Five Steps to Font Freedom
There is something absurd about typography on the web. Think about these scenarios: You don’t need to own a font to read a book set in Goudy. You don’t need to own Futura to watch a Wes Anderson film. You don’t need to own Times to read the Times. You don’t need to own any fonts to watch television. Why not? Because that would be insane. And yet this same logic doesn’t apply on the internet. Online, a person needs to own a fully licensed version of a font in order to view it in a web browser. You are reading Arial right now. That’s right, Arial. Why? Because everybody on Earth has a licensed version of Arial on their computer. The great democracy of the internet has failed to produce typography any better than the least common denominator of system fonts. As a designer, I hope you are outraged and offended. So what can you do about it?
At first glance, this seems to be an unavoidable situation. The font companies own the fonts, and any attempt to set them free is going to meet strong resistance. But what if there were legal ways to give fonts to the masses? Wouldn’t you support any effort to increase the options for web fonts? Of Course you would. Rest assured that the absurdity of limited online font selection is a very solvable problem. Here are five ideas to get the ball rolling towards an internet filled with rich typography…
1. Convince the Font Companies to Surrender Their Monopoly
Before we start the revolution, we should warn the font companies of their impending doom. Once they accept their fate, they can control their destiny. By setting their fonts free, the font companies will still maintain a strong level of authority in the industry, and can still control their product. While this would be the ideal solution, it is very unlikely to happen. Consider the ugly war the music industry has waged on their fans. Luckily there is plan B…
2. Create Read-Only Versions of Fonts
You don’t need to own a font to view it in Flash, or in a PDF. Fonts work within this technology because the font is embedded in the file. If a read-only version of a font could be created and distributed for free, font ownership would cease to be a problem. This could take the form of a font-reader plugin. Another possibility is a central database of read-only fonts located online somewhere. Now how do we do that? Don’t ask me, I just talk the talk…
3. Adopt the Free Versions of Fonts
Do a Google search for “free font” and you will get 160,000,000 results. Yes, there are tons of free fonts available online. Unfortunately, as you know, the majority of free fonts are garbage. But surely among the trash are some quality fonts buried somewhere. If we could gather up a collection of quality free fonts for easy distribution the impact could be enormous! The font bundle could come standard with Firefox, or maybe it could be downloaded as a Firefox extension. Power to the People!
4. Share Your Fonts
This is probably the most controversial idea on my list, but it would be extremely effective. If everyone who owned a font, put it on a P2P site, ownership of fonts would cease to be a problem. As long as people only used these fonts for onscreen viewing, this wouldn’t be breaking the law. Right? Right? Right. Ok, you go first.
5. Build Free Versions of the Classic Fonts
If we can’t convince the font companies to set their versions of classic fonts free, we will recreate them ourselves. The great fonts are based on designs that are centuries old that can’t possibly be protected by copyright law. Although it would be a major task, the collective power of the online community could create quality versions of classic fonts. Little by little, we can build an open source classic font library! Does anybody have a complete set of the original Garamond that I can borrow? Let’s get started…
So there you have it. Five steps towards font freedom. Just crazy enough that they might work! Let the revolution begin.
March 9th, 2006 at 12:35 am
If Apple can make a music format that can only be played on an iPod, certainly there must be a way to make a font format that can only be viewed in a web browser. Maybe that font could be automatically downloaded from that online database of yours…if it isn’t detected first, of course.
Oh well, Garamond looks like shit at 9 pixels tall anyway.
March 9th, 2006 at 1:57 am
The only solution we need is #2. Most of your other ideas would put every decent font shop out of business and we would live with only crappy new free fonts and the ones already created. I would like to see designers support the type industry and not share all their fonts with everyone else.
One a side note, I’m not sure you can copyright a font. You can copyright the actual font/software and the name of the font, but I don’t think you can protect the design. Am I correct here? Someone set me straight.
March 9th, 2006 at 4:33 am
Microsoft beat you to the punch with read-only fonts for the web years ago.
They produce a tool called the Web Embedding Fonts Tools that takes your OpenType font and creates a read-only providing the font doesn’t internally have a “no embedding” tag set.
Your CSS then contains an extension telling what font name links to what .eot embedded font file on your server.
When you visit the page in IE on Windows it downloads the font along with the rest of the page and providing the .eot file’s URL matches the URL you are browsing (to prevent people copying the files) it uses that font.
Other browsers just ignore the definition and fall back to the next one.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/embedding/weft3/default.htm
All we need is a W3C style standard for something similar that all browsers agree to adopt.
[)amien
March 9th, 2006 at 7:38 am
I’ve studied fonts and typography quite a bit, and frankly, I don’t understand most of the commotion about fonts. So, I wonder how many average users out there think there is a problem with reading Arial, much less think they want to start managing fonts on their PCs in order to reslove the problem.
March 9th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Maybe? But why on earth would you read Arial when you could be reading Univers?
