6 ms·

Purchasing a font license for a personal website is an insane and sadistic extravagance, like pissing away $200 on a t-shirt.

ale42 4y ago
Depends if the font is $1200 or $20...
Plasmoid 4y ago
Buying a font ought to be on par with buying stock art. No necessary but if it makes you feel good, go for it.
- browningstreet 4y ago
  Not a defense, but few outside fonts understand how hard fonts are to make, and to maintain, and to expand against feature-sets. It's more an artisanal world than a professional one, hence the craziness of some of the licensing schemes. Fonts are made and sold more like how the music world would be if music wasn't mainstream.
  - manuelmoreale 4y ago
    I was trained as a graphic designer. I have people in my circle who made fonts. I know how hard and time consuming it can be. And I wouldn't mind paying a fair price for them. It's the license the problem imo, not the price itself.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    As an outsider, can you give an estimate on what it would cost to have a font designed from the ground up, and get full rights to all the files? Are we talking $25k, $250k, $2.5m?
    - browningstreet 4y ago
      There are so many technical details involved in specifying what a font might be that it's impossible. As an example: Western/Latin, or international? How many weights, sizes, styles, and variations? A western international font requires thousands of characters/ligatures/etc. A WordPress site can be $500, $5K or $50K, depending on features, custom development, etc. Or more complicatedly, how much should a mobile app cost, and how much more should an iOS & Android mobile app cost, and how much more for a web version of some of the features..? Here's one of the problems: in the days before webfonts, fonts were sold to designers who put those fonts in their toolbox. They stayed in that toolbox and the font files themselves weren't distributed around with every client or every delivery of collateral. Output was rendered, that render didn't include the font. The font face tag existed for years before font designers and font companies were willing to change their POV on delivering full webfont files to every browser and every browser cache that received the webfont. This was very different than before. A font sold to a designer was used by one person, a webfont installed on a website had a theoretically unlimited file distribution -- it's basically a default napster for fonts. (Or more controversially, commercial apps without an app store). WOFF is just the exploitation of a bug to limit webfonts from desktop usage. It's a bit flip, and was easily altered. Iterations since have basically DRM firewalled desktop fonts from webfonts, but it's not very sophisticated. I can tell you that Fortune 50 companies can pay low millions to license a commercial font for time, across all platforms. It can take months to years to draw a font in all the characters/ligatures needed. Figure that's one designer (or an experienced designer, and a junior designer, working in tandem), working full-time, for 1-2 years, plus overhead, plus negotiations, plus specifications. How much do you think that's worth, or can be worth?
    - garrickvanburen 4y ago
      A decade ago, it was $25k for 1 weight.
barrysteve 4y ago
Yeah, if it doesn't fit in a high quality website. If you need your personal site to have the same quality as Apple's home page, then it's like spending $200 on a suit jacket.
manuelmoreale 4y ago
Well, it depends. I bought font for personal projects that were a one time 20$ purchase which I don't mind especially if i'm supporting young designers. The reason why I have to deal with web fonts it's because graphic designers usually design websites using typefaces without even bothering checking the webfont license first and then is up to me to explain the extra costs to clients.

ale42 4y ago

Depends if the font is $1200 or $20...

Plasmoid 4y ago

Buying a font ought to be on par with buying stock art. No necessary but if it makes you feel good, go for it.

browningstreet 4y ago
Not a defense, but few outside fonts understand how hard fonts are to make, and to maintain, and to expand against feature-sets. It's more an artisanal world than a professional one, hence the craziness of some of the licensing schemes. Fonts are made and sold more like how the music world would be if music wasn't mainstream.
- manuelmoreale 4y ago
  I was trained as a graphic designer. I have people in my circle who made fonts. I know how hard and time consuming it can be. And I wouldn't mind paying a fair price for them. It's the license the problem imo, not the price itself.
- bombcar 4y ago
  As an outsider, can you give an estimate on what it would cost to have a font designed from the ground up, and get full rights to all the files? Are we talking $25k, $250k, $2.5m?
  - browningstreet 4y ago
    There are so many technical details involved in specifying what a font might be that it's impossible. As an example: Western/Latin, or international? How many weights, sizes, styles, and variations? A western international font requires thousands of characters/ligatures/etc. A WordPress site can be $500, $5K or $50K, depending on features, custom development, etc. Or more complicatedly, how much should a mobile app cost, and how much more should an iOS & Android mobile app cost, and how much more for a web version of some of the features..? Here's one of the problems: in the days before webfonts, fonts were sold to designers who put those fonts in their toolbox. They stayed in that toolbox and the font files themselves weren't distributed around with every client or every delivery of collateral. Output was rendered, that render didn't include the font. The font face tag existed for years before font designers and font companies were willing to change their POV on delivering full webfont files to every browser and every browser cache that received the webfont. This was very different than before. A font sold to a designer was used by one person, a webfont installed on a website had a theoretically unlimited file distribution -- it's basically a default napster for fonts. (Or more controversially, commercial apps without an app store). WOFF is just the exploitation of a bug to limit webfonts from desktop usage. It's a bit flip, and was easily altered. Iterations since have basically DRM firewalled desktop fonts from webfonts, but it's not very sophisticated. I can tell you that Fortune 50 companies can pay low millions to license a commercial font for time, across all platforms. It can take months to years to draw a font in all the characters/ligatures needed. Figure that's one designer (or an experienced designer, and a junior designer, working in tandem), working full-time, for 1-2 years, plus overhead, plus negotiations, plus specifications. How much do you think that's worth, or can be worth?
  - garrickvanburen 4y ago
    A decade ago, it was $25k for 1 weight.

barrysteve 4y ago

Yeah, if it doesn't fit in a high quality website. If you need your personal site to have the same quality as Apple's home page, then it's like spending $200 on a suit jacket.

manuelmoreale 4y ago

Well, it depends. I bought font for personal projects that were a one time 20$ purchase which I don't mind especially if i'm supporting young designers. The reason why I have to deal with web fonts it's because graphic designers usually design websites using typefaces without even bothering checking the webfont license first and then is up to me to explain the extra costs to clients.