5 ms·

This needs to sink into the collective brains of the world's brand designers, many of whom still standardize upon proprietary fonts. My company creates sites f

by _greim_ 13y ago

This needs to sink into the collective brains of the world's brand designers, many of whom still standardize upon proprietary fonts. My company creates sites for a variety of brands, and we run into the same problem over and over again. No, we can't hotlink your copy of Frutiger. No, we can't host our own copy. No, we won't accept an email stating "we give you permission to use this font" in lieu of a license from the actual foundry. No, we're not going to embed typography in images or flash. People are often clueless about the technical and legal difficulties of proprietary fonts on the web.

Silhouette 13y ago
People are often clueless about the technical and legal difficulties of proprietary fonts on the web. A cynic might suggest that this is because of greedy foundries insisting on a rental model for web fonts, sometimes one so complicated that you need lawyers to figure out what you're actually paying for if you sign up. If they'd tried that with print fonts, most of those foundries would never have made it this far. What really surprises me is how readily the web design industry caved and paid up, particularly given the relatively poor quality of most early web fonts even from the commercial services, and how many of them remain poor even today. I'm hoping that sooner rather than later, the prevalence of good quality and fully specified free-to-use font families will force a change in the industry. Personally, I'd be happy to pay a reasonable amount for some good professional fonts. In fact, I have, from my own pocket and not any business's, on several occasions. However, I have no interest in locking myself, my businesses or my clients into ongoing payments for fonts when essentially no other stock resources work that way, and even less interest in hiring a lawyer to figure out whether someone's web font licence covers a particular not-entirely-standard use case.
- jxf 13y ago
  Is that really so "greedy", as you put it? Isn't it basically SaaS but with fonts? We don't seem to have a problem renting our software services on a subscription basis (Github, NewRelic, etc.).
  - dictum 13y ago
    I wouldn't call it "greedy", but when webfonts were starting to gain traction (2011-2012), foundries didn't sell licenses for web use, so their fonts were only available on services like Typekit or FontDeck. I don't if that's the case anymore. Then again, Adobe has moved to SaaS only (or are they selling licenses for non-CC apps?), so designers don't have much of a choice anymore.
    - Silhouette 13y ago
      Then again, Adobe has moved to SaaS only (or are they selling licenses for non-CC apps?), so designers don't have much of a choice anymore. Sure we do. You can still buy versions up to CS6 as a one-time purchase. Rather like Microsoft, Adobe's biggest competition has become the old versions of their own software that aren't crippled with ongoing payments and the risk of involuntary future changes to how they work or what they cost. Presumably they've done the math and reckon they're going to make more money between the people who signed up for Creative Cloud and the people they can now lure in who can afford a relatively low monthly fee but couldn't front the whole cost of CS in a single payment before than they're going to lose from people who won't give them any more money now but might have paid for upgrades under the old scheme. Given how little value they seem to have added either in the later CS series upgrades or since the move to CC, I suspect they're right.
  - loumf 13y ago
    We are willing to pay for SaaS monthly because the nature of the service is that they have to keep providing it for us to get value. Is that true for fonts? If the foundry stopped working, would I not be able to derive value from the font. Of course, I support the foundries making up any business model they want. But the argument is not the same as SaaS.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      > would I not be able to derive the exact same value from the font. Fixing this for accuracy. I agree.
  - 13y ago
