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How Font Awesome 5 Became Kickstarter’s Most Funded Software Project
- fortawesome 10y agoHey folks! I'd love to answer any questions folks might have about running the Kickstarter or Font Awesome in general! -Dave Gandy
- niftylettuce 10y agoDid you see https://github.com/crocodilejs/font-awesome-assets https://github.com/crocodilejs/font-awesome-assets? Not sure if we are OK to have the icons there - the licensing is confusing - we're not really distributing them.
- fortawesome 10y agoThose icons are Font Awesome 4.7, which is completely open source so you can do almost whatever you want with them. Font Awesome 5 will have a Free and Pro version. The Free version will be completely open source and you can use it however you like. The Pro version will have 2500-ish more icons and an SVG framework. Pro is the only one to worry about for distribution. :)
- niftylettuce 10y agoCan you email me? niftylettuce@gmail.com <3333 keep up the kick ass work. I'm launching a crowdfunding campaign of my own thanks to your inspiration.
- fortawesome 10y agoDone!
- pc86 10y agoIs it accurate that if you're using Font Awesome 5 Pro in an open source project you can't include the icons in the repository?
- fortawesome 10y agoCorrect. It's not okay to distribute commercial software to folks who have not paid. But Font Awesome Free is completely okay to include in the repo, as it is open source software. That said, we're letting open source projects use Font Awesome Pro CDN for free so this is hopefully mitigated. We want folks to use Font Awesome Pro, just don't want it distributed. :)
- pc86 10y agoThat definitely makes sense :) And the CDN at least helps mitigate any deployment issues with not being able to keep the images in the repo.
- Zarel 10y agoThis is great news; when I emailed you guys, you said "For open source projects, we’re working something out" but I didn't know what. I backed Font Awesome Pro but I was afraid I'd only ever be able to use the Free version since all my projects are open-source. My only concern left is for offline apps (like NW.js apps). I can make do with Font Awesome Free's icon set, but it'd be nice to have those SVG icons...
- BuuQu9hu 10y agoIsn't the whole point of a CDN to distribute things?
- pc86 10y agoDistribution is the means; the end is to load assets faster.
- rawnlq 10y agoHow much did making the video cost? When I first saw it I thought that commercial itself must've cost around the ballpark of the amount you were trying to raise (30k) and can't possibly be worth it. But turns out it was a brilliant move!
- reneherse 10y agoI'm curious about this too. Also, how many nights of shooting in the bakery were required?
- fortawesome 10y agoJust one night at the bakery from 6am to 6pm. There were a couple of shots they needed to get later, but it wasn't much at all. I think the intro and final scenes in the office were shot a couple of days later.
- wolfhumble 10y agoIt says it in the article: So we did some research into how much a great Kickstarter video should cost (i.e. Googled “how much does a kickstarter video cost”). To work with a fantastic production company and get the quality we wanted was going to run somewhere around $15k. This sounded like a lot to spend on a video, but we were pretty sure we’d be able to make back our investment. It also talks about the company that produced it.
- fortawesome 10y agoSo first, we got an absolute steal for what we paid for Knox Avenue (http://www.knox-avenue.com http://www.knox-avenue.com). For something similar from Sandwich Video, prices _start_ at $250k. We paid 1/10 that. But again, we got an absolute steal. Knox isn't as famous as they deserve yet. They're ridiculously talented. Edit: fixed URL
- gcd 10y ago*(http://www.knox-avenue.com/ http://www.knox-avenue.com/) << working link
- kybishop 10y agoHey David, Would you consider open-sourcing the JavaScript component apps if the $1 mil stretch goal isn't reached? Even as a pro backer, I want as many eyes (and contributions!) on said components as possible.
- fortawesome 10y agoThat's a good thought. I'll check with the team and see if we want to add that to the $900k goal.
- ars 10y agoHow are you going to spend $1 million without killing the company/project? People who previously have made icons for free will now want some of the money, and you only have enough for about 10 people for a year. I've seen too many companies get money and suddenly, instead of being extremely frugal like they used to, because they had to be, start spending money because they can afford it. And then the company dies. This happens to lottery winners too. Do you have plan to avoid it? You should plan to make the $1 million last at least 10 years without earning any additional money except interest.
