Comments on: Web Fonts Get Real with Typekit

By: omnicity

omnicity — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:37:29 +0000

“The concept of royalties is dead and, as far as I’m concerned, has always been absurd.”

Tell that to the Music and Movie industries! I think that those two have much the same problem as the Font Foundries. As for your car analogy, why do you think that car companies ‘encourage’ you to use a licenced dealer for all your servicing? And why do you think that there is specific legislation out there to prevent them going further? It used to be the case that using a third-party mechanic would void your warranty.

Personally I think that this is a great step forward. I agree that it won’t suit everyone perfectly, but if it does nothing more than open up some sensible debate then that is surely progress of a sort?

By: mikethebee

mikethebee — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:52:59 +0000

Seems my previous comment was posted and then disappeared. Was there a reason it wasn’t accepted for very long? DIdn’t think is was illegal or indecent :-( http://twitter.com/mikethebee.

By: mikethebee

mikethebee — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:53:26 +0000

I have always regretted how font restrictions have limited creativity. I assume it is a hangover from printing industry restrictive practices. Ironic as I quote the invention of the “printing press” as a moment that freed people from the control of Scribes and democratized content in the same way as the Internet is doing.

I would happily create some ‘free’ fonts if the process of encoding them was simpler, I have tried the various tools and just not had time to get my head around the complex parameter setup process. Drawing the font is the simple bit, it is creating a file of them that fails.

The whole process of licensing anything for web use needs tackling, those who try to stay clean just end up never using other than their own creations or opensource while the others ignore all the rules. Not good for anyone really.

By: Dick

Dick — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:23:26 +0000

The concept of royalties is dead and, as far as I’m concerned, has always been absurd. The carpenter I hire does not charge me perpetual usage fees. Nor does my tailor or mechanic. I buy a car once and do not need to pay royalties to Volkswagen each year (repairs maybe but not royalties…).

Maybe you think web typography is different… Well, how different is it from still pictures ? Can’t we buy pictures right now and use them on websites ?

If foundries licensed their fonts for Web usage they could make some additional money that they do not have access to right now. And if they are really scared about unlicensed use, they can build themselves a web crawler that will cross-reference the domain name where their font is used against their license database.

Please let’s move ahead already… I remember I had the same thoughts in the last millenium.

By: BS

BS — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:20:40 +0000

The whole fonts royalties issue is bs. Sure, it costs some time and money to make a font. But why should I pay a font foundry royalties for life to use something that had a finite creation time? I don’t charge my client royalties for life to use the website I designed for them, so what makes fonts so special? Surely it should be a one-off fee for unlimited use by one designer, enough to cover the original cost to make it + profit?

Also, is it really fair to a client to expect them to pay this over and above their website design costs? I doubt many will understand or agree to it. And not passing it on means the web designer carries the cost for life.

And what if Typekit goes bust, the client is left with a degraded website either way. Way too problematic on all fronts to be a serious consideration for a professional web business.

By: yogomozilla

yogomozilla — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:40:23 +0000

Either :
1. Use free (as in open) fonts such as DejaVu and Free(Sans/Sans-serif), Vera etc families. No license issues there.

2. Create an image using Imagick or some other extension based on a font file you have on your server. Server up the image with the text in the right font face. The script can then just plant the plain text required in an alt attribute
img src="/image.php?text=Welcome&font=FreeSans&size=12&colour=#ff0000" alt="Welcome"
Serve it up as a transparent png (with a hat tip to IE6 if you want) and off you go. Implement some caching to avoid reinventing the wheel as well.

No distribution of font files etc etc. No worries ;)

By: Albert

Albert — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:29:54 +0000

Try it with a secure site – won’t work – All elements under a secure site MUST be sourced from the one secure domain or else this will result in a broken padlock and a warning message about insecure elements – not good for shopping carts, secure credit apps, and that sort of thing.

By: Tyssen

Tyssen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:08:23 +0000

Why would anyone willingly host crucial site elements on someone else’s servers?

A font’s not a crucial element. If your custom font’s not available, one of your fallback fonts will be.

Also, designers purchase the rights to use photos on websites all the time and anyone can easily grab those. Why are fonts considered any different?

Because fonts take a lot more work to create than a photo.

By: luciano991

luciano991 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:35:28 +0000

Two things:

1. Designers and clients want a bigger font palette to choose from and Typekit gives it to them for a fee.

2. Good CSS will allow the page to degrade gracefully if the servers don’t perform.

Everybody’s happy.

By: JoJo

JoJo — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:37:27 +0000

Ken I disagree when you say:

Most websites using image replacement, etc are copyright violations.

The problem is redistributing the fonts files to other people, if you have license for a font and you use the fonts in a similar way is like using the font on printing or in text in a image so it must not be considered a violation of license…