Without getting too deep in history, many corporations and countless high-end publishers of books and periodicals had one or several type families customized for their particular use.

It’s the difference between “off-the-rack” fashions and tailor-fit clothing. Generally, “out-of-the-box” solutions need a certain amount of tweaking in order to be really good. By customizing widths, kerning pairs, character shapes, you cut down on the need to tweak and produce quality typesetting with uniformity and consistency.

The purpose is not to create a new variation of the typeface. It’s to improve the output.

———————————————————
Yes, I’m old, but I’m back in style!

Parker

I often have to modify a font a bit if I am going to use it for letterpress or if for normal print, to provide for different weighting.

Minion was available as a MM font once upon a time and multiple masters did anticipate user interaction in regard to manipulating a font.

I realize that a lot of type foundryes these days indicate in their terms of contract that you are not to modify a font but hey, I paid for Fontographer and FontLab and the right to use the PostScript or TrueType or OpenType formats just like they did.

You don’t have to go too far back in type technologies to realize that all type design is tied to format or delivery device. And the owner of that has the real say about it all. Prior to 1986 you literally had to “submit” a design to ITC if you wanted your typeface out there (no other options).

Reselling or redistibution of a font is a no no clearly but modification, nonsense. Hell I can modify a font by adjusting the software in my printer.

Gerald

devil’s advocate

Don’t you all think modification for design ownability is a little bit of a cop-out? I mean they might as well get new designs. For instance, I respect MSLO (Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia) for their continued use of Hoefler & Frere-Jones. On the other hand, I’m not so sure I understand why UPS did what they did.

/devil’s advocate

that is my point, Tiffany.

“The purpose is not to create a new variation of the typeface. It’s to improve the output.”

what do you mean? why not to contact the designer “to improve the output”? to design a new font?
where is the creative work? the original work?

“...why UPS did what they did.” — what they did?

what UPS did

Parker

“why not to contact the designer ’to improve the output’”

Good idea. What is in your wallet?

Gerald

Getting the original designer to do the modification is one good option, yes.
But that’s all it is; there can be no de facto “obligation”.

hhp

And if the original designer resides 6 feet under?

ChrisL

Or more problematic still, what if he’s mental?

hhp

Here is where old battle lines have been drawn.

On one side, the designer of typefaces.
On the other side, the “expert” user of typefaces, sometimes referred to as typographer and/or type director.

I’ve sat (or sometimes stood in pubs) between typographer and designer as they argued the point. For my part I am closer to being a typographer and have never drawn a single character that was ever released.

The “expert” user is never content to leave alone what irritates them visually. And the type designer simply can’t please everyone.

It’s just one of those relationships that you may not like, but I feel it keeps the art alive.

Other than that, it simply isn’t practical or downright impossible to go back to the original designer for modifications. Once a typeface has moved through one, two or several re-cuts over years or even centuries, the “original” designer’s intent may have been lost completely. That’s why I used to examine earlier specimens of third-iteration typefaces, not to nit-pick but to try and understand the original intent of the designer.

For some people it’s a sin to leave well enough alone.
Hmmm... I think this sauce needs a little more basil. How could that chef miss something so obvious as that?

—————————————————-
Yes, I’m old, but I pick nits too!

“And if the original designer resides 6 feet under?”

did you meausre? :)

I’m not talking about revivals or old old fonts such as Centaur, Caslon, Bembo....

”...What is in your wallet?”

not Capital One :)

“did you meausre? :)”

Yes I did, the measure was actually 432 picas :-)

ChrisL

...and it was a lead lined coffin too :-)

ChrisL

Hrant is not quite right. Anyone customizing a digital outline absolutely has an obligation to abide by the license issued by the owner of that digital outline. EULAs differ from one foundry to the next, but most include some express policy regarding what may or may not be done to create “derivative works” from font data.

On a personal note, I agree with Tiffany that modification is indeed a cop-out. The client who wants Helvetica, but “an ownable Helvetica” that’s “unique to our brand” should be dissuaded, since the result inevitably looks like Helvetica wearing a funny nose.