March 9th, 2006 at 8:49 am
This is a very interesting article, mainly because I spend a lot of time on a site that’s extremely type-centric and is home to many discussions amongst those that actually design type for a living, so I see the other side. Briefly, the big reason why most of these points are a bit untenable is that type design is hard, doesn’t pay well, and takes a long time. Also, what works in print (Caslon, for example) often turns to garbage on screen without specific design attributes. Beside the fact that, as others have pointed out, most people just don’t care.
There are solutions to some of your frustrations. Microsoft will be releasing a new family of fonts for on-screen reading. They expand the palette a bit and take advantage of ClearType rendering. Additionally, there is a method of in-line Flash type replacement that I’ve seen that works wonders, but is a bit complex for the average person. You can check out more on sIFR here. It’s worth a look, as it addresses point #2.
That being said, I completely understand the frustrations that you’re expressing. It does seems a bit weird the way things are. Though they’re logical if you take all the factors (such as technology, bandwidth, and piracy) into account. I’m also posting about this on the Typophile forums to see if anyone more knowledgable than I can contribute an insider’s view to this discussion and take it a bit further.
March 9th, 2006 at 8:55 am
@Nate, I realize the difficulty in reading wide lines of text, or all caps, or italics. Reading Arial is not a problem that raises to my level of consiousness. When I think about it, and I do, I prefer Verdana to Arial, but as a reader, I simply don’t notice. When designers say a general usage text font is “graceful”, I don’t know what they are talking about. How many regular users would ever see the difference between Univers, Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet, and numerous other sans serif fonts. Isn’t this a somewhat arcane discussion?
March 9th, 2006 at 9:10 am
“put every decent font shop out of business”
Bennett, there is probably a certain degree of truth to that. However, I am guessing that most font designers aren’t in it for the money. The passion to create fonts wouldn’t die just because they can no longer over charge for their product. Oops, did I say that?
Steve,
Fonts are used in so much more than just body copy. I completely disagree if you think the internet can’t be made better by a richer selection of fonts.
March 9th, 2006 at 9:12 am
Absolutely not. Font selection is a more sublime art than that. One that, admittedly, I have yet to completely master. The point is not to have a noticeable difference, especially in body copy, but to provide an easier read for the viewer. It’s possible with the wrong choice of typeface to completely exhaust the reader by the end of the page, or befuddle them so much that they simply stop reading. Don’t believe me? Set a 10 pt/12 pt paragraph in anything with too much contrast between its thick and thin strokes and you’ll see what I mean. Creating a comfortable read is not something the average viewer would ever be consciously aware of, but it does makes their experience better-if they know about it or not.
Am I wrong, people? Typography still matters, right?
March 9th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Steve, that’s like saying that all impressionistic painting is just as good as Monet, or that all classical music is just as good as Bach. The populace may not know a tertiary from a primary, but they often praise the water lily paintings over others in a museum. And, the populace may not know a fugue from a rondo, but they choose Bach’s music for their occasions because it just sounds right to them.
In the same way, the populace may not be able to articulate the differences in a font that is easier on the eyes or conveys something about the text they’re reading, but it makes a difference to them. The best example I can think of is literary people who do a LOT of reading. They wouldn’t know a descender from a bowl, but many of my literary friends have told me how they find certain books easier to read than others based solely on how the type looks. They may not have any of the industry language to describe it, but they know there’s a difference.
Don’t you think that it would make a huge difference in customer confidence if corporations started all at once using second-rate fonts? Or if the web never adopted even the fonts we have widely available now?
As someone who deals with eyestrain, it’s important to me to make the text as readable as can be at any size. Controlling the look and readability of the text we read is not arcane at all, especially if we are supposed to be moving into a glorious era of digital communication, complete with lots and lots of type.
March 9th, 2006 at 9:42 am
The font companies own the fonts
That statement invalidates all the ensuing arguments. I’ve heard it often, because it is easy to blame everything on some Evil Empire being greedy. I started the FontFont label 16 years ago and still have to work every day. Nobody has become a millionair designing type. It takes at least 100 hours to design and produce a family of 4 weights. So much for recreating Garamond, Bodoni et al. Go ahead, have fun!
Fonts are owned by their designers and licensed to distributors. That applies to all intellectual property ‚Äì music, literature, photography, type. It is always the right of an individual, who can, however, grant a license to a publisher forever and worldwide. Or just for a limited period. The publisher pays a proportion of the sales to the designer, the writer, composer. That is how I make my living. If I wasn’t happy with my publisher, I could take the rights back and sell my fonts myself, something a lot of designers are doing these days. And none of them survives on that income alone.
While I am all for having more choices when reading type online, ripping off type designers would not be on the top of my list. How would graphic designers feel if everybody just copied their portfolios and used them for their own projects?
March 9th, 2006 at 10:16 am
I think you are missing the point. It is not fault of the font companies, it’s web technology. Are you suggesting that if I go to your site, I should be prompted to download a font to see your site? Now, that would really increase site traffic! If you are so obsessed with fonts, you should take a look at sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement). http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/
March 9th, 2006 at 10:30 am
No, Steve. You are missing the point. The point is there are only a handful of fonts online. If you look at this logically, you shouldn’t have to own a font to view it on screen. All I am trying to do is brainstorm some possible solutions. I don’t want to put Erik Spiekermann (Welcome Erik!) out of business, but I think it is fair to explore all our options.
