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Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

brianmoore.com

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Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#51

Post by virtualritz »

gguncth wrote: post #46
virtualritz wrote: post #25

I love how all these 'brand' fonts look indistinguishable to an untrained eye and still brain-frying-bordedom-inducingly close to each other to someone like me who actually studied & worked in typography. Related: https://eidosdesign.substack.com/p/why-every-brand-looks-the...

The purpose of the brand font is to avoid paying licensing fees. Because the typefaces aren’t protected by copyright it’s usually enough to just have someone go and essentially clone an existing font. The whole thing is an artifact of peculiarities of IP law

My comment was not on why but what.

A brand is still free to commission a copy/clone of an 'interesting' font that has character (or, beware even serifs) ...

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#52

Post by Andrex »

vrganj wrote: post #15
Andrex wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to go the unpopular route and ask, how mission-critical are fonts, really? Protected fonts such as these can't be mission-critical, legally, right? Never felt myself lacking for fonts in Docs, myself. Quite the opposite, Google Fonts has way more than I'd ever have preinstalled and is now my primary avenue for typeface discovery.

Depends on what you do. Are you building a slide deck on your systems architecture? Probably doesn't matter. Are you building a marketing deck on your new corporate identity? Probably matters a lot. Either way, the tool I'm using shouldn't be the one deciding what matters and what doesn't. Just let me use my font as I please!

I could see some kafkaesque organization writing-up or firing someone for using the wrong font on a PowerPoint presentation.

Such companies should be mocked and shamed, not held up as examples to follow.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#53

Post by russdill »

mrweasel wrote: post #47
russdill wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of these fonts, I feel fairly certain if someone gave me a sample I could identify the brand.

Remove the name from the font and I'm fairly certain that I'd get none of them, well maybe HP. E.g. the Klarna Headline is pretty distinct, but I've never seen it before. The four other Klarna fonts are super generic. Also why do they need five different fonts? Mostly I think these custom fonts are a waste of money. If you ship software that needs to include fonts, and you don't want to pay a license, it makes sense.…

Different people work differently I suppose. It's true that some of the fonts seem designed to be forgettable, such as Source, Product, Optimistic. But others are, like Netflix, Verizon, Korean Air, HP, and Colgate look heavily branded to me.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#55

Post by hedora »

breakingcups wrote: post #48
gguncth wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the brand font is to avoid paying licensing fees. Because the typefaces aren’t protected by copyright it’s usually enough to just have someone go and essentially clone an existing font. The whole thing is an artifact of peculiarities of IP law

Is that true, though? Wouldn't it be possible to just copy a font wholesale, since they are uncopyrightable? How would licensing fees be enforced?

I think modern fonts include hinting software and stuff like that.

If you produced a bunch of screenshots of the output at various sizes, and then asked an LLM to convert to ttf or whatever, I’m guessing that’d be OK. I’m not an expert in this stuff though.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#56

Post by elcapitan »

breakingcups wrote: post #48
gguncth wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the brand font is to avoid paying licensing fees. Because the typefaces aren’t protected by copyright it’s usually enough to just have someone go and essentially clone an existing font. The whole thing is an artifact of peculiarities of IP law

Is that true, though? Wouldn't it be possible to just copy a font wholesale, since they are uncopyrightable? How would licensing fees be enforced?

Brand fonts are typically a specific license by the original creator of the font, often together with some adjustments (e.g. big companies often need additions for global markets that were not in the smaller original font)

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#58

Post by colejohnson66 »

vrganj wrote: post #9
dijit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh thanks! I looked but I missed that. So, I need to be super rich? Thats sad.

Why did we go from owning the software we run and being able to just modify things as we see fit to "You have to give Google a lot of money so you can have your own font in your own presentation"? Where did things go this wrong?

When we stopped paying for things. Seriously. If you pay for software, you can modify it. If you pay Google, they’ll modify it for you.

Yes, the EULA may prohibit modifications of local installations, but you’re not physically restricted from doing so - only contractually.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#59

Post by qingcharles »

WillAdams wrote: post #29
jonpalmisc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The licenses (from major foundries/vendors) are indeed usually quite restrictive; however, the hard part has always been enforcing them. It's not surprising to me that Google hasn't built any guardrails around this. After all, gating by IP address? What happens if someone from the marketing team logs on from an airport? All of the slides revert to Arial?

The access would presumably need to be done through a VPN to have the fonts.

Ehh.. a lot of these docs go out to customers and end users. Playboy for instance sends out tons of their updates and plans to clients with their own custom fonts in it.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#60

Post by lanewinfield »

ILoveHorses wrote: post #14

Any idea how did the creator manage to get access to the fonts in the first place? Won't you need a Google Docs document which uses the given font and then copy it from there and put it up on the website? Or is there some way the creator could have put these fonts on his website from publicly available information?

hi, creator of the site here.

A LONG time ago, I was shared on a document with a brand font and was surprised to see it was a custom one. With a bit of testing, I realized I could pull it into a new document and that new document would then become "infested" with that font and allow me to use it anywhere else within.

I recently realized there must be even more fonts that exist that I don't know of, so (transparently, with the help of Claude,) I ran through a list of potential clients (some listed on Google Workspace's site, some I just assumed) and tested across many. This is the list I came back with.

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