should be proud of the level of responsibility and expertise shown here.
- The fact that this kind of discussion is 20 years old is a sign that the problem won't go away and not a sign that nothing can't be done. If we do nothing it will be worse than it is now, not even the same.
- The idea of many different points of action is great. However, that doesn't exclude the idea of the umbrella organization. We should remember that we are a small community and that fragmentation enabled our current undesirable position. "NGOs" will push the Umbrella, and vice versa. Customers' habits showed that they need one place (that's why they stick with big distributors), but we want to be that place.
- My opinion is that the IATD won't be in a situation to request their members to give up partnerships with big tech and distributors. At least not until it has to offer something in return. We are trying to open more space for indie designers, not to limit us further. (BTW, I respect Nick's input, it strongly encouraged the thread).
- There are two main methods here: 1) Developing new tools and tech solutions and 2) Spreading the word about the new paradigm making it a new standard. Both methods are indispensable and only could work together.
- Prepare your emotions for the long run. This is still the incubator phase, we are not aiming for a perfect solution right now, just building the alternative. But people are starting to think and envision. Private messages are already being exchanged etc.
It is an interesting idea to support the new platform with the large cut at the start, getting a small part of ownership or some other benefit in return.
It raises many questions and would require some clear provisions about the future, ownership, decision-making, etc. to prevent abuse and fraud. Also, the numbers might be different (3 years is too long in my opinion, 1% is too much I guess), but I think that the general idea has potential, because type designers invest fonts, not money.
One more potential partner is Gumroad. They might be interesting as they have a pretty developed infrastructure for selling digital goods. It's not tailored for fonts specifically, but the development of the platform is very dynamic and I would say pretty transparent since Sahil (CEO) regularly schedules meetings where you can propose new features, etc. If IATD as an entity approach Gumorad, they might be interested in enabling font tester, licensing options, special terms...It might be a great opportunity for both parties.
https://treasure.lol/interoperability
And this is why Ethereum was created:
https://www.polygon.com/22709126/ethereum-creator-world-of-warcraft-nerf-nft-vitalik-buterin
It's also, as I understand it, the basic idea behind web3, where you login to any web3 app using a wallet and all the on-chain assets from web3 apps you've used previously that are associated with your wallet are available to the new app.
And for the record, Ramiro, I am not at all interested in preventing the formation of any associations discussed here; just the opposite.
In fact I'll be so happy to see one or more emerge, and I've put my money where my mouth is in supporting the development of https://type.world - as I've said above, I believe it is a necessary technological basis of such associations, which they can mutually benefit from sharing.
While Nick frames GF as a monopoly, I can't grasp it: the whole point of libre licensing is to avoid monopolies on development. Libre licensing, libre society, libre marketplaces
Most of them are Monotype folks watching you plan. ;-)
I have Clements Numbers there, a tiny little "numbers-only" font, having 355 sales so far.
In the old days, priced as $12, I used to get $6 out of each sale.
Now I've only get $2.40 which is ridiculous. ($3.60 taxes, $6 for CM)
I'm about to remove it from there and sell it on my own website.
In the meantime I have increased the price to $20, about a week ago.
----------------------------------------
On the other side:
- The interface for managing the shop and uploading the fonts/products is nice.
- The fact that buyers can leave ratings and comments is also nice.
- Users can "follow" you, and get notified of new released, also a nice feature.
But Pablo's numbers are right. Also, it can happen that a font gets 12 views in total in 4 months. They heavily rely on an algorithm, which more or less serves as an amplifier of the external traffic.
The marketing manager I used to contact earlier about different collaborations is not answering emails anymore. Seems they are less toward designers and more toward profit since Dribble, and Fontspring came into play.
Simon Cozens said: It's good if they follow the thread, would be even better if they participate. This is not a war, just a free market
That is the effect that the corporate concentration of Big Tech has on the marketplace.
It has shut out the community at large of type designers from earning money from font licence sales to the vast majority of 800 million web sites that use WordPress. By paying a few a small fee.
And who decides what those GF fonts will be, designed by whom?
Isn’t it you?
That’s the exclusive control that “monopoly” means (although I use the term incorrectly, rather than oligopoly, which is a bit of a mouthful).
The phenomenon is explained in Chokepoint Capitalism.
(Edit: sorry, I don't know why my paragraph spacing is suddenly larger than everyone else's)