161–170 of 176 posts
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I mean, what's the most expensive commercial font license? Neue Helvetica is $350/yr/cpu.
Does a per-cpu licence allow you to use the font in all your publications?
But usually web & (mobile) app licensing is separate from designer workstation licensing.
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Typefaces can't be protected, at least in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
That's kind of amusing. So in theory someone could just copy their typeface and rewrite the "font" and publish it for free. That makes the entire thing seem even more pointless -- if one guy can copy Operator Mono (I found at least one clone of that font as soon as I searched for it on Google) what is the point of paying some design firm to make you damn near the same thing as Netflix Sans when you could just rip it…
I find it profoundly stupid for Airbnb to have their own typeface. It's like they have lots of designers around and have to keep them busy with something. Well at least they did not give them the usual entertainment for bored designers: redesigning stuff that does not need a redesign.
It's a prestige thing. The current wave can probably be traced to Microsoft in the early 2010s, with its bespoke Segoe type family. Google followed with Roboto, then Apple with SF, and now you've got everyone from Coca-Cola to CNN commissioning their own type families.
It got cheaper since the same electronic font can be used for (almost) all sizes, design purposes, etc. though, so it's also happening more often now.
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No, there is a difference what a VC-funded startup should be burning money on. It's not a public company, yet.
Whilst "what a VC-funded startup should be burning money on" is something that the investors should have input on, I don't think random people on the Internet get to be the gatekeepers for what a company is allowed to do with their investors' money.
All I can gather from this is Airbnb has way too many engineers and designers for the amount of actual work there is to go around. At the end of the day, the day to day engineering problems Airbnb has are not very interesting. It’s a web app that can handle peak traffic with standard technologies (meaning nothing real time, live streaming, or millions of users at once). I have no clue what most engineers would be doi…
I’m not saying that should spend time and resources on a font now, but I’m also not saying they shouldn’t.
A font can help their branding, and having a strong brand can help keeping their margins high. Typography works for Coca-Cola, for example.
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Installed base is pretty meaningless in a world of web fonts and mobile apps. Everyone will need to download the font once. Not a big deal.
The installation process isn't the sum total of the point there. Known-good is better than unknown, all other things equal (and not to sound condescending but they basically are). It's low risk but frankly it's even lower reward. If their goal was to distinguish themselves, perhaps they could do it more effectively through something people would notice.
All I can gather from this is Airbnb has way too many engineers and designers for the amount of actual work there is to go around. At the end of the day, the day to day engineering problems Airbnb has are not very interesting. It’s a web app that can handle peak traffic with standard technologies (meaning nothing real time, live streaming, or millions of users at once). I have no clue what most engineers would be doi…
The font was commissioned from Dalton Maag, who specialize in this kind of work (as the second highest ranked comment notes). So if anything it is money that is being wasted, not employee time.
All I can gather from this is Airbnb has way too many engineers and designers for the amount of actual work there is to go around. At the end of the day, the day to day engineering problems Airbnb has are not very interesting. It’s a web app that can handle peak traffic with standard technologies (meaning nothing real time, live streaming, or millions of users at once). I have no clue what most engineers would be doi…
> They have also developed new faces based on these classical materials, but added those nuances and attributes that they lacked when current. Many of these faces are created for publishing, advertising, and computer clients who desire exclusive, proprietary alphabets. Like the king of France in the seventeenth century, these companies are patrons of an iconoclastic breed of type designer. The New Classicism is about both revival and invention, because there is no sense in remaking type that has existed before without improving upon it.
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The font was commissioned from Dalton Maag, who specialize in this kind of work (as the second highest ranked comment notes). So if anything it is money that is being wasted, not employee time.
After 18 months of creating, refining, testing, and integrating, we flipped the switch and released Airbnb Cereal across our brand and product.
Sure, AirBnB staff were involved, but they did not put in the huge amount of effort necessary to actually create the font. So that effort did not happen on AirBnB's property, so to speak, while AirBnB design staff "got to commission a font" as part of their career progress.
https://airbnb.design/introducing-airbnb-cereal/ is PR puff, it could mean they spent an afternoon or a decade of human-hours on this.
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Why do you think it's stupid? Having your own typeface makes your brand subconsciously recognizable at a glance.
Given how similar it is to Netflix Sans (and probably many other Sans fonts) I highly doubt that this is something you would prove if you were to test it.