That's one off fee. Try using Avenir webfont on your website which get 1 million pageviews per month, the total price you have to pay might even exceed the one off fee of JHA Bodoni Ritalic.
The most expensive typefaces (2019)
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Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#12They are not that expensive. I would gladly pay a similar amount for a decent Baskerville LaTeX font with math support. I would have to hide it to my wife somehow, though...
Your wifes boyfriend would be mad at you, though!
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#13I used to be on the side of fontographers before webfonts became a thing. Want to use a particular font for your print/screen production? Just pay for a license fee -- sure you might have to pay per weight, style, or even seat -- but at least you got to use it for your graphical productions as much as you wanted. Enter webfonts and instead of letting those same bought license "rollover" to the new medium they created…
I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Webfonts are a thing now, which makes all kinds of fonts, both free and expensive, available for websites. How is that anything but a good thing? Of all the things that message board copyright activists get up-in-arms about, it's hard to imagine one where they have a weaker case than typefaces. Literally nobody needs an expensive typeface; we have more high-quality free typef…
The point is simply that if I wanted to create a website and use Circular [0] (a nice geometric font made popular by Spotify) I would need to pay based on total pageviews which is an unknown, so the price is unknown, which is prohibitive in the sense that I'm now tied to a font license that penalizes me based on the success of my website.
Or, I could use Inter which is similar, free, better (more weights, filetype options) and I don't have to worry. This goes beyond price, I really don't want another thing to worry about and a cool font isn't worth the monkey on my back.
> we have more free typefaces than ever...
That's kinda the point I'm making I guess; I believe the recent rise of all these free/open alternatives to popular established ones was precisely because of the webfont-pay-per-pageviews model.
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#14Why is `n` missing from the screenshots?
You'll have to pay extra if you want `n` support
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#15Are those prices per license? Apparently Netflix was paying millions[1] per year to use Gotham before they made their own font. [1] https://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/03/21/netflixs-sleek-new-ty...
The article implies that they weren't paying millions. Am I reading that right?
From paragraph 2:
> It solves a couple of problems: first, Netflix was paying millions every year just for the privilege of using Gotham. When you license something at such a scale, it gets really pricey.
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#16That's one off fee. Try using Avenir webfont on your website which get 1 million pageviews per month, the total price you have to pay might even exceed the one off fee of JHA Bodoni Ritalic.
Use Open Sans instead, it's free.
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#17Are those prices per license? Apparently Netflix was paying millions[1] per year to use Gotham before they made their own font. [1] https://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/03/21/netflixs-sleek-new-ty...
I was really surprised that the article didn't mention Gotham or any other HF&J font. Those were the most expensive I had encountered up until now.
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Webfonts are a thing now, which makes all kinds of fonts, both free and expensive, available for websites. How is that anything but a good thing? Of all the things that message board copyright activists get up-in-arms about, it's hard to imagine one where they have a weaker case than typefaces. Literally nobody needs an expensive typeface; we have more high-quality free typef…
The point is simply that if I wanted to create a website and use Circular [0] (a nice geometric font made popular by Spotify) I would need to pay based on total pageviews which is an unknown, so the price is unknown, which is prohibitive in the sense that I'm now tied to a font license that penalizes me based on the success of my website. Or, I could use Inter which is similar, free, better (more weights, filetype op…
I get your point, but I don’t think Inter is similar enough to Circular to be a replacement for it. Inter is more of a San Francisco replacement in my book (which is how I use it on one of my websites—SF for Apple devices and Inter as a fallback). They’re both pretty, but Spotify’s UI looks very different than a UI set in Inter.
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#19$391 for a single font doesn't sound very expensive to me at all. Even for a small-business project, $400 is likely to be a rounding error for anything where the "designer had to pick a custom face" threshold has been exceeded. Certainly, it must be cheap for any serious print project! Printing costs will dwarf that font cost.
I’m involved in a project right now where the cost of licensing fonts has clearly made some people involved nervous. Of course, the cost is hardly anything compared to the cost of the project as a whole. Probably even less than the cost of the time spent finding the appropriate typefaces and get a decision to license it.
I think it’s just that a lot of people are genuinely surprised that typefaces cost real money, because they are so used to sticking to the ones they have “for free”.
Re: The most expensive typefaces (2019)
#20$391 for a single font doesn't sound very expensive to me at all. Even for a small-business project, $400 is likely to be a rounding error for anything where the "designer had to pick a custom face" threshold has been exceeded. Certainly, it must be cheap for any serious print project! Printing costs will dwarf that font cost.
Sure, as a one time cost it's reasonable. But often these fonts require separate licenses for web, and in those cases the costs scale per view often. So getting slashdotted (or whatever the equivalent is now) can be an unknown cost not just because of the hosting but also because of the fonts.