…and it was a lead lined coffin too :-)

That was indeed a grave accent!

Or more problematic still, what if he’s mental?

Hrant, I have a problem with this. I recall you posting this opinion here before, that it is okay to ignore an author/creator’s copyright if the author/creator is unreasonable.

My problem is that “unreasonable” is too relative. Just because you, or anyone else deems a person “unreasonable,” that doesn’t automatically make them so. There are many computer users who think that all protection for fonts are unreasonable. Who is to sit judgement of the question of what is reasonable for all cases, and what is not?

There may be designers who find your protection clauses unreasonable. How would you feel if Patria got out, and innumeral derivations of its design, some under other names attributed to other designers, began to circulate? I doubt that you would find it reasonable when others made cash from your efforts.

That is the problem with terms like “reasonable” or “mental”.

Either we are going to respect coppyright and EULAs or we aren’t. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be dialog within (and outside of) the community about what EULA terms should be. But to say that EULAs which are “unreasonable” may be ignored will lead to big problems.

If users find an EULA unreasonable, they should license type from someone else. Our field is not without competition, or change due to market circumstances. Those with unpopular EULAs will eventually get the message if their licensing numbers drop off drastically.

__
www.typeoff.de

“That was indeed a grave accent!”

Nice dig Steve:-)

ChrisL

> Anyone customizing a digital outline absolutely has an obligation
> to abide by the license issued by the owner of that digital outline.

And everyone driving a car is supposed to not exceed the speed limit even by one mile-per-hour. But the cops will never give you a ticket for that, and a court will throw out such a case. So the reality remains that it is unreasonable to expect full de facto adherence to the letter of the law. It’s all psychology, not a box.

Clearly, there is a difference between the letter -or even the spirit- of the law, and how humans are really expected to behave. This discrepancy is natural considering that the law is designed to protect those [already] in power. Please, no hogwash about the law being intended to serve the People.

Human beings are not modules in a computer program.

> “unreasonable” is too relative.

Hey, Life is “too” relative. We have to live with that, quite literally! Every moment of every day we make entirely subjective and personal decisions. This is just another one of them, no matter how much the lawdogs try to intimidate us.

> How would you feel if Patria got out, and innumeral derivations of its design,
> some under other names attributed to other designers, began to circulate?

I have never advocated redistributing fonts, modified or otherwise. That is beyond reasonability; internal modification is not. The attempt at preventing internal modification is a scare tactic that can only backfire on the font house itself, because the main thing it does is place an unreasonable demand on the user, leading to a near-automatic violation of the clause, creating a precedent of de jure “misbehavior” in the user, in turn making him more comfortable carrying out further (less justifiable) violations. It’s bad for everybody, no matter how attractive draconian modernism is (to some people).

> Either we are going to respect coppyright and EULAs or we aren’t.

Nope, I’m shades of gray, not black or white. You do what you think is right, I do what I think is right. I’m sorry if that’s Bad For Business.

hhp

I don’t think anyone objects to what you’re calling “internal modification,” but I don’t think this is what’s being discussed here. Certainly anyone who buys a font to use on a book cover or a CD is welcome to have at the font with hammer and tongs; I’ve certainly seen my fonts adapted in any number of ways, some of them OK, some of them brilliant, and some of them not so brilliant. That’s the bell curve for you.

The issue is “redistribution,” as you put it. The clients who call us beginning with “we love Minion, but...” — as described in the first post in this thread — are the ones who want to populate a large design system with “customized” fonts. In my experience, these include everything from fonts with a few serifs snipped off, to fonts whose only change is the font name and the copyright legend. This is not OK, and it’s not a question of relativism or personal morals: it is against the law.

In the seventeen years I’ve worked in this industry, it has been my consistent experience that organizations understand this without the need for legal intervention. Anyone interested in customizing their typography is serious about branding, and anyone serious about branding has legal counsel familiar with intellectual property law.