- fortawesome 10y agoSimplest answer is we're going to use the money to build a product that people want. Now that we have more capital and really awesome committed users, we know more about what to make. We're 4 senior designers and developers that have been around. We can design beautiful, usable software and deliver it ontime. Honestly, I wake up every morning excited to go to work with such excellent and admirable folks. I could not imagine a better job. Honestly. As far as the icons, no one else contributed. Just me. We tried external submissions before, but they were more work to manage than making them myself. And I think we've kept a somewhat consistent aesthetic. Starting over lets us tighten all of that up, too.
- ars 10y agoPlease be extremely frugal with your money. I would be very sad to come back in a couple of years to hear that you shut down. I've seen it too many times. > Simplest answer is we're going to use the money to build a product that people want. Obviously. But will spend money on extras? A nice sign for the office? A better office? Nice chairs? Phones for the conference room? These are the kind of not-very-expensive extras companies spend on when they get money. But it adds up, and without an ongoing revenue source it's not worth it. If you can budget no more than $100K per year, you'll keep your company alive for a long time.
- roel_v 10y agoSeems to me you're being very condescending, telling others how to run their businesses and lives. How many companies have you run?
- tf2manu994 10y agoWould the license not spell out trouble for anyone using the svgs on a GitHub pages site? I currently do this(tf2manu994/manmeetgill.com on github, gitlab and bitbucket), and I am a backer for pro. Does this mean I can not use the pro icons on my site without forcing a user to download the entire iconfont? [Yes I know, the markup on my site is crap, currently in the process of reworking without mdl]
- fortawesome 10y agoNope. Folks will be able to use just certain icon packs on their site. For more granular control, the $350k goal was a desktop icon subsetter.
- tf2manu994 10y agoWould embedding the output of the desktop app in a GitHub pages repo be allowed
- fortawesome 10y agoI think we'd be fine with that. Seems removed enough and isn't the whole set. It's a good area for us to think about and be more specific about. I'll talk to the team and see what we can do.
- tf2manu994 10y agoAwesome, thanks.
- the_duke 10y agoIt seems like you will get really close to the 1 million goal. Please consider open sourcing the SVG framework, even if you don't fully make the million. SVG icons clearly are the future, imo. See this article for a comparison: https://css-tricks.com/icon-fonts-vs-svg/ https://css-tricks.com/icon-fonts-vs-svg/
- baldfat 10y ago> Those icons are Font Awesome 4.7, which is completely open source so you can do almost whatever you want with them. Pro vs Free still bothers me. Couldn't one of the stretch goals been to make all fonts free and open?
- fortawesome 10y agoActually, we think the best way for us to keep making Font Awesome Free as good as it can be is to figure out how to be sustainable so we can put more time into Font Awesome. And the already-funded 38 stretch goal icon packs give 10 each back into Font Awesome Free. So that's another 380. That means FA Free will be over 1,000 icons in version 5 (up from 675). Also, the $1M stretch goal makes the SVG framework and all the code open source.
- OJFord 10y agoI wasn't aware of it before your comment, and now I'm confused, just sounds like buying 'Pro' would damage workflow. Say I have a project on Github, and I want to add some of the new icons I buy - I have to leave the icons out of the repo, and deal with whatever that means for deployment?
- fortawesome 10y agoIf you're talking a private repo, that's no problem at all. As for a public repo, the same applies as to commercial typography. Don't make it available for download. This is part of why we're doing Font Awesome Pro CDN. Choose your options and icon packs and we'll serve them up for you. And we're making this free for open source projects. It also means you can upgrade to a new version without pushing code if you like.
- tf2manu994 10y agoWouldn't the end-user be able to download it from the cdn anyway? Would an alternative not be to allow them in an open source repo provided that the owner adds a readme to the folder in which the font resides, telling the end-user to refrain from downloading? Edit: what about an open source non-electron web application? How would they use the font?
