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You wouldn't steal a font

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Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#231

Post by cgio »

gkoberger wrote: post #109
tptacek wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is maybe nothing in the entire world that I am less sympathetic towards than the cause of font piracy / font liberation. You have perfectly good --- in fact, historically excellent --- fonts loaded by default for free on any computer you buy today. Arguing for the oppression of font licenses is, to me, like arguing about how much it costs to buy something at Hermès. Just don't shop at Hermès.

I agree the average person is likely fine with the fonts on their computer, but this is profoundly misunderstanding the importance of design. Typefaces are incredibly important, and have been for centuries. I'd argue that complaining about font prices is less like a Hermes bag, and more like complaining about high-end ingredients when a supermarket has cheap stuff. Yes, you can get away with cheaper materials when co…

I guess if they are so important we should be paying for them. Not that you argue against it per se, but in discussion context.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#232

Post by dcow »

gkoberger wrote: post #157
gobengo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

op isn't saying you shouldn't complain. op is saying you shouldn't steal instead of complaining

I think there's some confusion in who is responding to whom, then. I never said anything about piracy, but the person responding to me may have confused me with the top-level comment. All I have done is defend the importance of typography, and never mentioned piracy or stealing.

Typography is important. So important that we have really good looking fonts available for free. And a custom font isn’t going to be the deciding factor in whether your next AI powered social graph app sinks or floats. Guaranteed.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#233

Post by lotsofpulp »

xyst wrote: post #135
charcircuit wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't copyright a font.

You can copyright just about anything as long as you have the _money_ T-Mobile trademarked a very specific pink, "Magenta" There’s even a company that holds trademarks on a set of colors, Pantone. Courts have yet to reverse or revoke these silly trademarks.

T-Mobile does not have a trademark on the color magenta, nor does Pantone on any colors.

The trademark is for using that color to market your product such that a buyer might assume they are buying T-mobile, but in reality they are not.

Or for Pantone, that a buyer is buying a color quality controlled by Pantone.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#234

Post by williamscales »

socalgal2 wrote: post #182

TIL: font designs are not copyrightable in the USA. Font files are but the design itself is not. It seems you are free to copy the design, but not the file. Not sure how that plays out in practice. Is it common to copy a font design or is it just more common to be inspired by a font design but make a new font that's in the same general design space? Like say Arial seems inspired by Helvetica but is not the same.

There are definitely fonts that are nearly identical copies, e.g. Palladio is a clone of Palatino (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino#Free_and_open-source_...)

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#235

Post by tptacek »

rondini wrote: post #228
wubrr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many free fonts out there, yes, but there's a reason they're free. Go on and tell me what that reason is then. Are you also going to tell me free open-source software, like Linux is low-quality because its free? > The quality for a majority of them is significantly lower Again, a completely baseless, unprovable assertion. > You don't have to agree, but I'm not being absurd or lacking sincerity. What do yo…

You’ve been combative throughout this thread, and it's clear that you don’t see typography or design as disciplines that warrant serious thought. I don't think you're actually willing to engage with an explanation of why it matters but I'll try anyway. System fonts are the absolute bottom of the barrel. Some are well designed but using any of them is a visual shorthand that you didn't care enough to put thought into…

This claim that system fonts are the "bottom of the barrel" is just so clearly false that I don't understand how you can be an advocate of typography and say it. Both Microsoft and Apple put huge amounts of effort into typography, contract or employ well-regarded designers, and their outputs are themselves well-regarded.

If you wanted to say "most of what's on Google Fonts is bottom of the barrel", you'd have a colorable argument. But that isn't what you said.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#236

Post by dcow »

rondini wrote: post #228
wubrr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many free fonts out there, yes, but there's a reason they're free. Go on and tell me what that reason is then. Are you also going to tell me free open-source software, like Linux is low-quality because its free? > The quality for a majority of them is significantly lower Again, a completely baseless, unprovable assertion. > You don't have to agree, but I'm not being absurd or lacking sincerity. What do yo…

You’ve been combative throughout this thread, and it's clear that you don’t see typography or design as disciplines that warrant serious thought. I don't think you're actually willing to engage with an explanation of why it matters but I'll try anyway. System fonts are the absolute bottom of the barrel. Some are well designed but using any of them is a visual shorthand that you didn't care enough to put thought into…

There are many laughably horrible attempts at fonts out there on free font sites (I remember my days learning to write software in the early 00s), sure. But there are also high quality professionally designed and typeset fonts available for free, including those of the system variety. The argument is comparing the latter to expensive designer fonts, not the former to high quality fonts.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#237

