6 ms·

> The lack of competence from companies that acquire Japanese companies, and then fail to even price things in yen or offer support packages that cater to Japan

> The lack of competence from companies that acquire Japanese companies, and then fail to even price things in yen or offer support packages that cater to Japanese customers is really something. In general I don't think it's just that. Pretty much all font foundries have... insufferable business models. I once emailed one Japanese foundry asking to license one of their font to use on my website. I wanted a perpetual, one-time license to use on a single website, and I wanted to store and serve their font from my server. I was even prepared to pay low four figures for it. Nope. I was told I need to pay a subscription fee, and I need to use their crappy Javascript to serve it. Okay, if you don't want my money then I'm not going to insist.

rvnx 11mo ago
Soon they are going out of business anyway since they will be replaced by generative AI (which will look the same)
- jacobn 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - School-Cotton 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - adamsmark 11mo ago
      You can still make art for yourself. Admittedly Pre-AI, someone might have spammed their font business and received a similar frustrated response. Maybe it's more about the shilling?
      - rvnx 11mo ago
        There will always be a place for calligraphy, artisan, who place creativity, handcraft and art first. You can see it like pizzas: there will always be someone who actually makes these pizzas from scratch; grows his own tomatoes in his garden, does his own flour, does his own cheese, raises pigs, etc. But these are exceptions, maybe 0.001% - it gets very very expensive, these people do it for passion and art, not for money or scale. You need to pre-order your pizza weeks before, you will pay a lot and you are not sure what will be the final taste (hopefully tasty), and you buy a story and supports someone. On the other end, you have companies like Gustavo Gusto who produce 100'000 pizzas a day. Quality ingredients, great execution, convenient, immediate, available and cheaper than hiring someone. The irony is that the expensive and slow small artisan may actually make a worse product, than something which has been battle-tested on millions of people and whose supply chain has been controlled end-to-end. After all of that, the industrial fonts like Roboto are not that bad, and if the industrial people offer you to customize it in a couple of prompts, then this is the cherry on top.
      - omnimus 11mo ago
        It's not about the shilling. It's about death of quality. As society we are self-destructing our culture using trash AI copies. It doesn't matter if it's fonts, code, movies or illustrations. Look at that service - the fonts are shit to meh but they are free. Corpo managers will of course want to squeeze every drop so they will push for free - especially as the AI gets close. So instead of allowing someone obsessive to produce highest quality output they can… we stop this by using stolen copy. In this can only lead to wiping any concepts of quality in our society while also robbing the people producing the quality work.
        _factor 11mo ago
        I for one, love it. I want every single mega corporation using crappy AI to the point where we can identify and not buy their products. Leave the little guys alone, they don't print money yet; so have not much choice.
    - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
      You know, I'd have to say that responding to a comment that says "Japanese font foundries are about to be replaced with generative AI" with a plug for your generative-AI fonts is about as on topic as you can be. I challenge you to describe a reason why that's a bad response.
    - irusensei 11mo ago
      Please don't be irrational. We all can make fun at clueless suits desperately throwing money at the AI buzzword furnace while still recognizing there are practical applications for it.
  - wolfi1 11mo ago
    and after beta?
  - xigoi 11mo ago
    The fonts seem to have little Unicode coverage (no Greek letters for example), which is one thing that I wouldn’t expect an AI to have a problem with.
    - RobotToaster 11mo ago
      Given that Chinese/Japanese characters are made from a limited number of strokes, generating them seems like an ideal application for AI.
  - tecleandor 11mo ago
    No thanks. Not only for the AI, but I've tried to write a little japanese and all the fonts appear blank.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

rvnx 11mo ago

Soon they are going out of business anyway since they will be replaced by generative AI (which will look the same)

jacobn 11mo ago
[flagged]
- School-Cotton 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - adamsmark 11mo ago
    You can still make art for yourself. Admittedly Pre-AI, someone might have spammed their font business and received a similar frustrated response. Maybe it's more about the shilling?
    - rvnx 11mo ago
      There will always be a place for calligraphy, artisan, who place creativity, handcraft and art first. You can see it like pizzas: there will always be someone who actually makes these pizzas from scratch; grows his own tomatoes in his garden, does his own flour, does his own cheese, raises pigs, etc. But these are exceptions, maybe 0.001% - it gets very very expensive, these people do it for passion and art, not for money or scale. You need to pre-order your pizza weeks before, you will pay a lot and you are not sure what will be the final taste (hopefully tasty), and you buy a story and supports someone. On the other end, you have companies like Gustavo Gusto who produce 100'000 pizzas a day. Quality ingredients, great execution, convenient, immediate, available and cheaper than hiring someone. The irony is that the expensive and slow small artisan may actually make a worse product, than something which has been battle-tested on millions of people and whose supply chain has been controlled end-to-end. After all of that, the industrial fonts like Roboto are not that bad, and if the industrial people offer you to customize it in a couple of prompts, then this is the cherry on top.
    - omnimus 11mo ago
      It's not about the shilling. It's about death of quality. As society we are self-destructing our culture using trash AI copies. It doesn't matter if it's fonts, code, movies or illustrations. Look at that service - the fonts are shit to meh but they are free. Corpo managers will of course want to squeeze every drop so they will push for free - especially as the AI gets close. So instead of allowing someone obsessive to produce highest quality output they can… we stop this by using stolen copy. In this can only lead to wiping any concepts of quality in our society while also robbing the people producing the quality work.
      - _factor 11mo ago
        I for one, love it. I want every single mega corporation using crappy AI to the point where we can identify and not buy their products. Leave the little guys alone, they don't print money yet; so have not much choice.
  - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
    You know, I'd have to say that responding to a comment that says "Japanese font foundries are about to be replaced with generative AI" with a plug for your generative-AI fonts is about as on topic as you can be. I challenge you to describe a reason why that's a bad response.
  - irusensei 11mo ago
    Please don't be irrational. We all can make fun at clueless suits desperately throwing money at the AI buzzword furnace while still recognizing there are practical applications for it.
- wolfi1 11mo ago
  and after beta?
- xigoi 11mo ago
  The fonts seem to have little Unicode coverage (no Greek letters for example), which is one thing that I wouldn’t expect an AI to have a problem with.
  - RobotToaster 11mo ago
    Given that Chinese/Japanese characters are made from a limited number of strokes, generating them seems like an ideal application for AI.
- tecleandor 11mo ago
  No thanks. Not only for the AI, but I've tried to write a little japanese and all the fonts appear blank.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]