- AndrewOMartin 10y agoEither I'm missing something (not uncommon) or, whoever claims this is the most funded software project seems to believe video games aren't software. Star Citizen ($2,134,374) and Double Fine Adventure ($3,336,371) leap to mind. I'm actually very slightly surprised to hear that there's no non-game software kickstarter that's raised more than $891,989.
- fortawesome 10y agoFair enough! We're going by Kickstarter's definitions: - Most funded: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/software?recommended=false&sort=most_funded https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s... - Most backed: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/software?recommended=false&sort=most_backed https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology/s... I'll link those up in the article. Good point.
- AndrewOMartin 10y agoSo that's what I was, indeed, missing. Good stuff, and good luck.
- imaginenore 10y agoThat's just in Tech -> Software category, not all of Kickstarter. The most funded projects can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?recommended=false&sort=most_funded https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?recommended=fa... Pebble Time = $20.3M Coolest Cooler = $13.3M Pebble 2 = $12.8M Pebble e-paper = $10.3M Baubax Travel Jacket = $9.2M And if you look at the software -------------- Shenmue 3 = $6.3M Bloodstained = $5.5M Torment = $4.2M Project Eternity = $4.0M Mighty No. 9 = $3.8M Double Fine Adventure = $3.3M
- Zarel 10y agoI think you missed the part where they said "most funded software project", not "most funded project", and that they're using Kickstarter's category's definition of "software".
- aikah 10y agoFont Awesome was already well known to developers and designers before Kickstarting, so it's no surprise its campaign is a success. If Bootstrap made a crowd funding campaign for instance, it would be as the same level if not more as Font Awesome. Obviously one wants to launch a campaign when a project has some big momentum, not when it's declining.
- michaelbuckbee 10y agoAlready well known and they're able to push people to the Kickstarter from their site: http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/ http://fontawesome.io/cheatsheet/
- fortawesome 10y agoThat's another one of the big things. We didn't talk about this one specifically, as it's not as common for folks to have. 1.5M uniques a month has come in handy, that's for sure.
- joshvm 10y agoI'm curious where the costing came from (since $30k barely pays a good designer for a few months). The reason for asking is that I'm wondering why the original goal wasn't higher? Is it really that you didn't forsee that level of support? This is a common reaction from startups that are amazed that their $10k goal suddenly spiraled into millions. Often the reaction is to add lots of unrealistic stretch goals which delay the project. As for most backed, I think relaxing the early bird deals clinched it for a lot of people (including myself). I have a lot of respect for Kickstarters that offer a flat pricing for the base product.
- colechristensen 10y agoIt's a kickstarter goal, it doesn't have to be all of your funding and why not set the goal low? Think of it more like a minimum to make the effort worthwhile. If you can get $30k on kickstarter you can probably get a lot more from other channels. What value do you get from setting a high goal?
- fortawesome 10y agoYou're exactly right. Honestly, we were going to make FA5 anyway. Was time.
- joshvm 10y agoSeems like pretty sound logic. Though to answer the second question: there are plenty of cases (usually hardware) where people really underestimate how much things cost to make. I've lost count of the number of stories where startups said "We messed up our mold/printer/fab order which cost us $20k to redo, and then we had no money to make t-shirts".
- fortawesome 10y agoEstimation is key on a Kickstarter. We've got a team of 4 of the best designers and developers I've ever worked with who can deliver beautiful, usable products on time. It's the highest compliment I can pay them professionally.
- SippinLean 10y agoGlad to see SVG is an option. The icons are great but icon fonts are dead at my shop (mostly for the reasons Github abandoned them).
- fortawesome 10y agoGreat that you're excited about the SVGs! We wanted to add more formats so as many folks as possible could use them. For a lot of folks, icon fonts are the way to go. But other folks want SVG. We get that, so we're adding them!
- dwynings 10y agoHonestly I've gotten so much value from Font Awesome over the years that it was great to finally support the project – I have a feeling others felt the same way.
- fortawesome 10y agoReally appreciate the kind words!
