Create metric-equivalent font

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Comments

  • notdef
    notdef Posts: 168
    edited July 2018
    I, and I suspect many with me, consider horisontal metrics intellectual property. The recent X Grotesk with matching metrics to a certain German type designer’s high profile sans serif definitely affected my opinion of the publisher/designer in question.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,496
    edited July 2018
    My personal opinion: The whole concept of intellectual property is inherently misleading. Copyright, patent, trademark and other monopoly rights have different reasons to exist, histories, lengths, global uniformity/variation, etc etc, and have very little in common. It is impossible to reason about "ip" because it isn't a single thing, the concept attempts to link together such disparate things but because they are so different, nothing makes sense. For example:

    "a certain German type designer’s high profile sans serif"

    I think you mean a certain American software corporation's sans serif, that was made as work for hire by a certain Dutch designer living in Germany. 

    Which is to say, I think the concept of ownership is not as simple as some people like to make out, especially for intangibles.

    "The dead guys stole all our best ideas"
  • notdef
    notdef Posts: 168
    I think you mean a certain American software corporation's sans serif, that was made as work for hire by a certain Dutch designer living in Germany. 

    No. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more cases like this.

    "The dead guys stole all our best ideas"

    Bury me!
  • notdef
    notdef Posts: 168
    edited July 2018
    No need for splitting hairs about terminology. It is not hard to grasp the basic shittiness of pretending someone else’s work is yours. 
  • notdef
    notdef Posts: 168
    edited July 2018
    … and reusing someone else’s work without permission.
  • Miles Newlyn
    Miles Newlyn Posts: 265
    @Dave Crossland 
    Do you know how Google and Łukasz Dziedzic navigated IP laws when creating Carlito, a design that is metric compatible with Calibri? 
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,496
    edited August 17
    Miles, perhaps you could ask your friends who were at Ascender, since they created sans/serif/mono metrics-compatible fonts just discussed on TD this month (https://typedrawers.com/discussion/5421/times-new-roman-in-google-docs-android-app#latest) and probably can tell you more than I can ;)

    John, surely you know that not everyone agrees to work on libre fonts! :) 
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 340
    I'm drawing a blank trying to imagine a single piece of design I've seen with a metrically compatible font. I don't think large fortunes are being stolen from designers in  this very particular way. Other ways, yes. 

    I generally prefer original Palatino, but when I need it with MS-DOS line and box drawing characters, I reach for Book Antiqua.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,056
    As a complete visual knock-off rather than only metrics-compatible, Book Antiqua is a different case. (Also, unlike any of Microsoft’s other PostScript-base-35 “compatible” fonts they got from Monotype. All other cases either were metrics-compatible and NOT lookalikes—or in the case of Times, Monotype had their own totally legit original version.)

    Of course, Microsoft later licensed Palatino from Linotype to make up for it. And eventually Monotype ended up owning both ITC and Linotype, so they owned all the originals for all the fonts in question, anyway. 😂
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,474
    I'm drawing a blank trying to imagine a single piece of design I've seen with a metrically compatible font. I don't think large fortunes are being stolen from designers in  this very particular way.
    Use in design is hardly the only or, these days, even the primary value proposition for a font. Companies create metrics compatible fonts because they’re valuable to those companies. Metrics compatible fonts are derive value from the investment in creating the original—otherwise, no one would bother making them—, so shouldn’t the people who made that investment receive a share of that derived value?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,056
    edited August 19
    FWIW, I have often seen design with metrically compatible fonts. Century Gothic I see semi-regularly. Whether or not that played any part in the choice of that font by the end user is another question, of course.

    One of my forensic cases involved a backdated rabbinical school certificate, that was supposedly from 1968 (IIRC) but had Monotype Corsiva (1992, metrics-compatible with ITC Zapf Chancery Medium Italic from 1979).
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,496
    DC: I think you mean a certain American software corporation's sans serif, that was made as work for hire by a certain Dutch designer living in Germany.
    ...

    JH: shouldn’t the people who made that investment receive a share of that derived value?
    As I said in 2018, the concept of ownership is not so simple.

    If the people who made the investment of effort to make something did so under work for hire terms, and the people who hired that work aren't in the business of making things (which is why they hired it out), and then someone else wants to make something compatible, then, well, what do you suggest, John?
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,474
    the concept of ownership is not so simple
    I think the concept of ownership is actually irrelevant, for the reasons you indicate: the rights to the font may be owned by someone who isn’t interested in either financially exploiting them via licensing nor vigorously defending those rights. I am talking about fostering mutual respect and mutual prosperity, which I think means actively seeking ways to share the value derived from the things people have made with the people who made them.
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 340
    I'm not against the original designer making a claim against someone stealing his font’s metrics. I'm surprised this practice continues at all, but apparently some FOSS designer found value in aping Calibri some years ago. I just struggle to imagine the scale of revenue lost. Perhaps I have lost zeal with age.

    Yes, Book Antiqua goes far beyond just stealing metrics; I chose a bad example. Monotype Corsiva and Century Gothic would have been better examples.

    I  was about to request that now any type designer anywhere create a metrically compatible yet different looking derivative of one of his own fonts, but then I remembered Nick already did that with Panoptica.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,474
    edited 3:21AM
    I just struggle to imagine the scale of revenue lost.
    It isn’t always, or even often, a question of lost revenue. It’s about entity Z financially benefiting from value derived from something made by entity X (whether or not originally made for entity Y). Entity Z may be fine with that, or may not be, (as may entity Y), regardless of whether the situation also involves lost revenue or potential revenue.

    It’s depressing that people tend to see this as a question of whether or not it is okay to benefit from someone else’s work [without paying them anything]*, instead of an opportunity to help that person prosper and share in the value their work has generated.

    * Edit.
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 340
    I generally benefit from someone else's work every time I buy a thing, and I regard that as okay™, assuming I am paying the correct person at the time.
  • Peter Constable
    Peter Constable Posts: 262
    edited 4:04PM
    Aside: Which came first: Times, or Times New Roman? (The history here isn't clear to me.)
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,474
    In metal, Times New Roman (Monotype) preceded Times (Linotype). The Times newspaper, like most others, used Linotype machines, so the design was adapted for Linotype setting pretty immediately. That required some adjustments to the design. I’ve not looked closely at those adjustments, but presume they involved fitting to duplex widths, compensating for the inability to have overhanging kerns, etc.

    In digital, Times precedes Times New Roman, at least as they came to exist on mjaor platforms. Linotype licensed their version to IBM, Adobe and, crucially, Apple. The version of Times New Roman that Monotype made for Microsoft was adjusted to be compatible with Apple’s Times.

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