
The most expensive typefaces (2019) - zdw
https://medium.com/@msilvertant/the-most-expensive-typefaces-in-the-world-d025923084f0
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OzzyB
I used to be on the side of fontographers before webfonts became a thing.

Want to use a particular font for your print/screen production? Just pay for a
license fee -- sure you might have to pay per weight, style, or even _seat_
\-- but at least you got to use it for your graphical productions as much as
you wanted.

Enter webfonts and instead of letting those same bought license "rollover" to
the new medium they created a new separate "web licence" (ok, I can pay
another fee); but then some smarty pants thought it would be a good idea to
charge per usage (0-50K monthly pageviews $price, 50k-100k another price etc),
good grief.

Of course not all foundries do this, but this move spawned the rise of many
open source fonts with free and open licenses (and initiatives like Google
Fonts) so we could have an open web without another copyright license to worry
about.

In other news, I just found out that Variable Fonts[1] are the thing, good
times.

[1] [https://rsms.me/inter/#variable](https://rsms.me/inter/#variable)

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Webfonts are a thing now, which
makes all kinds of fonts, both free and expensive, available for websites. How
is that anything but a good thing?

Of all the things that message board copyright activists get up-in-arms about,
it's hard to imagine one where they have a weaker case than typefaces.
Literally nobody _needs_ an expensive typeface; we have more high-quality free
typefaces now than anyone has had... basically in all of human history.

~~~
OzzyB
The point is simply that if I wanted to create a website and use Circular [0]
(a nice geometric font made popular by Spotify) I would need to pay based on
total pageviews which is an unknown, so the price is unknown, which is
prohibitive in the sense that I'm now tied to a font license that penalizes me
based on the success of my website.

Or, I could use Inter which is similar, free, better (more weights, filetype
options) and I don't have to worry. This goes beyond price, I really don't
want another thing to worry about and a cool font isn't worth the monkey on my
back.

> we have more free typefaces than ever...

That's kinda the point I'm making I guess; I believe the recent rise of all
these free/open alternatives to popular established ones was precisely because
of the webfont-pay-per-pageviews model.

[0]
[https://lineto.com/typefaces/circular](https://lineto.com/typefaces/circular)

~~~
oh_sigh
If you don't have an idea of how many users to expect, your server costs are
an unknown too. I don't see how paying per view will change that.

~~~
ElFitz
Unless gp doesn't use any sort of auto scaling what so ever. In which case,
the cost will be that of the (known) provisioned amount

~~~
oh_sigh
The equivalent to that would be to just buy e.g. the 100k users font license,
and then stop serving traffic once you hit 100k.

~~~
wolfgke
Even alone having to implement this (and perhaps become sued if there is a bug
in the code) is a massive liability for the business.

~~~
tptacek
And yet plenty of businesses use licensed fonts just fine, and, at the same
time, literally nobody has to. What about this system is problematic?

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reggieband
As a caveat, I'm going on memory here, but I remember licensing to be
significantly more expensive than $5000 for international distribution of
Adobe fonts for a AAA video game I worked on. They had to secure rights for
the font for use in game, in print publications (e.g. print ads), TV, etc. I
recall each of these was a full on contract and eye-watering cost well above
the prices he quotes.

If the prices he quotes are for unlimited license across all media ... $5k
seems cheap to me.

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ajhurliman
Are those prices per license? Apparently Netflix was paying millions[1] per
year to use Gotham before they made their own font.

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/03/21/netflixs-sleek-new-
ty...](https://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/03/21/netflixs-sleek-new-typeface-
will-save-ton-money/)

~~~
TwoBit
The article implies that they weren't paying millions. Am I reading that
right?

~~~
tomcam
From paragraph 2:

> It solves a couple of problems: first, Netflix was paying millions every
> year just for the privilege of using Gotham. When you license something at
> such a scale, it gets really pricey.

~~~
iNerdier
And just below that:

‘It’s worth noting that Jonathan Hoefler, founder of the Hoefler&Co type
foundry that designed and owns the Gotham font, says that the company has
“never quoted a client anything close to a million dollars for anything.”’