As for SiFR, it is one of the few solutions out there. Unfortunately, it does nothing to change the equation – it just works within the screwed up system. I have experimented with SiFR, and write about why I didn’t use it here.
March 9th, 2006 at 10:47 am
In the same way, the populace may not be able to articulate the differences in a font that is easier on the eyes or conveys something about the text they’re reading, but it makes a difference to them.
I’ve worked on a number of projects where clients have had anotable reactions to typefaces. In one case, I did a brochure for an organization. The client loved one of the comps, but had a visceral dislike of the body font which had nothing to do with legibility – it just felt wrong to her. After a discussion as to what she disliked about it, I was able to come up with a choice she really liked.
In another case, I did the logo and identity for a mid-size company that had changed its name. The president of the company liked the font I used on the business materials that he bought site licenses of the font family for the executive team and their secretaries. I suspect he would have had the entire website set in that font if he could have.
Neither of these clients had the vocabulary to describe why they reacted the way they did to these font choices – but it made a big difference to them.
March 9th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Sorry but I have to take naive point number one personally. I am a “21st century font company”. I have a “monopoly” on the fonts I have designed and I am lucky enough to make my entire living from type design (believe it or not). So will you pay my mortgage, feed and cloth me and my children, and pay for our health care once my intellectual property has been “liberated”?
March 9th, 2006 at 11:09 am
The point is there are only a handful of fonts online.
Number, please.
Yes, this is a trick question.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Type Designers: What if you liscensed your work out to the websites, not to the end user? Then, you see, you’d get paid, but also anyone who visited the site would be able to see it typeset the way it was meant to be seen. And the owner of the site was responsible for maintaining this read-only version of your work? I mean, isn’t the point of designing a typeface so it can be used?
March 9th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
As the original post says, “You don’t need to own a font to read a book set in Goudy.” In essence, this is true because Goudy is “embedded” in the text.
I’d love to be able to choose which typeface to set my web site in, rather than be limited to Arial, Verdana, etc. AND, I’d be happy to pay a type designer for the license to use that font on my web pages.
In this way, it would be exactly the same as a book — once you chose the type to set the book in, you buy the font and print the book. A new paradigm would follow suit: Design the page, buy the font, post it for all to see.
For type designers, this could lead to new revenue opportunities based on how many more web sites there are when compared with print materials. There could even be a structure of based on micropayments per page view or the like.
Certainly food for thought.
March 9th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Lets expand on the original.
The book in Goudy may be free to read but you have to pay to get the book before you read it.
Good old Wes Anderson. Films have to be payed for, or rented, before you can watch them.
The Times is not free, reading it may be a money free activity, but the ownership of the paper isn’t.
TV shows, well you get to watch them for free but the TV is not free and advertisers are actually subidising your viewing pleasures.
Designers love charging for their work but seem to be reluctant to understand why they should actually have to reach into pockets and pay for material (read fonts) to complete their work.
Just as much work, inspiration and originality goes into creating a font as goes into design work, probably more, and it pays a lot less as well. You want free fonts, please feel free to use the free fonts available, then see how much work you get. Commercial fonts help designers earn money.
March 9th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
GM, you have to pay to use the internet, too. Your argument doesn’t make much sense. If I own a font, I should be able to use it on my website and people should be able to view it without owning the font.
March 9th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
A lot of website are payed for in the same way as “free” TV. As designers we just want a way to use the fonts that we have already payed for (hopefully), in all of the applications available (including web). Do type designers have a problem with the “Read Only” idea? Obviously the other four steps are not going to sit well with type designers, but I fail to see how read only fonts would be a bad idea.
March 9th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
True. But the original statements didn’t make much sense to me either. You want things for free in a world where nothing is free.
You have every right to use a font you have purchased on your site, but people viewing your site haven’t, so they see it using a replacement from their system they have payed for. You want them to see it in the style you have designed it in, then design it with embedded text. That way they do not have to have the font
March 9th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Adrian,
What are you talking about?
> If everyone who owned a font
Wrong. You don’t own any font. You have a license to use the font; font=software.
Like Photoshop. Do you own Photoshop? Can you share it?
Maybe post your templates – how to design books, CDs, posters etc etc – online? or maybe as public domain?
March 9th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
All the stuff I do is embbedding enabled, so complain to the ones who dont do this.
March 9th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
As David points out, instead of “Own” I should have said “paid for the right to use.” Now we are just getting picky.
March 9th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Try to understand why a font is indipendent from PostScript language, and eat well.
