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Helvetica Now Variable

monotype.com

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Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#111

Post by Symbiote »

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?

A distinctive font can be very recognizable, just like a logo, colour pallet and other parts of a house style.

I've recognized fast food places abroad with the logo text translated into Arabic or Cyrillic by the font.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#112

Post by Isthatablackgsd »

Pentamerous wrote: post #51
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).

They do. As fast as I can look at a picture of a cat or a dog and tell you which of those animals it is, when my husband sees a font he immediatly knows which font it is. I find it fascinating. He is also my go to person when I choose fonts because he always give critiques I would never think of.

There is an awesome useful addon if you like hunting down fonts that you came across the sites that uses them. It is called "WhatFont" for Firefox and Chromium browsers. Click the button and then click the font, it will reveal every detail of that font.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#113

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#114

Post by amelius »

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.

From: https://glarts.org/font-and-typeface-legal-tip-sheet/

> In the United States, fonts are protectable under copyright law. Typefaces, however, are not. ... A trademark protects what a typeface is called, a copyright protects how a font program is written, and a design patent protects letter design—how the letters appear.

So if I understand this correctly, then unless they have a design patent for the entire range of typefaces, you could use some of the typefaces if you use a different encoding. Perhaps someone with legal background can comment.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#115

Post by galago »

franga2000 wrote: post #108
addaon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Font cloning is a thing. Font tracing is usually done by printing out the character to be traced at very large scale -- I've seen about 12" x 12" -- and placing it directly on a large digitizing tablet. A sequence of strokes / points is collected for the outline of the character, and then curves of somewhat reduced degree are fit to those strokes / points to both reduce font data size and reduce the impact of errors,…

> This is generally against the terms of service for the initial font, however, which would make it a legal matter... I doubt there's anything in the ToS for most fonts prohibiting me from rendering a short story that just so happens to contain every character and post it online for everyone to enjoy. I couldn't possibly predict that my friend who doesn't even know the name of the font, let alone ever agreed to any T…

A font isn't just the letterforms, there's also all the metrics, spacing, kerning, and OpenType features like ligature replacement. Also modern OpenType releases contain many languages which makes the metrics even more complex. Metrics are also very refined to the point that with some fonts if they weren't copied completely there would be problems.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#116

Post by zippergz »

oefrha wrote: post #84
stimpson_j_cat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have Typekit via Creative Cloud, use web fonts on my site, and have not run into any additional fees or restrictions. That said, my site is pretty low-traffic, so it's possible there's some issue I'd run into if I used it more.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#117

Post by amelius »

jjeaff wrote: post #80
alberth wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can you differentiate a Helvetica created font file from a font file where I manually traced every Helvetica alphabet identically.

I suppose if you manually traced Helvetica letters, then they might have a case for misusing their font. After all, there isn't a licensing option that allows you to use the font as a template.

But what if the tracing was done by a consumer who visited a website containing the Helvetica™ font?

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#118

Post by netr0ute »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #20
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.

Yes, you are crazy and perhaps even entitled to think that you deserve the fruit of all font creator’s labour for nothing.

Google Fonts disagrees.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#119

Post by _huayra_ »

Can someone explain why pro fonts are so damn expensive?

There are a bazillion free fonts which are great for most uses, but for a font like this where it's not as if the font was custom calligraphy (e.g. for a video game or something) and is just a "good normal font", what exactly goes on to make this font and others like it worth the money?

I genuinely don't know if there are special features of this font that are beyond what you can get from very similar free fonts or if it's just some brand recognition thing.

Re: Helvetica Now Variable

#120

Post by lstamour »

oefrha wrote: post #84
stimpson_j_cat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Since the 2018 rebranding to Adobe Fonts, there are no pageview or font limits for subscribers: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html

Agency clients need their own subscription, legally: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#web-...

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