I'm curious what the earliest instance of a type foundry paying a designer royalties instead of just paying a one-time fee for ownership of a design? The earliest date I know of was a seemingly strange and unique deal in 1928 for Ludlow Ultra Modern. Where any of the name-brand Barnhart faces done with a royalty deal? Or maybe some Goudy faces?
Also, when the did the practice of paying a one-time fee for ownership die out? Was the shift to digital type? Or maybe internet distribution? Is anyone still buying designs from third parties outright?
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RR then goes on to explain, “The company didn’t, as a matter of fact, pay me much for my design work, and Linotype, besides, paid no royalties at all. If you designed a typeface for American Type Founders, you got royalties on sales. (That’s where Goudy made his money, you know.) But since I would never get royalties from Linotype, Griffith devised this scheme for my benefit, in lieu of royalties. It was noble of him, wasn’t it?” [p. 117]
CHG had earlier arranged a similar “retainer” for Dwiggins, for much the same reason. (In this case, though, WAD actually did perform some consultation services over the years.)
You could follow up with Steve Matteson and see if he knows what Goudy’s business arrangement was with ATF or Lanston Monotype, see if that gets you an earlier date.
He offered $1000 per font (plus he wants to own ALL rights, plus he ask for fonts to be very similar to other well know and popular fonts) to a colleague of mine, who declined the offer.
But it seems that many people are accepting the deal. How else you can do 125 fonts in such a short period of time? That business model seems to be working for him....
Just compare Koziupa/Paul http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/sudtipos/habano-st/ and Måns Grebäck http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mawns/harbell/ and you will get the idea...
To be fair, he also does some new styles, and some are nice and fresh, like http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mawns/xtreem/ I would prefer to see more like this one and less like the other ones....
I have a question that Matthew Butterick might be able to answer: What is the history of the concept of "work for hire" prior to the Copyright Act of 1976?
And, on another matter: I agree with James about Hablano/Harbell. Similar, but by no means a rip-off.
I don't know what Google is paying people for fonts, but I have a feeling that Goudy, who was selling only artwork, was doing far better a hundred years ago than many font designers are today. The balance of supply and demand was certainly far more advantageous for old Fred than it is for most current type designers. During the years under discussion, there were over six hundred piano manufacturers in the U.S. and an astonishing 1800 car makers. It wasn't always the best that survived, though it may be some comfort to know that the one and only(!) surviving U.S. piano maker is Steinway, which was as highly regarded at the beginning of the 20th century as it is today.
I'm sure typemaking will follow a similar path. The Goudy brand still has value, whereas the fatcats of his era, who tried to squeeze him for a few dollars, are known only to a handful of type dweebs like us.
Goudy would have been fine with what Google is paying, based on those figures.
In 1905, top illustrator Charles Dana Gibson was making $75,000 a year. That was way more than sporstmen, and there were no movie stars (it was the year of the nickelodeon). Records had been a mass consumer product for a half dozen years, but even after the 1909 copyright act, performers in the US would not generally receive royalties on record sales until Bing Crosby spearheaded the practice 25 years later.
> In 1905, top illustrator Charles Dana Gibson was making $75,000 a year. ... there were no movie stars
I expect that his contemporaries - Peter Jackson? - today make similar dollar adjusted amounts.
> Goudy didn't have to do a lot of the finishing and production work on his early ATF fonts.
Neither do the GF designers; iKern, ttfautohint, etc
> Lettering Inc., was paying mostly anonymous lettering men around $1,500 per design in 1965. That's just over $11,000 in 2013 dollars.
Single style, 250 glyphs?
Presumably, that was for significantly fewer than 250 characters. But Stuart would have a better answer for exactly what the character sets were in those designs.