March 9th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Towards the end of this thread it is boiling down to basically “we payed for them, why can’t we use them as we see fit”. Well, this is a good question, BUT lets get back to the original post, you know, the one advocating piracy and price avoidance of other peoples goods.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
GM, I think it is pretty clear from my post that I don’t advocate piracy, stealing, or putting font designer’s out of business. The purpose of my post is to find a way to bring rich typography to the masses with as few casualties as possible. If you can’t contribute to that topic, I think you have said all you can say.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
mhm. one thing to calm people down a bit, who feel they might be robbed of their intellectual property:
see, with software, there is the open source movement. people share, without starving. they share, they collaborate, they make a living.
have a look at your browser and your cms. there is a fair chance you did not pay for that.
same in music industry. people form obscure bands named arctic monkeys or, even worse
, clap your hands say yeah. they give away mp3s. they are a bloody success and sell huge quantities of records.
thou shalt not be afraid.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Bucky Fuller had a parable about problem solving that started with a business man on a cruise vacation…
During the sea voyage, the ship met with disaster and began to sink rapidly. The businessman was thrown into the ocean and near drowning begged God for help. As he reached for air one last time, his hand hit a large hard surface floating in the water. He grasped and climbed on the object which turned out to be a grand piano from the cruise ship. His life was spared.
Greatful to God, the businessman swore he would devote himself to helping save more lives on ocean liners in case of sinking, so he started a factory to make the biggest and best grand pianos available.
I think you are proposing a “grand piano‚Äù solution to an important and fundamental problem facing graphic designers, type designers, font foundries, computer & communication device engineers, systems development and peripheral integrators, on and on, and above all‚Ķ the end user.
If we closely examine your stated concern, “There is something absurd about typography on the web‚Äù you will find it has less to do with font development companies and more to do with the giants of computer/communication device systems and hardware manufacturers. They were the first ones to implement “grand piano‚Äù problem solving by latching on to an existing font technology, partially integrating and spinning off page description languages and creating what the engineers thought was the best thing since ice cream ‚Äì WYSIWYG, on screen lo-res emulation of hard copy output.
Desktop Publishing systems soon became the way ALL USERS of PCs and Macs composed work on-screen, utilizing font outlines with either discrete screen bitmap representations or hinted screen rasterizations. Believe me, it wasn’t the font companies calling the shots on development, and they are still small and minor players compared to the corporations who envision fully integrated cross-device computer/entertainment/publishing/communication devices. Your cell phone, PDA, laptop, TV, on-line game and on-demand infotainment console (cable or satellite) will all sing and dance together using whatever new or available font technology.
Graphic and motion image designers AND type designers/font manufacturers should actually form stronger alliances to make the visual world of reading on-and-off screen intelligible, inviting and hopefully beautiful and inspiring.
“The font companies own the fonts, and any attempt to set them free is going to meet strong resistance.‚Äù
‚Äì More “grand piano‚Äù thinking. Fonts are not being held hostage. It’s like setting all the fish free! Most fish are already free. Some fish you can catch yourself, some your buy. Some you keep as pets, some you eat. Cook it yourself or have someone cook it for you. Making fonts free won’t guarantee your selection will be installed (current technology) or even looked at.
Essentially, web browser on-screen use and display of type utilizes the same basic technology as setting a document with business or graphic software. If you have installed the font data, both the browser and document software can call out to it for rendering on screen. Some browsers (IE, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, etc.) have a core set of fonts integrated within them. That is why some of you might notice slightly different screen renderings between one browser and another on the same computer.
As some have stated above, some companies (like Adobe, Microsoft, Bitstream) have worked on font embedding for cross-device documents and web display. These attempts may prove fruitful to the designer, or they might actually be reaching for a “grand piano‚Äù solution.
What you see on the screen, and what you can print out from a web page are actually two different outputs. Many (not nearly enough) designers are starting to realize the need to design for screen view with a different design implemented when the user selects “printer friendly version.‚Äù
Implementing CSS is becoming more important to designers of web sites. CSS currently supports ten different media definition tags (see W3Org CSS Media) which enable you to designate which style sheet to be used on the screen, when printed, on speech synthesizers, on Braille tactile feedback devices, handheld devices, TV and a few other devices. Start thinking in terms of what typefaces will look better on screen and which print better on basic home and business printers. To think of the computer screen only when you design web pages is to think “one dimensionally‚Äù (figuratively, that is).
Web is about accessibility and not about putting nice graphic design on screen.
Many designers forget that the USER is the ultimate decision maker on how, when or if they will read your page. Even if you tag fonts, styles and sizes for a web page, the user has options (within the preferences menu) to override, ignore, re-size the text view on screen.
A designer trying their best to line up a text block so the copy runs the exact depth of a photo or image is basically ludicrous. Give up your print-mentality need for control. The web is dynamic whereas print is static.
One very important subject IS type selection for web pages. But designers should forget about what they feel are typefaces that have worked well in print. For web pages, it’s all about screen rendering. There are many type designers today who are taking great pains to deliver screen fonts for small and low-res viewing. You should hunt them out and thank them‚Ķ the stuff is remarkable. Don’t ask them to give it away!
Cross-device, cross-browser, cross-platform and multi-output designing is a blend of technology, science and art. Fonts, free or not, are not going to make ones ability to successfully communicate ideas on multiple device. Stop building pianos and start building better lifeboats.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
“You don’t need to own a font to view it in Flash, or in a PDF.”
No, but if flash can read the font someone can easily extract the font data from the flash. The same with any central repository of read only fonts – if the computer can read the font, which it needs to in order to display it, then a technically minded soul can get that data and distribute it.
