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A rant on web font licenses

manuelmoreale.com

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Re: A rant on web font licenses

#151

Post by ghaff »

ntrz wrote: post #144
ghaff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how common design patents are though. Relative to copyright, patents are much shorter duration and much more expensive and time-consuming to get whereas copyrights just happen (though you may want to register for greater protection--but that's still cheap and easy.

Yeah, agreed that it seems unlikely to be a problem for most typefaces. I just think it's a bit misleading to suggest it's guaranteed to unburden the typeface of any and all 'intellectual property' protections ("In the US, you can literally go and vectorize any font in the world and do whatever you want with it").

And, of course, I can sue you for copying my typeface even if I'll probably lose in court and you probably don't want to spend at least 5 figures in lawyers to defend your open source typeface design.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#154

Post by manuelmoreale »

mortenjorck wrote: post #131

Linked at the end of the article is something that I can't believe I haven't come across already (as a designer): https://www.fontshare.com I initially assumed the author had linked it simply as a commercial type foundry with reasonable web licensing, but I did a double-take when I realized these were all free (beer rather than speech, thus distinct from the OFL community), in what appears to be a rather expansive fr…

I found it recently. Most of those fonts are excellent and there’s also a nice selection of variable fonts which for web use are incredibly handy.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#155

Post by makeitdouble »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #109
makeitdouble wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websites shouldn't be magazines. Why though? We’re in 2023 and magazines got out of print to move to the web. Telling literal magazines “no, you shouldn’t exist here” is pretty harsh. But I’ll grant you the mental image is powerful. I imagine you going to a restaurant and shouting “what’s with the decorum ? And that background music ? and all this space between tables ? this should be a warehouse with everyone sitt…

I'm happy to chose to have an experience, frankly I enjoy fine dining. But I refuse to go if I can't get access to the prices beforehand. There is a difference between an authentic experience (say the opera) and using it as a manipulative tactic. Do not get between me and the information. If I call an ask how much the lobster bisque is, don't tell me to hold while they get ahold of someone who can say it with a Frenc…

> This is about empowering the consumer.

This is about what they want to deliver the customer and wether the customer chooses to receive it or not. Some restaurants will not explain you over the phone how much any single dish costs, and they might not want you or me as their customer.

Some won’t have a price for the lobster in the first place, and they’ll tell you how much to pay after you spent the night there. And some absolutely not fancy restaurants won’t even know if there will be lobster the day you go there nor how much they’ll price it.

But in any of these cases, it’s an experience the customer chooses. You can choose to never deal with a place that won’t let you spreadsheet your dinner cost beforehand, or never go to a site that takes more than 1s to fully load, or never allow a site to set a custom font etc.

You’re free to hang up while they go fetch a French accent guy. In the meantime, some other customers already knew the prices but still called just to hear the French accent guy talk to them for 5 minutes and will wait however long to get their fix.

So yes, I’m all for varied and clunky experiences as long as it’s a two way street and no scamming is involved. The web is wide enough to give some small place to all of it.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#156

Post by shove »

On the one hand, the author is correct that rent-seeking on Akzindenz (a font that predates Helvetica for godsake) is some crazy bullshit. On the other, modern typographers are some of the lowest paid graphic artists out there. Doing a gazillion glyphs, balancing weights, kerning … it’s a ridiculous amount of work

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#157

Post by makeitdouble »

johnchristopher wrote: post #134
makeitdouble wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websites shouldn't be magazines. Why though? We’re in 2023 and magazines got out of print to move to the web. Telling literal magazines “no, you shouldn’t exist here” is pretty harsh. But I’ll grant you the mental image is powerful. I imagine you going to a restaurant and shouting “what’s with the decorum ? And that background music ? and all this space between tables ? this should be a warehouse with everyone sitt…

Then just put a PDF on the website and be done with it. edit: and it seems we can't make magazines on the web anyway so there's also that. edit 2: does the background music not loading/working prevents the cook from cooking and the waiter from bringing food ?

This gives me flashback of the Apple attempt at crack this nut. PDFs, PDFs everywhere.

> edit 2: does the background music not loading/working prevents the cook from cooking and the waiter from bringing food ?

The cook is busy fixing the Sonos system, your lasagna will have to wait.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#158

Post by makeitdouble »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #109
makeitdouble wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websites shouldn't be magazines. Why though? We’re in 2023 and magazines got out of print to move to the web. Telling literal magazines “no, you shouldn’t exist here” is pretty harsh. But I’ll grant you the mental image is powerful. I imagine you going to a restaurant and shouting “what’s with the decorum ? And that background music ? and all this space between tables ? this should be a warehouse with everyone sitt…

I'm happy to chose to have an experience, frankly I enjoy fine dining. But I refuse to go if I can't get access to the prices beforehand. There is a difference between an authentic experience (say the opera) and using it as a manipulative tactic. Do not get between me and the information. If I call an ask how much the lobster bisque is, don't tell me to hold while they get ahold of someone who can say it with a Frenc…

Ａ different angle: when moving from paper to the web, a lot was lost and a lot was gained. As you point out information has been the core pillar of the web since the dawn of it, and we thrived with that mindset.

But at some point I think we need to find a way to bring onboard part of what was left aside, all the stuff were information was not the primary value. Sure not all of it was great, but there should be technical ways to guarantee it’s delivered as fast as it can and as complete as the makers wishes.

I’m imagining a small kid opening the next Lego movie promotion site, and sure they’ll want to know when and where they can watch it, but the first step is to bring them in-universe and persuade them they want to watch the movie in the first place. Bare naked Arial text with no background for 4s won’t help in that respect, could probably be worse than a blank loading page for some kids, so the question really is how to make the actual intended experience work better (how do we solve the font licensing problem? Or how do we make sure to deliver a French Accent menu over the phone without the wait time, to get back to your analogy).

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#159

Post by lozenge »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #67
lozenge wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't missing, it was slow. Are you going to re kern and re layout the page when the font arrives? If you want to avoid that then you have to wait.

> Are you going to re kern and re layout the page when the font arrives? It makes me angry that this is even a sentence. Call me an old fart but I really felt that the web lost the thread when this became a concern. Websites shouldn't be magazines. Typography and layouts are nice to have, but the first priority should be information and content. But then the marketing people got involved and it had to become part of…

I'm not talking about a brand experience necessarily. Just a mixture of paragraphs and images can cause the issue of where to put the scroll position after the text has changed size. Then add tables, different ways to layout images, etc.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#160

Post by rntz »

manuelmoreale wrote: post #138
CharlesW wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just normal price segmentation as applied to a creative work. The idea is that Nestlé can and should pay more for a typeface to be part of the voice of a brand than, say, a family-run bakery.

That I get but there's literally an entire world in between a family-run bakery and Nestlé. And prices are right now completely idiotic for most normal businesses. And also, even though I understand the overall concept, why should Nestlé pay more? I'm asking as a general concept. Should a freelancer charge more money for the same amount of work to a large client just because they're a large client?

One argument is: if font designers had to pick just one price, instead of charging a higher price to bigger customers and a lower price to smaller ones, they'd need to pick a higher price in order to recoup their costs. This would price some smaller customers out of the market entirely.

The comparison with a freelancer misses the weirdness of digital goods, where there's zero marginal cost. The work of designing a font is only done once, and then has to be recouped over many sales; since each sale involves basically zero additional work, any choice of how to split up the cost among customers is inevitably artificial, and not based on how much work it represents.

And of course, any artificial way to decide how much each customer pays is going to screw somebody over for no good reason. I don't think there is a perfect solution here.

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