3 ms·

I mean, I'm not sure the world needs more font faces when the existing set of many many options seems to do a pretty good job for all purposes (who ever thinks,

I mean, I'm not sure the world needs more font faces when the existing set of many many options seems to do a pretty good job for all purposes (who ever thinks, "boy this job would be much easier with a font more appropriately suited to the task, but alas, no such font exists"?) However, I did really enjoy the introduction slides, some great design work there for sure.

tobr 6y ago
From what I’ve heard (sorry, no good references, so please correct me if this is wrong), it’s often cheaper for a big corporation to commission a custom typeface than to license an existing one. Plus it’s an opportunity for branding and some good PR.
SamWhited 6y ago
This comment didn't make sense to me, it seems like this is like saying there are enough paintings or sculptures in the world for people to see whatever kind of art they want and have whatever emotional reactions they're going to get from the existing art. This isn't like open source license proliferation or something, having more fonts is just more room for experimentation and creativity, more choice for designers, etc. you don't have to keep up with every single one, and it doesn't make things harder like eg. open source license proliferation where the more of them you have the more you need a lawyer to review every dependency. But maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's some harm here?
- pickledish 6y ago
  Ah, yeah I do see where you're coming from. I guess I just haven't been looking at font faces so much as "art" (mostly because it seems like there isn't a lot of room for variation or creativity; most of these "new" font faces look more or less the same to me, but that could also just be my untrained eye). You're totally right that there's no harm, and I also wasn't trying to belittle the effort of making new fonts! I was more wondering why a _company_ would want to expend the probably quite significant resources to create a whole new font (as opposed to a solo artist doing it for fun, which I'd understand) -- but the other response to my top-level comment gives some good reasoning to that question :)

tobr 6y ago

From what I’ve heard (sorry, no good references, so please correct me if this is wrong), it’s often cheaper for a big corporation to commission a custom typeface than to license an existing one. Plus it’s an opportunity for branding and some good PR.

SamWhited 6y ago

This comment didn't make sense to me, it seems like this is like saying there are enough paintings or sculptures in the world for people to see whatever kind of art they want and have whatever emotional reactions they're going to get from the existing art. This isn't like open source license proliferation or something, having more fonts is just more room for experimentation and creativity, more choice for designers, etc. you don't have to keep up with every single one, and it doesn't make things harder like eg. open source license proliferation where the more of them you have the more you need a lawyer to review every dependency. But maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's some harm here?

pickledish 6y ago
Ah, yeah I do see where you're coming from. I guess I just haven't been looking at font faces so much as "art" (mostly because it seems like there isn't a lot of room for variation or creativity; most of these "new" font faces look more or less the same to me, but that could also just be my untrained eye). You're totally right that there's no harm, and I also wasn't trying to belittle the effort of making new fonts! I was more wondering why a _company_ would want to expend the probably quite significant resources to create a whole new font (as opposed to a solo artist doing it for fun, which I'd understand) -- but the other response to my top-level comment gives some good reasoning to that question :)