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Helvetica Now Variable

monotype.com

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31–40 of 197 posts

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#31

Post by m-p-3 »

da_chicken wrote: post #14
flowerlad wrote: post #9

Fantastic font, now infinitely malleable! Unfortunately it is expensive, and you can't just buy it and use it, you have to renew the license annually. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/mti/helvetica-now-variable?tab... And my use case isn't even covered: include in a web application that will be downloaded and installed by customers. My current choice is OpenSans https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans

> Unfortunately it is expensive, and you can't just buy it and use it, you have to renew the license annually. Not even that. If you want it for a web page you have to pay in blocks of page views. In my mind that moves it from "eh" to "LOL no". These are licensing terms for people who want the name.

That's ridiculous..

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#32

Post by Santosh83 »

todd3834 wrote: post #18

Am I crazy for expecting fonts to be free? There are so many good options that I can use without paying a license fee. I can't imagine liking the tiny differences in a font so much that I would get myself locked into a yearly licensing fee.

Paying for products per se is not a problem. What always becomes a problem are stuff like unfair pricing, surge pricing, extortionate rates and fees backed up by monopoly/DRM/regulations, recurring subscriptions or ever increasing rates for the same product with no meaningful improvement and so on.

Fonts can be sold but pricing calculated per page view and device just strikes me as a bit too much. Why not just sell them at a flat rate? Unlike software fonts seldom change once bought so what is the basis for subscription fees instead of one-time sale?

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#33

Post by switz »

todd3834 wrote: post #18

Am I crazy for expecting fonts to be free? There are so many good options that I can use without paying a license fee. I can't imagine liking the tiny differences in a font so much that I would get myself locked into a yearly licensing fee.

Fonts are a herculean effort and a dazzling display of creativity and taste. The fee for a good font is, generally speaking, nominal. Use free fonts if you want, but a good font is worth paying for.

You are "crazy"[0] for expecting them to be free. But if you don't want to use a paid font, that's totally within your prerogative.

[0] though I prefer not to use that word, perhaps a better word would be 'entitled'

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#34

Post by mikedc »

knowledge-clay wrote: post #19
da_chicken wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately it is expensive, and you can't just buy it and use it, you have to renew the license annually. Not even that. If you want it for a web page you have to pay in blocks of page views. In my mind that moves it from "eh" to "LOL no". These are licensing terms for people who want the name.

Typefaces should not be copyrightable. Print ones are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are.

In the US, "typefaces", ie. the shapes of the letters, generally are not. "Fonts", ie. the programs that draw the letters, are copyrighted as software, as something of a workaround. For more reading on the history here Typographica has a succinct overview[0].

[0] https://typographica.org/on-typography/copyright-protection-...

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#35

Post by antihero »

todd3834 wrote: post #18

Am I crazy for expecting fonts to be free? There are so many good options that I can use without paying a license fee. I can't imagine liking the tiny differences in a font so much that I would get myself locked into a yearly licensing fee.

I wonder which is the most fully featured free Helvetica clone?

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#36

Post by flowerlad »

croes wrote: post #22
knowledge-clay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typefaces should not be copyrightable. Print ones are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are.

Print fonts are copyrightable.

In the United States, the shapes of typefaces are not eligible for copyright.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#37

Post by bin_bash »

switz wrote: post #33
todd3834 wrote: post #18

Am I crazy for expecting fonts to be free? There are so many good options that I can use without paying a license fee. I can't imagine liking the tiny differences in a font so much that I would get myself locked into a yearly licensing fee.

Fonts are a herculean effort and a dazzling display of creativity and taste. The fee for a good font is, generally speaking, nominal. Use free fonts if you want, but a good font is worth paying for. You are "crazy"[0] for expecting them to be free. But if you don't want to use a paid font, that's totally within your prerogative. [0] though I prefer not to use that word, perhaps a better word would be 'entitled'

I'm happy paying people for their effort and creativity. This licensing agreement is not something I would personally consider though:

> You get a total number of prepaid pageviews that can be used over time. This means that you will pre-pay for a number of pageviews, then you’ll have to come back to order more after your site has been viewed that number of times.

> For example, if you order 250,000 page views, when your webpages using the webfonts have been viewed 250,000 times, you will need to buy the webfont package again for an additional number of prepaid pageviews. Pageviews are valid for 4 years.

(Then again I mostly do tools and infra so I'm not in this market anyways.)

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#39

Post by jstx1 »

Do you genuinely notice differences between fonts? I have a general sense of monospaced vs proportional and serif vs sans-serif. Past that it's mostly all the same to me and I'm kind of impressed that people pay so much attention to the tiny details (and maybe questioning whether they really do or whether fonts are kind of like wine tasting).

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#40

Post by philosopher1234 »

com2kid wrote: post #25
todd3834 wrote: post #18

Am I crazy for expecting fonts to be free? There are so many good options that I can use without paying a license fee. I can't imagine liking the tiny differences in a font so much that I would get myself locked into a yearly licensing fee.

> Am I crazy for expecting fonts to be free? There are so many good options that I can use without paying a license fee. I can't imagine liking the tiny differences in a font so much that I would get myself locked into a yearly licensing fee. Having worked at Microsoft for years, I also got a chance to work directly with Monotype on custom fonts for a project's specific needs (wearable, tiny screen, specific DPI). Mo…

I never understood under what circumstances you would really need a custom font. Could you say more about why that was the case?
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