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  "What really surprises me is how readily the web design industry caved and paid up" I don't think there were enough good alternatives at the time. Perhaps secondarily though, the people making these decisions just look at it as another line item on their invoice - it's not coming out of their pocket. From a small business perspective, if someone tells me my website is going to cost more (maybe in perpetuity?) to use fancy fonts XYZ that creative agency ABC's designer 'just loves', I'd tell them to get stuffed and find something that's free or cheaper. But agencies that make these decisions are typically dealing with larger clients, and the people making those decisions are working from a budget, not their own pocket.
mortenjorck 13y ago
Well, that's a bit like saying "the world's software developers, many of whom still use proprietary frameworks." Branding agencies use proprietary type families when they're the most appropriate for the job, just like developers use commercial software when it fits a need that the open source community hasn't filled to their liking. Open-source typography is flourishing, but that doesn't mean commercial typography is dead.
- _greim_ 13y ago
  > Open-source typography is flourishing, but that doesn't mean commercial typography is dead. Agreed, I just think the pendulum hasn't swung far enough on the open direction, because of the relative newness of the tech. In other words, it seems that branding agencies sometimes use proprietary type families out of habit and ignorance, not because they've evaluated the tradeoffs and made a careful choice.
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    In other words, it seems that branding agencies sometimes use proprietary type families out of habit and ignorance, not because they've evaluated the tradeoffs and made a careful choice. I think their choice is more rational than you give credit for. While there are now quite a few good freely available fonts for use on your blog or small business site, there are still few, if any, open font families that offer the same breadth as good commercial offerings. If you're a large organisation, bringing in an agency to create overall branding guidelines that will apply to everything you produce from slideshows to printed brochures via web apps and business cards, it would be foolish of that agency to suggest typography that didn't offer enough range to be future-proof.
    - _greim_ 13y ago
      Perhaps. I can certainly appreciate that a brand designer may be worrying about a wide range of print and advertising media, and in that grand scheme of concerns the web isn't all that important.
    - 13y ago
Haywain 13y ago
Honestly, it isn't that difficult any more to find nearly any foundry that hasn't already recognized the webfont movement and have web licenses available. Also, the myriad webfont services already out there have growing libraries that usually cover either the font in question or something similarly useful. I can't tell if your example is from personal experience or manufactured, but even Frutiger is readily licensable for web use through MyFonts.com. So, let's not forget that! I concede, though, the trouble here is the webfont-subscription model, though relatively affordable, isn't exactly ideal due it it's reliance on a service rather than self-hosting (though some services and foundries offer this kind of license as well).
izacus 13y ago
Yeah, this hits us Android devs pretty much daily when iOS designers send designs heavily using Helvetica / Helvetica Neue. Not to mention the (way to common) surprise when you tell them that using that font will cost several thousand $ per year in licensing in the app.
- jfim 13y ago
  Does Helvetica come as part of iOS?
  - soulhacker 13y ago
    Helvetica Neue as well…
triangleman 13y ago
Haywain, you have been hellbanned and nobody can see your post unless they are logged in and have "showdead" turned on.
dangayle 13y ago
What you're suggesting is that designers limit themselves to the what? < 100? professionally designed type families that are freely available? Like it or not, most of the open source fonts in the world are amateurish at best, hideous at worst.
Nilzor 13y ago
No, we're not going to embed typography in images What are you saying here - that it's illegal to publish a .PNG with text generated from a commercial font you've purchaes?
- _greim_ 13y ago
  Not legal reasons. We don't want to do it for technical reasons.