- madamelic 10y agoYep. I was really excited to see I could still get into the early backer Pro reward. A little bit annoyed about the theme license price ($600!) but I guess I can buy that if it ever gets to that. I am sure a very small price to pay if you are making money off Font Awesome.
- Zaheer 10y agoSame. Backing the pro-version was a no-brainer given how much I've used the icons in the past. It's such a good product I want to give them money even if it was free.
- jen729w 10y agoI love this. This drives me to do my own thing - a small thing - but I know that if I build it for the right people, some of those people will feel compelled to give me money for it. Not all, I know, I know, but some. Some is enough. Some is marvellous. Some might be all I need to quit my regular day job, which is all I want.
- devoply 10y agoYup felt the same and can't wait to get a whole bunch of new icons to use in my project.
- klausjensen 10y agoExactly. For 20 bucks I get to support them for their awesome font work, plus get some extra perks (which I already forgot what were).
- tzury 10y agoHow can one wisely use $ 900K to maintain an open source icons rendering in a font format? This seems to me as a total waste of money. Too much money will ruin creativity processes, and so it did in most of the cases I have observed.
- intrasight 10y agoMy understanding is that best-practice now is to use SVG instead of icon fonts.
- cantabrigienne 10y agoVersion 5 is going to include a full SVG framework.
- Zarel 10y agoFor Pro only. I'm perfectly willing to pay for Pro, the problem is that my project is open-source so I can't use the paid version.
- fortawesome 10y agoYou can indeed! Font Awesome Pro CDN will be free for open source projects. :)
- NoInkling 10y agoThey reached the $1mil stretch goal, so the SVG stuff is coming for the free version as well now.
- Kiro 10y agoWhy is that?
- milesokeefe 10y agoA variety of reasons: https://css-tricks.com/icon-fonts-vs-svg/ https://css-tricks.com/icon-fonts-vs-svg/
- fortawesome 10y agoI've always thought this article was reasonable: https://benfrain.com/seriously-use-icon-fonts/ https://benfrain.com/seriously-use-icon-fonts/
- bambax 10y agoThis is interesting: > believe it or not, trolls are a sign you’re onto something. You’ve upgraded from indifference to dislike (or outright hate). Things that are new and useful create resistance, which is actually a sign there is something instead of nothing.
- edblarney 10y ago$15K to make a proper video for kickstarter? This is kind of defeating the purpose? I mean - there's prob. another $5K in expenses + all the work ... That's a lot of risk - which is what it takes to be competitive?
- eterm 10y agoIt part of the "lie" that kickstarter has become. The "goal" is raising $30k, yet they're willing to spend half that on a video. There's no incentive to have a high goal, in fact the lower the goal the better, you get to look better "We raised 50x our goal!" and it secures the kickstarter is a "success".
- swalsh 10y agoEh, I mean this is a similar idea to a non-profit using fund to advertise itself to gain a larger war chest. On the surface it sounds wrong, when you donate to a charity you want the money to contribute to the cause. However If you care about the cause, and greater funds can improve it better... then doesn't it actually make sense? In for-profit business, people don't blink an eye at spending money to grow it...
- edblarney 10y agoI don't have a problem with them spending it. I have a problem with the 'cost of entry' for a Kickstarter campaign.
- fortawesome 10y agoHonestly, you can get by with $2k if you're frugal and can write it yourself. There are always younger folks who are up and coming (like Knox Avenue but earlier) who will take a shot. But it's a good bit of work sorting through the noise. I think we had a leg up since we made a Kickstarter video ourselves a couple of years ago. We knew what we were looking for.
- yesyes1million 10y agoMy understanding is that no one really raises money on kickstarter. It's more of a marketing platform than a fundraising platform. Assumption is: "All of this money is a write-off but I'll get a ton of VERY committed users/customers who will become advocates for my product."
- philfrasty 10y agoThe video is kinda similiar to the Dollar-Shave-Club commercial ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI
- fortawesome 10y agoYep, we definitely took inspiration from there!