According to Tiffany’s chart (Type Foundry EULAs: who allows what), most foundries allow modifications.

http://fontlab.wikidev.net/The_Case_for_a_User-Friendly_EULA

The concomitant stipulation is that any modified font can only be installed on a device which is licensed for the original. So the client commissioning the modification pays for licensing the original font, and the modification fee. This is reasonable, because the modification fee is paying for their exclusive custom version of the font.

I’ve had this kind of work done on my fonts, and I’ve done it on fonts designed by others: for instance, for newspapers, headline or agate versions of “standard” fonts. My client could have contacted the original foundry, but was confident in my ability to do the work adequately, on time, and reasonably priced. No doubt the original foundry could have done it just as well, or better, but for my client they are an unknown quantity.

However, I would never mess with the beziers of a font from Font Bureau, or any other foundry that prohibits it in their EULA. They are not being unreasonable, merely setting the terms of a contract which potential users can take or leave, and other font workers are legally bound to observe, no matter what they think of it. It’s not just a question of obeying the law, but of mutual respect amongst designers.

There is a difference between civil disobedience such as speeding (citizen vs. state) and disrespecting the Bureau (citizen vs. citizen), which is a small design firm, not exactly what you’d call “those in power”, Hrant.

And everyone driving a car is supposed to not exceed the speed limit even by one mile-per-hour. But the cops will never give you a ticket for that, and a court will throw out such a case. So the reality remains that it is unreasonable to expect full de facto adherence to the letter of the law.

Hrant,
I got pulled over for going less 2 mph over the limit. I only got a warning, but he seemed close to giving me a real ticket.

Laws (especially regarding traffic) are made... to be broken. The speed limit is 40 because they know people will be driving 45. There is a certain buffer around many American laws with acceptable overages and underages.

However, with contracts and EULA type things there are specific borders that you have to adhere to. They are generally very direct in stating your rights and limitations, and there isn’t room for personal interoperation.

Either we are going to respect coppyright and EULAs or we aren’t. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be dialog within (and outside of) the community about what EULA terms should be. But to say that EULAs which are “unreasonable” may be ignored will lead to big problems.

agreed

r.k

Dan,

What about fonts with really rotten kerning tables, like the early Monotypes? Or those that refer to the standard Symbol-font for currency etcetera?
Modifying those should be considered a work of mercy...

> I don’t think anyone objects to what you’re calling “internal modification,”

I guess you haven’t been looking at EULAs lately. I was guilty of the same some years ago; but I’m not into EULAs. On the other hand, as Tiffany might tell you, there has been a return to more reasonability lately, probably partly because of the bursts of public outrage such as this. But there are still too many font houses that have that clause.

> it’s not a question of relativism or personal morals: it is against the law.

That is not enough.

> Anyone interested in customizing their typography is serious
> about branding, and anyone serious about branding has legal
> counsel familiar with intellectual property law.

What is “serious”? If it’s the ability to make money, I don’t think your argument holds water, since companies richer than the ones you would consider “serious” do that all the time. And if it’s not about money, then is it about typographic integrity? That’s also problematic, because of the cultural deficiencies in the concept of intellectual property, especially in something as inherently derivative as type.

> mutual respect amongst designers.

That doesn’t work either, obviously. Not least because some font houses -who do prohibit any modification- deservedly don’t get any respect from other designers.

The only thing that ever works is Reasonability. And that clause isn’t. Which is why it does more harm than good.

> not exactly what you’d call “those in power”

In the context of the type world, of course there are some entities which have more power than others, for various reasons. If you had sat in Lawrence’s EULA meeting at TC2004, you would have recognized them by the hissy fits they were throwing. You of all people should see that.

> he seemed close to giving me a real ticket.

That’s what he’s trained to make you think. Where do you think all the money goes - donuts?

> The speed limit is 40 because they know people will be driving 45.