Post by wubrr »

rondini wrote: post #228
wubrr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many free fonts out there, yes, but there's a reason they're free. Go on and tell me what that reason is then. Are you also going to tell me free open-source software, like Linux is low-quality because its free? > The quality for a majority of them is significantly lower Again, a completely baseless, unprovable assertion. > You don't have to agree, but I'm not being absurd or lacking sincerity. What do yo…

You’ve been combative throughout this thread, and it's clear that you don’t see typography or design as disciplines that warrant serious thought. I don't think you're actually willing to engage with an explanation of why it matters but I'll try anyway. System fonts are the absolute bottom of the barrel. Some are well designed but using any of them is a visual shorthand that you didn't care enough to put thought into…

> You’ve been combative throughout this thread

Disagreeing with you doesn't mean I'm combative. (Not that I care)

> typography or design as disciplines that warrant serious thought.

We are talking about fonts here, more specifically fonts used in software, more specifically the quality of free fonts used in software. Not 'design' as a whole which is much more than that.

> System fonts are the absolute bottom of the barrel.

If you say so.

> You're associating your product with the ocean of amateur work on the internet, giving the impression you copy pasted a template.

Reusing a font means you're copy-pasting your article/app/etc from a template? Erm ok.

> There are some high quality free fonts typically backed by massive organizations with actual typographic expertise.

'Some'? Like 1000? 10000? How many fonts does one application need? 'typically'? How 'typically'? And I'm not being pedantic - your statements are pretty meaningless without actual numbers.

> Professional fonts are well designed at all weights, they're carefully spaced, they include much larger character sets to support more languages, contain features like lining and non-lining figures, variable font weights, small caps... are those all slight differences?

What is a 'Professional font'? lmao

Plenty of free fonts have all of the features you've listed, and plenty of non-free fonts don't.

> There’s a reason so many articles exist with titles like “Google Fonts That Don’t Suck”. Most of them do.

Again 'so many' and 'most'... you should provide specific (at least approximate) numbers, otherwise this says nothing about how many good free fonts are actually out there.

> Arguing that all design is BS is just lazy

Well I didn't say that, pretending that I did is pretty lazy tho.

> I highly recommend practicaltypography.com, a free web book that discusses all of this and more, including why system fonts are bad and why a professional typeface is worth paying for.

Oh geez! A FREE book which tells you why you should pay for 'professional' fonts while at the same time selling them to you with affiliate links! Thank you sir!

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#238

Post by wubrr »

michaelmrose wrote: post #207
wubrr wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many free fonts out there, yes, but there's a reason they're free. Go on and tell me what that reason is then. Are you also going to tell me free open-source software, like Linux is low-quality because its free? > The quality for a majority of them is significantly lower Again, a completely baseless, unprovable assertion. > You don't have to agree, but I'm not being absurd or lacking sincerity. What do yo…

The last sentence is the variety that is super tempting to make but counterproductive because it shuts down discussion or poisons it thereafter its made to impress bystanders not actually communicate with the person.

Agree that it might not be the best, but seems like a fairly appropriate response for someone trying to back up their rhetoric with 'thousands of books out there'. How is it 'made to impress bystanders'?

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#239

Post by fooker »

gkoberger wrote: post #109
tptacek wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is maybe nothing in the entire world that I am less sympathetic towards than the cause of font piracy / font liberation. You have perfectly good --- in fact, historically excellent --- fonts loaded by default for free on any computer you buy today. Arguing for the oppression of font licenses is, to me, like arguing about how much it costs to buy something at Hermès. Just don't shop at Hermès.

I agree the average person is likely fine with the fonts on their computer, but this is profoundly misunderstanding the importance of design. Typefaces are incredibly important, and have been for centuries. I'd argue that complaining about font prices is less like a Hermes bag, and more like complaining about high-end ingredients when a supermarket has cheap stuff. Yes, you can get away with cheaper materials when co…

> Typefaces are incredibly important, and have been for centuries.

Is there hard statistical evidence for this?

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#240

Post by davidivadavid »

tptacek wrote: post #208
bravura wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually like your takes, but where I disagree today is when you say: "Truffles have a functional role in a dish." but fonts don't. Either both do have functional roles or both are luxuries like Hermès.

I don't want to get too deep into this because it doesn't matter to my point (you're also not entitled to eat truffled dishes any more than you're entitled to eat ortolans). But: set a document in one text face or another; it won't much matter at all to the experience of reading it (unless you pick a bad text face). Leave the truffle out of a risotto and you've made a different dish. The important subtext of this thr…

Take any famous wordmark and replace it with a different typeface. You have a different wordmark. Typefaces aren't only used in body text. If you've read Bringhurst and are a typeface nerd, you should know you're arguing in bad faith. (Also generally like your comments, fyi, but you should know not to chime in that way about that topic on HN where the average attitude to anything design related is a mix of contempt and ignorance).
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