- lowglow 10y agoAt the bottom of the kickstarter they have a link to Jellop, they run ad campaigns to boost kickstarter projects. This might be the real story, but not sure since there are no metrics on how much they've helped. http://www.jellopcrowdfunding.com/ http://www.jellopcrowdfunding.com/
- fortawesome 10y agoWe tried doing some Facebook advertising ourselves, but it didn't go so well. Jellop has done better, but they're REALLY great for products that have mass appeal. With our narrower audience, the Font Awesome website has been the biggest driver.
- lowglow 10y agoSame. We just failed big time on running our own ads for pre-orders for our product[0] on Facebook. Our take away was just keep doing what works: Engage with our community and keep showing proof of progress and milestones met. So now that we have our first basic lesson down in connecting products to the right audience, what do you think really activated the majority of purchases? [0] https://getasteria.com/ https://getasteria.com/
- fortawesome 10y agoThree things come to mind right away that seems like contributed to folks pulling the trigger and buying: 1. Pent up good will from using Font Awesome over the past 4 years. 2. The product was something folks actually wanted and the price was a great value. 3. A video that makes folks laugh. Even if just a bit.
- ythn 10y agoFontAwesome is amazing, so useful
- EGreg 10y agoI bet they did something besides this. How did they get people to VISIT THEIR PAGE on kickstarter? Were they featured on KS front page? Featured elsewhere? How did the word of mouth spread? THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO KNOW
- bxbb 10y agoThey promote the campaign on their site ( http://fontawesome.io/ http://fontawesome.io/ ). A lot of people (including me) already visited the site occasionally to take a quick glance on the cheatsheet. I think that's probably where the most traffic originated from.
- EGreg 10y agoHow do you know? Why is their site so heavily trafficked?
- fortawesome 10y agoWe posted the info he's referencing elsewhere in the thread. We're used on roughly 1 in every 3 new websites that gets made.
- ggreenbe 10y agoSo you're like the Wordpress of icons.
- phaed 10y agoYou killed VideoPixie. Bad time to be down.
- fortawesome 10y agoThey're back! Was just a hiccup. :)
- tomsaffell 10y agoYeah, terrible timing. A CNAME record conflicted with our new SSL cert - renewing the cert forced us off VIP on to SNI (per GAE's deprecation schedule for VIP) and the CNAME we had in place for VIP then prevented DNS from resolving properly - at least that's what I think happened ! (videopixie engineer :)
- justanton 10y agoCan someone pls explain the difference between personal and student licenses? They're both $20.
- fortawesome 10y agoYeah, it shouldn't be confusing! We extended early backer pricing for the whole Kickstarter, so the Personal / SMB license would have been $40. Only difference is who can use the license. Student license is for students only. But I'm recommending students just get the full Personal / SMB license since it's more flexible in the end and a better price. (Non-profits should ABSOLUTELY get the Student / NP license as it's good for any organization size and just $20).
- cbhl 10y agoStudents eventually stop being students (i.e. graduate), so doesn't that conflict with the licenses being perpetual?
- fortawesome 10y agoThey can always gift it to another student. :)
- dangerboysteve 10y agoJust got a email from the A5 campaign asking for help to get over the $1M hump.
- bayesian_horse 10y agoSome people think making a font is boring and senseless, but I think it is character building...
- rasz_pl 10y agoThe best part about webfonts is you can block them, glad they decided to do SVG. >900 requests blocked on https://articles.fortawesome.com/how-font-awe.... https://articles.fortawesome.com/how-font-awe..... and rising by 1 every second. Quite aggressive font fetching script doesnt seem to get the hint.
- yesyes1million 10y agoImpressive amount raised. But this is a terrible kickstarter campaigns + amateur video. Your blog post is also hard to read. I assume you have a great product with a strong community of users. But imagine how much you could have raised if your marketing didn't suck!
- FullyFunctional 10y agoWow, I would have backed this. There's much useful insight in the article I wish other KS would heed - especially regarding stretch goals; I've seen soo many KSs derail because they, in desperation, added stretch goals that they could execute. (But I'm done done done with KS; I've suffered too many burns and scams).