by _greim_ 13y ago

Silhouette 13y ago

People are often clueless about the technical and legal difficulties of proprietary fonts on the web. A cynic might suggest that this is because of greedy foundries insisting on a rental model for web fonts, sometimes one so complicated that you need lawyers to figure out what you're actually paying for if you sign up. If they'd tried that with print fonts, most of those foundries would never have made it this far. What really surprises me is how readily the web design industry caved and paid up, particularly given the relatively poor quality of most early web fonts even from the commercial services, and how many of them remain poor even today. I'm hoping that sooner rather than later, the prevalence of good quality and fully specified free-to-use font families will force a change in the industry. Personally, I'd be happy to pay a reasonable amount for some good professional fonts. In fact, I have, from my own pocket and not any business's, on several occasions. However, I have no interest in locking myself, my businesses or my clients into ongoing payments for fonts when essentially no other stock resources work that way, and even less interest in hiring a lawyer to figure out whether someone's web font licence covers a particular not-entirely-standard use case.

jxf 13y ago
Is that really so "greedy", as you put it? Isn't it basically SaaS but with fonts? We don't seem to have a problem renting our software services on a subscription basis (Github, NewRelic, etc.).
- dictum 13y ago
  I wouldn't call it "greedy", but when webfonts were starting to gain traction (2011-2012), foundries didn't sell licenses for web use, so their fonts were only available on services like Typekit or FontDeck. I don't if that's the case anymore. Then again, Adobe has moved to SaaS only (or are they selling licenses for non-CC apps?), so designers don't have much of a choice anymore.
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    Then again, Adobe has moved to SaaS only (or are they selling licenses for non-CC apps?), so designers don't have much of a choice anymore. Sure we do. You can still buy versions up to CS6 as a one-time purchase. Rather like Microsoft, Adobe's biggest competition has become the old versions of their own software that aren't crippled with ongoing payments and the risk of involuntary future changes to how they work or what they cost. Presumably they've done the math and reckon they're going to make more money between the people who signed up for Creative Cloud and the people they can now lure in who can afford a relatively low monthly fee but couldn't front the whole cost of CS in a single payment before than they're going to lose from people who won't give them any more money now but might have paid for upgrades under the old scheme. Given how little value they seem to have added either in the later CS series upgrades or since the move to CC, I suspect they're right.
- loumf 13y ago
  We are willing to pay for SaaS monthly because the nature of the service is that they have to keep providing it for us to get value. Is that true for fonts? If the foundry stopped working, would I not be able to derive value from the font. Of course, I support the foundries making up any business model they want. But the argument is not the same as SaaS.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > would I not be able to derive the exact same value from the font. Fixing this for accuracy. I agree.
- 13y ago
mgkimsal 13y ago
"What really surprises me is how readily the web design industry caved and paid up" I don't think there were enough good alternatives at the time. Perhaps secondarily though, the people making these decisions just look at it as another line item on their invoice - it's not coming out of their pocket. From a small business perspective, if someone tells me my website is going to cost more (maybe in perpetuity?) to use fancy fonts XYZ that creative agency ABC's designer 'just loves', I'd tell them to get stuffed and find something that's free or cheaper. But agencies that make these decisions are typically dealing with larger clients, and the people making those decisions are working from a budget, not their own pocket.

mortenjorck 13y ago

Well, that's a bit like saying "the world's software developers, many of whom still use proprietary frameworks." Branding agencies use proprietary type families when they're the most appropriate for the job, just like developers use commercial software when it fits a need that the open source community hasn't filled to their liking. Open-source typography is flourishing, but that doesn't mean commercial typography is dead.

_greim_ 13y ago
> Open-source typography is flourishing, but that doesn't mean commercial typography is dead. Agreed, I just think the pendulum hasn't swung far enough on the open direction, because of the relative newness of the tech. In other words, it seems that branding agencies sometimes use proprietary type families out of habit and ignorance, not because they've evaluated the tradeoffs and made a careful choice.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  In other words, it seems that branding agencies sometimes use proprietary type families out of habit and ignorance, not because they've evaluated the tradeoffs and made a careful choice. I think their choice is more rational than you give credit for. While there are now quite a few good freely available fonts for use on your blog or small business site, there are still few, if any, open font families that offer the same breadth as good commercial offerings. If you're a large organisation, bringing in an agency to create overall branding guidelines that will apply to everything you produce from slideshows to printed brochures via web apps and business cards, it would be foolish of that agency to suggest typography that didn't offer enough range to be future-proof.
  - _greim_ 13y ago
    Perhaps. I can certainly appreciate that a brand designer may be worrying about a wide range of print and advertising media, and in that grand scheme of concerns the web isn't all that important.
  - 13y ago

Haywain 13y ago

Honestly, it isn't that difficult any more to find nearly any foundry that hasn't already recognized the webfont movement and have web licenses available. Also, the myriad webfont services already out there have growing libraries that usually cover either the font in question or something similarly useful. I can't tell if your example is from personal experience or manufactured, but even Frutiger is readily licensable for web use through MyFonts.com. So, let's not forget that! I concede, though, the trouble here is the webfont-subscription model, though relatively affordable, isn't exactly ideal due it it's reliance on a service rather than self-hosting (though some services and foundries offer this kind of license as well).

izacus 13y ago

Yeah, this hits us Android devs pretty much daily when iOS designers send designs heavily using Helvetica / Helvetica Neue. Not to mention the (way to common) surprise when you tell them that using that font will cost several thousand $ per year in licensing in the app.

jfim 13y ago
Does Helvetica come as part of iOS?
- soulhacker 13y ago
  Helvetica Neue as well…

triangleman 13y ago

Haywain, you have been hellbanned and nobody can see your post unless they are logged in and have "showdead" turned on.

dangayle 13y ago

What you're suggesting is that designers limit themselves to the what? < 100? professionally designed type families that are freely available? Like it or not, most of the open source fonts in the world are amateurish at best, hideous at worst.

Nilzor 13y ago

No, we're not going to embed typography in images What are you saying here - that it's illegal to publish a .PNG with text generated from a commercial font you've purchaes?

_greim_ 13y ago
Not legal reasons. We don't want to do it for technical reasons.