Exactly! And EULAs have the no-mod clause to scare a small segment of users into following it; these are equivalent to the few people on the road who do always drive under the speed limit. And it’s notable that these people are usually too old or they’re illegal aliens.

> with contracts and EULA type things there are specific borders that you have to adhere to.

Yes, and this absolutism is what makes it not work. Traffic laws are pragmatically constructed (even though they’re made to control peons). But such a clause is a EULA is either broken or not; and when -not if- it is broken, you’ve broken your best chance at getting cooperation from the user. We need our users more than they need us; let’s not push them to piracy.

> there isn’t room for personal interoperation.

But humans personal-interpret everything, all of the time!
They are not cogs.

hhp

>let’s not push them to piracy

You are the one excusing piracy, with your “I hit her because she’s ugly” logic. Manufactured provocation is a self-serving excuse for illegal or bad behavior.

***

I can think of at least two perfectly reasonable arguments for a no-mod clause:
1) To nip in the bud the process of companies doctoring a font, renaming it, and skipping multi-user license fees.
2) Because a foundry doesn’t want to see visually corrupted versions of their fonts in the media, degrading their reputation.

Having said that, I don’t believe that foundries are obligated to explain why they make their EULAs the way they are, in order to justify users not breaking the agreement.

If users find a particular foundry’s licence agreement onerous, they should get their fonts from a different foundry.

The solution is a purchaser better informed about the options in the marketplace, not a piracy exemption for ignorance, as you are suggesting.

> You are the one excusing piracy

Nope. Redistribution is piracy, and I keep having to repeat that I don’t condone it. Internal modification is reasonable human behavior, not piracy. Don’t use “pirate” the way The White House uses “terrorist” - everybody will think you’re an idiot.

> To nip in the bud the process of companies doctoring a
> font, renaming it, and skipping multi-user license fees.

Which of course it doesn’t do very well at all. All it does is make people feel OK about doing really bad things. “Hey, since I broke this Absolute EULA anyway by modifying this font, maybe I should just ignore it outright?” And think of what a person would do if you went after him for internal modification... He’d make it a point to harm your business, and then he really could!

Admittedly, legal formalisms do hold some sway in some corporate circles. So the rich play their little games with their lawyer armies, while the people get trampled. Wow, what a surprise. Hypocritical money grubbers.

> Because a foundry doesn’t want to see visually corrupted versions of their fonts

Tough. It’s a reasonable part of culture.

> I don’t believe that foundries are obligated to explain

Who gives a crap what they’re “obligated” to do or not. I keep talking about Reasonable Human Behavior, all you guys are worried about is the Formal Party Line.

> The solution is a purchaser better informed ....

No, the solution is a font house better informed about:
2) human psychology.
2) The limits on hubris.

hhp

There is one case where trying to prevent internal modification might be excused: if the font is free. Like in the case of the MS core fonts. On the other hand, because of the big picture (always at play), it’s quite hard to feel sorry for MS for having to incur a few more support calls...

hhp

>Don’t use “pirate” the way The White House uses “terrorist” - everybody will think you’re an idiot.

Hrant, that rhetorical flourish is a little over the top. What do you hope to achieve by comparing me to George Bush and calling me an idiot?

I didn’t call you an idiot. I was pulling you back from
the precipice of calling internal modification “piracy”.
You’re welcome.

hhp

>I didn’t call you an idiot.

How clever you must think you are, to draw the specious distinction between a clumsy inference and a plain insult.

Software piracy is the unauthorized use of intellectual property. If a EULA specifies that modification of fonts is not allowed, contravening it is piracy. Why is that so hard to understand?

“You’re Either With Us Or Against Us.”™

Your “clever” is more of an insult -via that trademark
Western avoidance of directness- than anything I said.

hhp

>If a EULA specifies that modification of fonts is not allowed, contravening it is piracy.

Horse shit.

Gerald

>Horse ——.

There seems to be some misunderstanding about the way the font business works.

It’s organized around licence agreements, which are a form of legal contract. Not a perfect system, but it’s what we have.