~~~
Etheryte
If you bill 80k a month you still end up with ~1M annually but get to say the
above line to prop up your business.

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tptacek
$391 for a single font doesn't sound very expensive to me at all. Even for a
small-business project, $400 is likely to be a rounding error for anything
where the "designer had to pick a custom face" threshold has been exceeded.
Certainly, it must be cheap for any serious print project! Printing costs will
dwarf that font cost.

~~~
tobr
I’m involved in a project right now where the cost of licensing fonts has
clearly made some people involved nervous. Of course, the cost is hardly
anything compared to the cost of the project as a whole. Probably even less
than the cost of the time spent finding the appropriate typefaces and get a
decision to license it.

I think it’s just that a lot of people are genuinely surprised that typefaces
cost real money, because they are so used to sticking to the ones they have
“for free”.

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etaioinshrdlu
Artbreeder ([https://artbreeder.com/](https://artbreeder.com/)) is likely to
have a font generation mode eventually. This can generate high quality fonts
(as well as lots of Unicode codepoints) and even interpolate between fonts in
latent space. You can also take an existing font and find it in latent space,
and then regenerate it. Take a look at the header of the Artbreeder homepage
to see a small sample of font interpolation. (Apparently the interpolation is
not even as smooth as it could be yet.)

I would not want to be a manual font designer in the future.

~~~
battery_cowboy
> I would not want to be a manual font designer in the future.

I wouldn't want to be any designer in the future. Eventually there will be a
tool to generate any design with easy sliders and stuff. You can already
design logos in software that are as good as the best designers 20 years ago
for free with a few YouTube videos, imagine what this type of generation tech
will do in the future.

I think that along with the current easy to use API 3rd-party systems, like
Stripe or Uberauth, we're basically going to go back to a ColdFusion style
design tools for the "low hanging fruit" sites like regional grocery stores
and below where there are generic templates for a whole e-commerce site and
back end for your business with the front end included, but this time you can
use all kinds of knobs, levers, and buttons to adjust it to look unique and
personal for your business and the backend generation will happen based on
your product data requirements and the like.

We already kinda have that for mom + pop stores and smaller businesses. The
only companies that will need handcrafted web apps will be the out-of-the-
ordinary businesses like Uber, or the huge companies that need more complex
logic, like FedEx or Walmart. Everyone else will either do it themselves with
whatever the Wix of this type of thing is or they will hire some farm of
developers (like an Amazon warehouse, but with developers instead of pickers)
to task one of their drones to do it.

On different kind of note, that page header font warping thing is super fun to
look at while intoxicated!

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enriquto
They are not that expensive. I would gladly pay a similar amount for a decent
Baskerville LaTeX font with math support. I would have to hide it to my wife
somehow, though...

~~~
lallysingh
[https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/baskervillef/](https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/baskervillef/)
?

~~~
enriquto
This is a good start (and baskervald is even better) but is not of excellent
quality. I am not talking about the character shapes themselves, that are OK,
but about the relationship with greek characters, with LaTeX math, and the
quality of accented characters. What the world needs is an available version
of the "SMF Baskerville" described by Yannis Haralambous here:
[https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02101627](https://hal.archives-
ouvertes.fr/hal-02101627)

~~~
lallysingh
I wonder if people would chip in to pay someone to do it right.

~~~
enriquto
This is exactly what happened. When the french mathematical society ordered
this font they probably paid a lot of money, and then it became a sort of
"secret sauce" that they want to use exclusively.

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addcninblue
Why is `n` missing from the screenshots?

~~~
lemoncucumber
You'll have to pay extra if you want `n` support

~~~
DonHopkins
'n' app purchase

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soulchild37
That's one off fee. Try using Avenir webfont on your website which get 1
million pageviews per month, the total price you have to pay might even exceed
the one off fee of JHA Bodoni Ritalic.

~~~
mark-r
Use Open Sans instead, it's free.

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frankzander
And they forget, that a font face is only a tool. It's just like a golden
hammer ...

