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I used worked for a relatively well known type foundry. Font licensing still has a hangover, pretty much all foundries license by user number or organisation size. Having designed and/or mastered quite a few families, my opinion is the sense of worth most designers attach to their own work is usually severely inflated, and pricing tends to reflect that.

Cutting type used to require a huge amount of skill of course, but it is relatively easy to design well drawn type with modern software these days. It takes time to draw multiple weights and styles, but it's certainly not as skillful as most would assume. The number of new "foundries" that have popped up over the past few years is telling.

The amount organisations used to pay for custom type jobs was insane, given how much work it actually was to deliver them. The value attached to the aesthetic of the particular designer being hired is also debatable in my experience, very rarely did clients reject or amend what they were presented with. I've also drawn fonts that have been attributed to other designers, and nobody seems to notice.

I think things are changing slowly as the market becomes more saturated, but licensing like this is outdated in my opinion.

Luckily this is nowadays easily worked around with free type faces (like from https://fonts.google.com). I don't find many type faces that are so amazing I'd want kilometers of red tape around my project for them.

> The font is beautiful. The license is unworkable.

For anyone looking for a beautiful geometric sans-serif with an open source license, I can highly recommend Inter: https://rsms.me/inter/

Inter appears to have broader language support, has a variable font version, and is also now available via Google Fonts (for anyone who cares about that). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_font

Agreed. Inter is one of my favorites to use on web stuff.

> you undertake to keep all copies of the Font Software secure and to maintain accurate and up-to-date records of the number and locations of all copies of the Font Software

That's an interesting clause given that everyone can just download the font files from the linked web page. Or do the original font files contain information that isn't in the WOFF format?

I have a pet peeve about font licensing.

Typographers struggle to make a living in most cases, but yet they don't offer better font licenses. I don't understand why they don't make it simple single license term for all usecases and make a sale. It's masochistic.

Selling typeface licenses by number of seats / CPUs is pretty standard in the industry. Take a look at the pricing on one of Hoefler’s typefaces for example: https://typography.com/fonts/operator/style

I thought about buying Hoefler fonts because they have some extra features and e.g. engraved style but the licensing is just too much work for me. How do I know how many computer's I'll have or how many page views? I'm looking for a "pay money -> use font" type of deal.

Thankfully there are some quite nice SIL or OTF licenced fonts available.

You might not like it, but this is routine for commercial font licensing. Whether it seems outdated by wider licensing standards isn't particularly relevant.

Similarly, all the people saying the competition is free aren't the target market for a good quality font with a degree of exclusivity. You aren't going to find that combination from sources like Google Fonts.

Meanwhile, the kind of customer who is going to value this kind of work and actually pay for it is probably going to accept the licensing conditions. They might not like them either, but since almost everyone offering something to this market is doing so on similar terms right now, it's a take-it-or-leave-it kind of deal.

Standard form contracts saying they are governed by the laws of the place where the supplier is based are also completely routine. US companies frequently even specify an individual state favourable to them for this purpose. And yet, business still happens.

I’m in the game industry and we use a lot of different fonts. I have never seen a game company buy one of these obtuse licensed fonts. I started my career in the design industry and I quickly steered my peers away from these licenses. The licenses just aren’t designed for modern applications. Often, as well, is that these fonts haven’t been tested on rendering systems other than browser/OS level and need a lot of work and adjustment to work.

Where do you see game companies sourcing their fonts? It's not my field, but I had the (possibly incorrect) impression from some past discussions that a lot of fonts used in games are created for individual titles much like other artwork. I doubt many game studios are trying to license fonts like Gotham for unlimited use.

In my experience Game companies buy giant font packs (unlimited license) and then use them as needed. You’re right that a lot of fonts are custom made or heavily modified in game, but not all fonts are. A lot of game text is shared between games so they use common fonts.

Also the requirement for wide characters like Russian or Chinese make a lot of “toy” fonts unusable.

I owned an ad agency for a a decade. We treated licenses like this as unusable and I even had our legal team draft up a white paper we would share with our clients about these kind of licenses and the hidden expenses and difficulties using them would create. I can only imagine trying to figure out how many cpus in even a modern small business...

