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Helvetica Now Variable

monotype.com

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Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

alberth wrote: post #46
mikedc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Silly question, so how do type foundries prevent someone from literally copying the TTF, WOFF, EOT files - and then rebrand a font as their own? Will the bits/bytes of a TTF be different if two people produced identically the exact same shape of the letters? EDIT: let me clarify a bit. The GP said that the shape of the letters is not copyrighted in the US. Which implies to me that if Helvetica has the exact shape of…

> What I'm asking is, what prevents someone from skipping the step all together of tracing every letter in the Helvetica alphabet and instead, just digitally copies the TTF font file?

What stops you from copying any copyright-protected software? Technically, usually, very little (sometimes DRM). But, mostly, its social/economic constraints like your (or your business’) particular tolerance for legal exposure.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#82

Post by kube-system »

Santosh83 wrote: post #32
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 t…

The price of a Ferrari also seems unreasonable to me. I drive a different car. I also use fonts other than Helvetica. I'm not entitled to either of them.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#83

Post by deltron3030 »

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.

People start to care when they get deeper into the graphic design rabbit hole and basically express their work through type and its character exclusively, like in logo design, poster design etc. where type character has a big impact on the individual letter level.

Body and sub-heading text is a bit more forgiving and less detail thirsty, the focus is more on the texture of textblocks rather than the individual letter or words.

If you have to cut up and modify individual letters, Helvetica can be quite nice to work with.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#84

Post by oefrha »

stimpson_j_cat wrote: post #59
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.

That's a standard practice for a lot of webfont vendors isn't it? I know it was for Typekit/Adobe Fonts (which requires a Creative Cloud subscription).

What even is Typekit’s pricing these days? I looked into it a few weeks ago and the only thing I could find was Typekit comes with any Creative Cloud subscription, including $10/mo ones. But surely you can’t pay $10/mo to serve an arbitrary amount from their webfont CDN? Did I miss something? Is the pricing only available after you subscribe?

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#85

Post by huashu »

really amazing work by the monotype team. As always, font licensing is a very tricky business, so I understand everyone's frustration here.

If any of you are looking for an open-sourced sans serifs for your sass and other projects, I covered a couple in my newsletter. I go over how to use them with examples and use cases. some are variable:

https://fonts.substack.com/p/dosis https://fonts.substack.com/p/fow-no4-libre-franklin-a-versat...

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#86

Post by AceJohnny2 »

jstx1 wrote: post #39

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).

I absolutely do. I'm not sure why, it's not something I specifically pay attention to, but I definitely appreciate text in some fonts more than others. For example, I really liked The Economist's print font (and I don't mind the redesign [1])

That said, I once spent a couple weeks trying out various programming fonts/sizes, so maybe I'm an outlier. (I'm on Mac now, and the system Monaco font is fine. I don't remember what I had settled on when I was using Linux until 6 years ago)

I have to add that I recently upgraded from a 2k 27" monitor to a 4k one, and the first thing I noticed is how much nicer all the text is (again, macOS)

[1] https://designmodo.com/the-economist-redesign/

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#87

Post by abegnoche »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #40
com2kid wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Video Games is an example, each AAAA games I worked on had custom fonts (that was used in-game but also for our powerpoints presentation during the making of the game).

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#88

Post by AceJohnny2 »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #86
jstx1 wrote: post #39

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).

I absolutely do. I'm not sure why, it's not something I specifically pay attention to, but I definitely appreciate text in some fonts more than others. For example, I really liked The Economist's print font (and I don't mind the redesign [1]) That said, I once spent a couple weeks trying out various programming fonts/sizes, so maybe I'm an outlier. (I'm on Mac now, and the system Monaco font is fine. I don't remember…

That said, programming fonts are a particular niche of interest, because first you want your ambiguous glyphs to be easily distinguishable. O vs 0 vs o, l vs I vs 1 vs i, and secondly you want the overall feel to be pleasing to you.

Other considerations are how does the font render g (is there a loop at the bottom, or just a tail) or a (does it have a "tail" at the top or is more like an o with an extra leg?).

People can get really worked up about these details, just like a coding style guide: if it differs from what you're expecting, it's distracting, but you get used to it after a few days/weeks.

Since last I went on this journey, I see that this wonderful website for comparing programming fonts popped up:

https://www.programmingfonts.org

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#89

Post by lights0123 »

compi wrote: post #66

Web fonts are so weird, to display this site I had to download the advertised font as a .WOFF file to my computer. I now have a fully featured copy of what they are selling. I know they are actually selling the license to use it but still it seems weird that any site that licenses and uses this will also be mass distributing it to peoples machines.

It's the same concept as Windows. You can (as in physically, not as in "it's allowed") download and use it without a license, and no one will care if it's just you personally, but expect lawyers if you're a big company.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#90

Post by dhosek »

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.

That type designs are not protected is a gross injustice. The time and effort involved in creating a type design is significant. Alas, when the type industry had the resources to lobby to have copyright law changed, they were making a lot of money from stealing each others' designs and chose to lobby the opposite. There was an ill-fated effort in the 90s to lobby for typeface design protection (I was part of it as the editor of a typography magazine) but it never achieved any measurable success.
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