March 9th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
No one seems to have mentioned the Gentium type face here yet, its an open source typeface developed under the umbrella of SIL International. Quite nice and might save someone some development time.
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium
B.
March 9th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Great thinking… the prices of fonts have led me to use garbage fonts myself. I can understand that those that design the fonts want to pay the bills, too, but I’d love to see the “safe list” of fonts grow. Like, when you update your browser you update you font list as well – a common database is probably a pipe dream, though… it’s like my fantasy of “one common browser” (ha!) But, at the very least, someone should do something about the limited fonts that are “safe” in design.
March 9th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
I agree with many of the comments here, but the ones that ring most true to me are:
1. This was an opportunity to enrich the world typographically, and it came up a tad short, partially because of business, partially because of technology.
2. The web differs so much from print in more ways than we designers are often willing to admit, particularly with our fixed widths and images of text, etc.
3. We are fighting each other when we should be helping each other. Unfortunately, that usually means sacrifices on both sides, which is tough when you have bills to pay and just enough money to do it.
I think companies like Microsoft and Adobe and even Mozilla are in the best position to act on these things, but require our energy and desire to be compelled to. MS has made some moves with their new ClearType collection that will eventually pervade the world to a certain extent, but like most companies, they tend towards closed systems that serve their needs over us, the users.
If anything, this thread shows a rift that needs bridging. Where is AIGA to commission, offer, and push more web fonts? Where is our self direction? Perhaps it’s that we argue about Quark vs. InD and how we all really wish we could make a difference but no one cares. Or maybe it’s just a matter of the right people at the right time? Why are we not harnessing our collective energies and group funds to privide the foundation for our own…well, typographic liberation?
March 9th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
If anyone is interested in creating fonts, there’s an open-source font creation package.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/doubletype/
It saves each glyph in text format, making for easy collaboration/sharing of typeface designs amongst a group of designers.
If anyone is eager to begin a typeface creation wiki, please contact me. I can create and host one. There may also already be one out there somewhere, of course
Thanks,
Criss
March 9th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
You’re missing a major option, the one that would work without someone losing their shirt.
6. Server side font technology
You can’t steal a font from a book, newspaper, et al., The designer and publisher license it and then set the ink to paper. Right now the only technology for using fonts online (regardless of their many shortcomings) do not protect the font software. We need a better technology for rendering websites, better back-end font management and installation tech, in order to solve this problem. I imagine, though I’m not a programmer, that the rendering would have to be done on the server side, like php imaging or something to that effect, and then printed to the users screen. The font would have to be installed onto the server in a secure way and accessed like a write-protected database would be.
Granted, the basic EULA does not address this particular sort of embedding, but we can adapt. I think it makes no sense to resort to stealing, anarchy, or starting from square one (though open-source designing sounds interesting) to solve a very simple problem.
March 9th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Five Steps to Font Freedom
Adrian Hanft III of Colorado has made a great point about fonts: You don’t need to own a font to read a book set in Goudy. You don’t need to own Futura to watch a Wes Anderson film. You don’t…
March 9th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Norbert has it exactly right. The problem is nothing to do with the font companies or font designers. And they certainly aren’t greedy – if they were, they’d be in another line of business.
The overwhelming majority of type vendors and designers already set their fonts for “preview and print” embedding, or some more liberal setting. They’ve already done their part.
The problem is that there is no universally accepted solution for font embedding on the web. I think Adrian sort of gets that, but he seems to think that it’s up to the font folks to solve. But really this is a problem for the web folks to solve – perhaps with input from the font people.
Any of the previous solutions that relied on distributing fonts for end users to install up front has been fundamentally flawed. insofar as it keeps designers using a handful of fonts that are universal, and relies on something largely outside of their control – that the user already has the font installed. Even if the fonts are freely available, the web is too much of an instant-gratification medium for web designers to be able to rely on people installing specific fonts just to view a site.
The W3C is considering a new mechanism that would allow a reference to a font in a specified format on the web site, perhaps in a Zip file. That’s an improvement, because it gets the font automatically loaded – but you’d still be limited to free fonts, which isn’t very exciting. And convincing the rights-holders that they should give their work away isn’t going to work here any more than it did in the music industry.
Still, it’s a big problem. You need to convince the folks who own the web browsers and the web authoring applications that there’s a big market for a solution. The font foundries already know this and most of them are as eager for a good solution as you are.
Regards,
T
March 10th, 2006 at 1:13 am
SIFR?
March 10th, 2006 at 5:33 am
A couple of ideas in this post and throughout the comments piqued my interest.
First, the idea of taking a number of the classic type faces and recreating them as open source is a great idea. I agree in the collective power of the web, great things like Wikipedia develop out of these communities. Of course, quality is always a concern, but reverting to the open source philosophy, you may contribute and refine any design there is. In these cases a lot of the hard work has been done, if original drawings are provided, all of the spacial and optical adjustments have been made and it is just a matter of rendering them digitally.