How often did you use commercial fonts in your client work? Almost every major foundry has had terms along similar lines for a long time. I've never seen one offer a completely unlimited licence for their fonts, other than for private commissions. Well, not openly and at a price they're willing to advertise in public, at least.

Regularly. We'd probably have opted to not license from this foundry because of this clause in the license:

"9.6 Cinetype Limited reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to modify or replace this Agreement at any time. If a revision is material we will provide at least 30 days' notice prior to any new terms taking effect."

This is an unneeded Darth Vader clause.

I agree such clauses are absurd. Of course whether it has as much legal weight as the paper it is never going to be printed on is another matter.

I thought the objections to the licensing in this case were more about the limitations like having a maximum number of users covered, but perhaps I misunderstood what at least some people were upset about.

I know these things can be easily misleading, and I tried my best with the IP lawyer to make the EULA intelligible and simple as much as possible. This particular clause shouldn’t be seen as potentially damaging for the customer. I want to be absolutely clear about this: you buy the font now, and the EULA included in the package that you get will be valid forever.

But as a business, I cannot tie myself to a document that is published and that in two years’ time could be obsolete. I understand some people think it’s already obsolete, but it’s not. With one license you have what most commonly requires three licenses: Desktop, Web and App.

Regarding the tiers, the principle is simple: the font is a value for a business, either in terms of brand value or product value, and a business pays according to the value that the font brings.

A startup with little investment has all what it needs to adopt the font throughout the entire range of usages and assets (in Print and Digital).

Going back to the ‘Darth Vedery’ clause. If there will be any change to the EULA, this will apply to the fonts distributed from the time we will publish the new EULA (this is also why EULAs come with a version number and a publication date).

The new EULA won’t work retrospectively. That would be beyond evil, I totally agree. No fear of “Luke, I am your father” kind of situation. If previous customers will find the new EULA a better fit for their needs, they will be free to comply to it, if not, they will refer to the original EULA attached to the font they bought. In simple words, older customers will always have the best of what comes next.

Imho, the licensing agreement creates a barrier for purchase while likely providing little protection because much of it is likely not enforceable in practice.

When I worked at a design firm we used different fonts for almost every client application. We had clients in Europe and Asia so all our fonts had to support whatever language was needed for the client. If the font the client wanted was under a license we didn’t support, we would reach out to the creator and negotiate a single application license. These license are more flexible, not limit usage, and often expensive. But that cost was paid by the client. We also offered a variety of in-house sdf fonts that supported many features like: circular kerning, character morphing, font blending.

Most of the applications we did where built off of our custom interactive engine and the font renderer was very flexible and rivaled browsers at the time as well as supporting emergent tech like dynamic sdf fonts.

I think the key point there is that you were dealing with individually negotiated licences. Obviously when enough money is involved, there may be deals to be done privately. I doubt any of those deals involved price tags as low as the licences we have been discussing today, though.

The $1500 license for this font isn’t too far off from the single use licenses; also, I didn’t see any usage info about marketing material. It depends on the application/game/font with prices from $1000-$5000.

$1000 for the rights to incorporate a font in a specific application you're selling is one thing, but that's still a limited scope. Surely you weren't paying so little for unlimited use and redistribution rights for a full, professional-quality font family?

Edit: Sorry, I missed the reference to single applications in your earlier comment. In that case, what you were saying makes a lot more sense.

What are the hidden expenses in this case?

And a note, the license applies to users, not CPUs. If I have two computers, one tablet and one mobile phone, I'm still one user, and I can use the font on as many devices as I want.

The target market for any product is people who buy the product. However much they value the work, want exclusivity etc doesn't factor in.

However much they value the work, want exclusivity etc doesn't factor in.

Of course it does. Someone who doesn't see value in a work is never likely to buy it. Promoting the work to that person is a waste of the seller's time. Offering more generous terms to try to squeeze out an extra sale to that person reduces the benefit of all other sales, and it might not get that extra sale anyway. As a business strategy, it doesn't make sense.

The licensing is a nightmare, I agree. I immediately fall in love with the font and then I saw the licensing! Number of users????