also http://madmenmag.com my typo

EVERY client wants specific typface and regards that as a branding aspect that must be satisfied, with even greater rigor than print, since the digital editions get 250,000 views and last forever where the print ones get maybe 50,000 printed and most end up in landfill.

Its my belief that the Client should specify and own such license(s) that we, the digital edition layout editors, are instructed to use. It gets seen more and we all know it. It has to anti-alias cleanly and many do not. It has to kern in 72 dpi without fault ( many fonts will make the word burn read like the word bum with a badly kerned lowercase ‘r’ slammed up against the ‘n’) Basically most webfonts suck and need to be pixel scale sensitive rather than bezier 300dpi pretty.

I want to buy and use fonts that are qualified for “xx” pixel use by experts, us that font and not have to worry about anti-aliasing, kerning, linespace, bad column justify outcomes.

… in this way, you are right, build it and they that are like me, will come in droves … love it and see that it gets paid for.

Regarding my last sentence: I mean to say it’s necessarily a consequentialistic and pragmatic angle I’m coming from. There are other angles, but this is one that makes good sense to me, other things being equal.

“More than” strikes me as a red herring, here, ready to throw us off the track. If you want something more akin to an ironclad legal reason, or an a priori argument, see the software comparison, above (e.g., license vs. copyright). My (attempted) contribution has to do with the situation as it stands with people, which laws and logic are here to serve, not the other way around.

Phil, Dave, Scott, thanks for asking such great questions and explaining your concerns with real examples. Peter, Dan, Ethan, thanks for making good arguments on the flip side. I’ve asked Typophiles to help us with this debate, and I’ve asked that they try to consider their profession from the perspective of folks who have been severely disappointed by other creative industries.

k.l., thanks – good distinction, I’ll be sure to always say “licensed” in the future. Ben, thanks for the clarification about what it means to be a “large” type foundry.

Scott, regarding your excellent Typekit licensing concern, can you make that a comment on Skepticism about Typekit?

Instead of calling it a webfont license, call it an All Media License.

1) It takes significant time to develop quality fonts. Some designers spend years developing families.

2) Fonts are very similar to software apps, yet have no built-in DRM that most software does. We have always had to “submit” to piracy as a matter of fact. Web distribution makes it even more likely. (Though I personally consider that all par for the course.)

3) A lot of money is at stake.

Now typing this I see the direct comparison to the music industry. So, change or die. My business, Fonthead.com vows to change. I have modified our license (at least for the time being) to allow @font-face linking without addition fees/hoops.

I will be participating in TypeKit as well and hope to see it work out. These are indeed interesting times to be a type designer.

Why have they had their rights MORE pooped on than the creator of images on a webpage, or sound, or text? Thus why are type designers more in need of DRM than photographers?

What I don’t want to see happen is a web page I design suddenly have its fonts removed because some foundry has decided not to support typekit any more. Couldn’t happen? If it can happen with music or on the Kindle it can certainly happen with typekit.

Type designers must adjust to the modern world. Trust the web designers to evangelise for you. Teach them that type costs to design. The only people who will infringe your copyright would never have bought the type anyway.