Second, someone mentioned who cares about managing fonts when Arial works just fine? Most people concerned with choosing type for their designs – web, or print – understand typography as a labor of love. They will also likely know that Arial is an inferior clone of Helvetica, a Microsoft commissioned piece with enough changes to Helvetica to pass copyright restrictions. Most people do not care about typography, and so any solutions for embeded type should be transparent to them, but for people concerned with type, there are real concerns and real issues with type, and especially type on the web.
Third, most type is not really suited for the web, when rendered from a program like Photoshop an 10pt that prints wonderfully from your laser printer is going to look like garbage as mentioned before. All of counter forms fill in, stroke weight is lost in the conversion to pixels, and those in and of themselves constitute a discussion about whether we should push down the path of pixel fonts, or to develop the classics for web. Any discussion will of course be purly rhetorical, but mentioned in the discussions above there seems to be support on both sides.
Fourth, one way to embed type in images can be accomplished through the use of PHP scripting. The type renders quite well and within 10 lines of code or so, you can generate .jpg and .png images on the fly. You can use any typeface, as long as you have a .amf file on your server – which can be converted in a program like Font Lab, as long as your licensing agreement allows. More info:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.image.php
Lastly, Underware a great collective out of the Netherlands released a typeface called Unibody 8 a while back free for download on their site. It includes 4 variants, all in 8pt for use in Flash, or in non-anti-alliased Photoshop text.
http://www.underware.nl
March 10th, 2006 at 6:11 am
sIFR
March 10th, 2006 at 7:20 am
Five Steps to Font Freedom
A blog called BE A DESIGN GROUP invites “all people to participate in design.‚Äù A post this week raises the “absurdity‚Äù of typography on the web not being as open as it is in other media. In a little digging…
March 10th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Your basic point is that each viewer of a web page has to own a licensed version of a font in order to view that font on the webpage. This isn’t strictly true. A web page designer is perfectly free to produce his or her page as an image, with text rendered into that image using any font he or she wishes. If he or she chooses instead to store *text* in the page, along with a tag indicating which font the user’s browser should use to render that text, then that’s a different story.
The analogies you cite are really analogous to the image-based scenario, not the text/tag based scenario. TV programs send *every single pixel* to my TV. Newspapers render text characters in their entirety.
You could regard a font as a “device” that renders text information into visual form. A TV is a device that renders certain forms of RF-encded information into visual and audible form. I do in fact have to own a TV before I can view TV programs.
Think your analogies through before you use them.
March 10th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Kip, try opening your mind a little bit. You know as well as I that “hiding” your text in images is not the best way to display text in a browser. If you need me to list the reasons I will. What really bothers you and the other opposing points of view is that there is a chance that someone can steal the fonts. That is a valid argument that I don’t disagree with! So how do we solve that problem? Instead of wasting time poking holes in my analogy, I would like to see more comments that constructively try to solve the problem I have presented.
March 10th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Yeah, I don’t think creating giant graphics for all of our text is exactly the best solution.
There is always the chance of someone taking iTunes downloads and figuring out how to get around the restrictions. The music industry finally loosened up enough and one billion songs later . . . There probably is not a perfect way to protect the fonts, but that shouldn’t stop everyone from moving forward. Protect the fonts as much as possible and find a model that will benefit the end user, the type designer and the web designer.
I’m pretty naive when it comes to web standards and web design for that matter, so take my comments with that in mind. Would it help if all of the web browsers had a certain number of fonts (lets say 150) built in. That way the fonts don’t have to load every time a different web page is loaded. This way the designer will own the rights to a certain font when he/she designs the web site, but the consumer won’t have to worry about it. Of course trying to decide on 150 fonts wouldn’t be easy. It would also probably give the creators of those fonts a bit of a monopoly and might not be a big encouragement for developing new web specific fonts. Just throwing out some thoughts. I’m also assuming it is nearly impossible to get Microsoft to play with everyone else.
March 10th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Fifteen years ago, in the days when desktop studios were taking away work from ‚Äòtraditional’ studios there was a seemingly endless explosion of type to choose from. Some designers even appeared to believe typography began and ended with typeface selection. Many designers seemed to think that some major progress had made in a design once the typeface was selected. Certainly between 1990 and 1995 I remember spending far too much time looking at the same design with difference fonts. Under those conditions a lot of typography sucked big time.
Then the web came along and was an even bigger sink pit of weak type. Art Directors fought back with graphic text and other strategies that were insensitive to the medium.
Finally, after the turn of the millenium, enough web designers stopped worrying about choosing typefaces and started worrying about setting type. Leading. Size. Contrast. Paragraph spacing. Etcetera. Soon the web became a typographically exciting medium.
Sure, I would like to see more faces be commonly available, and I enthusiastically endorse the notion of creating open source or free versions of classic faces. Meanwhile, let’s not forget that we might be setting type better online because we had so few faces to choose from.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Kevin’s point “that we might be setting type better online because we had so few faces to choose from” is a good one. One of the nice things about having a limited typographic palette to work from (at least for body text) is that a level of type standardization on the Web has set in recent years. Websites are finally embracing usability and clear standardized presentation through CSS and I worry that opening up our pages to any typeface will lead some designers, right or wrong, to set some of those classic faces like Garamond at 8 or 9 point which could be a big step backwards from the users perspective.
March 11th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
I worry that opening up our pages to any typeface will lead some designers, right or wrong, to set some of those classic faces like Garamond at 8 or 9 point which could be a big step backwards from the users perspective.
The option has to be there. Just because I could set an annual report entirely in Pepita doesn’t mean I will. But I like knowing I could.
March 13th, 2006 at 11:28 am
the only good idea in that original post is #2.
the rest expect people to work long hard hours and not get their due for it, but meanwhile the rest of us get to use what they worked so long on.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:11 am
I’m personally very interested in re-creating classic fonts and publishing them under an open source license.
The idea that if fonts were produced for free, that there would be no more innovative font design is rediculous.
Has open source software led to the death of innovation in software? No of course not.
I don’t see why the same wouldn’t apply to fonts.
March 15th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
I think that solving the problem would require some sort of international organization that would decide which fonts should be universally available, and that Microsoft and Apple should have those fonts in the default install of their OS. Open OSs (like Linux) could follow adding those fonts too, and everyone would have the same (let’s say 50) fonts installed for web-safe viewing. In any other case (for example, font specific headings or website headers) I would recommend images or sIFR.
March 15th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Please no more system fonts that conflict with my font selection on print projects. Is there a way that the OS system could have system fonts that are only available for web browsers? This might be nit-picky, but I have a hard enough time with Apple’s existing system fonts that conflict with my other fonts.
March 24th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
Here is a resource for available Open Source fonts.
Unifont
http://www.unifont.org/index.html
http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/
(Go to the Europe tab for Roman faces)
Most notable: Bitstream Vera, DejaVu, Gentium
April 18th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Thanks Jeff for that links.
May 1st, 2006 at 7:59 pm
wow, Adrian, what a fantastic thread!
i was at first afraid that no one would get the point, but then, all of a sudden the people who enjoy complaining gave up, and now you have all of these fantastic ideas.
so:
If a designer purchases (licenses) a font, the designer can print a giant billboard in Wonton screaming to the world that Yin’s Yang delivers 24hrs. The designer can create a graphic for Yin’s TV spots with it. The Designer can print menus and those menus can be changed and updated just as fast as the Designer’s little legs can move back and forth from the printer. The designer wants to take advntage of 21st century technology and create a dynamic online storefront updated moment to moment in (you guessed it) Wonton so he can stop deforresting the planet and give his little legs a rest, but he can’t. Run Yin, run!
and i know now someone is moaning: sIFR!
how is that any better if, as its name suggests, it requires a flash plugin?
i think the point here is that we want the technical ability to display our licensed typefaces for the eyes of the end user, for whom we licensed the fonts to be displayed for in the first place. end users who haven’t had to pay a cent for any of the fancy typography that makes Coca Cola seem like it just fits perfectly into its can.
i hope that the foundries are not leary of the idea of more eyes on their product.
as was noteicable early in the thread, there is a massive school of oblivious when it comes to the average end user’s understanding of typography. so, 1. it’s not the end-user who will steal fonts (okay, maybe some joker just has to have Wonton for their chat typeface, but they would probably not go buy it just for that purpose, so it isn’t actually costing the foundry a sale), and let’s not kid ourselves, EVERYONE listens to music. EVERYONE wants it. fonts… not so much 2. the people who are most likely to steal the fonts WILL steal them. music too. and 3. those of us here who want server-side font rendering presumably already own the licenses and are wondering why that license is virtually useless when it comes to dynamic content.
i am not a fan of the 50/150 common userbase installed font idea. too many files, too many languages. still too restrictive.
someone mentioned that this is a webnerd-side problem, and i agree. there is no dirth of typefaces out there, and i have a hard time believing that type-designers are enthusiastic about the limited application of their product in such a vast medium as the web.
i like the concept of pre-rendered semantic graphics, or whatever you want to call it, but only if it is something that can be instituted easily and would remain highly compressed until it was expanded in the user’s CPU.
to that end, it might be a good idea to create composite letter forms which layered semantic, digital, and print letterforms, eliminating the need for an entirely “other” CSS definition, because it’s built in! plus the addition of braille layers or other accessibility layers would make a technology like that very hot.. the digital forms could simply be the curves and color/shade/gradation instructions to be assembled by the end-user’s video-card. hehe, this site requires an minimum of 32mb of VRAM!
Q
May 1st, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Q, Thanks for your enthusiasm. I have gone into hibernation on the issue, but I think there is much potential to this idea. The comments here show that there is passionate support as well as equally passionate opposition. The tricky part is how to make everybody happy. More hibernation is needed…
June 5th, 2006 at 6:42 am
Why is a font exactly indipendent from PostScript language?
July 20th, 2006 at 4:44 am
I have read the article. The concern for better typography on the internet is definitely valid, the five solutions, however, are poorly constructed and seem to come from an underlying contempt for the people who make and distribute typefaces.:P
August 11th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Five Steps to Font Freedom
Adrian has a post titled Five Steps to Font Freedom on the Be A Design Group blog. I’ve quoted some of it below:
There is something absurd about typography on the web. Think about these scenarios: You don’t need to own a font to read a book set…
August 19th, 2006 at 7:24 am
It all comes down to proprietary right and regulatory laws haven’t yet been functioning successfully.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
I am not saying he got the idea from me, but Andrei Michael Herasimchuk of Design By Fire has a letter to John Warnock asking him to “Please consider releasing eight to twelve core fonts into the public domain.” Check it out, and think about writing a similar letter if you would like to see this happen.
July 20th, 2007 at 2:58 am
great article, well done.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
Thank you Adrian, Fonts are one of the important things if you want to have a sucessful Site
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:02 am
Great thinking‚Ķ the prices of fonts have led me to use garbage fonts myself. I can understand that those that design the fonts want to pay the bills, too, but I’d love to see the “safe list‚Äù of fonts grow.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Imagine if you did need to own a font to see it on a movie… hey, they will find any way to make money! In fact, I’m not surprised that they decided to do this on the internet. They knew they could, and people try and find a million ways to make money.
I wonder if typographers used to sell their fonts to printing presses in the old days. Probably not, actually. They would be hired for their services. That industry probably died, but has had such a resurgence with the web. Very interesting– I’ve never really given this a heck of a lot of thought…
December 26th, 2007 at 7:21 pm
Is this for real? I didn’t know fonts are such a big deal. I used to think that there’s no business behind these fonts and all. I used to think they’re part of the package. I guess you’re right in those numbered items you’ve listed. Monopoly over these fonts should be stopped otherwise, everything in the Internet and all else that are written shall become exclusive only to those who can afford to own a particular font.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
what does Rick Benish
(i think he lives in eUgene, oregon now) –
the MEISTERFONTMASTER – think about it?
Mark Jaquette @
ISM &
BAMm
February 1st, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I think you are missing the point. It is not fault of the font companies, it’s web technology. Are you suggesting that if I go to your site, I should be prompted to download a font to see your site? Now, that would really increase site traffic! If you are so obsessed with fonts, you should take a look at sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement)
May 13th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I want to create my own fonts and use them on my site also I want to distribute them to free use.
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 am
After creating a particular font, how do you register it? Does it have to comply to any set of criteria?
June 19th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Nice work, it gonna be very usefull for me thanks alot
June 20th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Thank you very much for the great article.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:40 am
Firstly, I’m not reading your page on Arial because I don’t use Windows, I use Linux Ubuntu.
Which gives me a whole range of free fonts to use to my delight.
The only problem with them is that if I send a document to someone else, it obviously just pops up as Arial on their side because they still use Windows. However, if I make something a PDF, then everything is in its own unique font – and it looks so much better and so much more original.
Best way to go to get fonts opensource for everyone? Support opensource fully, such as Ubuntu as an operating system.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
This is an interesting point, and it’s how we’ve ended up with fancy text being sent as images, which causes all kinds of accessibility and spiderability problems.
One technique that’s often overlooked is font embedding, where the font is sent over the internet with the web content. At the moment only IE supports it, and it’s only possible when font creators haven’t put embedding restrictions in their fonts. But it does create a lot of new creative opportunities, particularly if you’re using one of the free fonts out there that are actually any good. I’ve written a tutorial on font embedding and an example on my website.
August 7th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
ype Designers: What if you liscensed your work out to the websites, not to the end user? Then, you see, you’d get paid, but also anyone who visited the site would be able to see it typeset the way it was meant to be seen. And the owner of the site was responsible for maintaining this read-only version of your work? I mean, isn’t the point of designing a typeface so it can be used?
August 29th, 2008 at 4:13 am
That statement invalidates all the ensuing arguments. I’ve heard it often, because it is easy to blame everything on some Evil Empire being greedy. I started the FontFont label 16 years ago and still have to work every day. Nobody has become a millionair designing type. It takes at least 100 hours to design and produce a family of 4 weights. So much for recreating Garamond, Bodoni et al. Go ahead, have fun!
September 11th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Type Designers: What if you liscensed your work out to the websites, not to the end user? Then, you see, you’d get paid, but also anyone who visited the site would be able to see it typeset the way it was meant to be seen. And the owner of the site was responsible for maintaining this read-only version of your work? I mean, isn’t the point of designing a typeface so it can be used?
same in music industry. people form obscure bands named arctic monkeys or, even worse
, clap your hands say yeah. they give away mp3s. they are a bloody success and sell huge quantities of records.
September 13th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Websites are finally embracing usability and clear standardized presentation through CSS and I worry that opening up our pages to any typeface will lead some designers, right or wrong, to set some of those classic faces like Garamond at 8 or 9 point which could be a big step backwards from the users perspective.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Interesting, thank you very much.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I think you are missing the point. It is not fault of the font companies, it’s web technology. Are you suggesting that if I go to your site, I should be prompted to download a font to see your site? Now, that would really increase site traffic! If you are so obsessed with fonts, you should take a look at sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement).
June 30th, 2009 at 6:16 am
For websites you don’t need so many fonts normally.