The person, or company, who writes a licence agreement can put any conditions they like in it. For instance, they could decide that licensees only be allowed to use the font if they’re wearing a paper hat. You might think that’s unreasonable, but if those are the terms of the agreement, and you don’t agree, you should licence your fonts from a different foundry.

Hrant, Gerald, you seem to believe that users should be free to disregard whatever terms of a contract they consider unreasonable. That’s a slippery slope. The system is un-policed as it is (which does little to discourage abuse) so behavior is determined by social contract. Yes, people cheat, but at least let’s try and keep up appearances and not legitimize it, otherwise minority vices become mass habits.

I agree with you that being allowed to modify the fonts which one has licensed is a good idea, which is why I permit it in my EULA, as do many other foundries. However, there are those who don’t, and that’s their prerogative.

There seems to be some misunderstanding about the way human nature works.

> That’s a slippery slope.

Hey, Life is a slippery slope.
If you try to control it too much, it backfires.

> let’s try and keep up appearances

I guess I’m not good at being fake.

> that’s their prerogative.

Yes, and in the same way, it’s every individual’s prerogative to ignore unreasonable demands (especially when they’re presented so arrogantly). It’s really that simple, and no amount of legalistic posturing is going to fool everybody into giving you what you want. And you know that.

hhp

Sorry, Hrant, I have to agree with the other Nick.

Rules, laws, conventions...whatever you want to call them...make civilized life possible. To claim immunity or special exception, for whatever self-important reason, is to forfeit the protections that civilized life affords. I don’t know that happened while you were growing up, but I was told (repeatedly) that “everyone does it” isn’t an excuse, either.

Do I obey speed-limit laws scrupulously? No: I am fairly confident that I can “get away” with doing 5 mph over the limit (especially when most of the people around me are doing 15 or more mph over) but...if I get “caught” and cited for speeding, I will take my lumps, no argument and no excuses (especially “everyone does it”). Does that make me a dope, or a sucker? Probably, but at least I can retain some modicum of self-respect.

> Rules, laws, conventions…whatever you want to call them…make civilized life possible.

While I think reasonable human behavior makes civilized life possible. Formal laws are an aspect of that, but so are things like compassion, sincerity, candor, etc. that I’m sure you were told were Good Things while you were growing up too. So it’s a balance, and a pragmatic, nebulous, human balance. The over-reliance on formal law benefits those in power; it is designed to keep us peons. And this overt formalism is perhaps the single greatest flaw of western culture. It is inhuman. And pretending that we expect people to follow an unreasonable clause in a EULA is counter to how I was personally brought up. And if you ignore that society is made up of individuals with different desires/needs, you trade in Culture for Capital.

hhp

Hrant, you’ve got your humanity schtick backwards.

Most foundries are small businesses owned by fontmakers, not shareholders, and they have different views on things like how to word a EULA.

Don’t treat them all like impersonal manifestations of Big Bad Capital.

That’s a very convenient attitude for people who want to cynically take advantage of moral relativism by pirating whatever they feel like. Don’t fall into that trap, it’s bad for your karma.

While I’m not a professional type designer, this debate to me seems to be very similar to the war that is currently being waged in the music industry.

Metallica stood up and decided that Napster and other file sharing programs were illegal and stole profits from the artist and the music industry. What this did was ruin a huge potential (and might I add “free” marketing tool) to be utilized by both artists and record companies. Many of us who downloaded songs for free had the full intention of making actual music purchases. Song downloads could have been seen as “samples.”

When Metallica “banned” myself and many others from Napster, (their songs I downloaded to see whether I was going to purchase their back catalogue of albums) I vowed never to purchase ANYTHING by Metallica as long as I live, and I still haven’t.

Artists that are on major labels are getting raped by record companies because they’re stealing money from artists that they attribute to loss by illegal downloading. Consumers on the other hand (now I believe more than ever) pirate music as a backlash against record companies for putting out crap music and/or charging too much for it. Record companies are still losing money...

Moral of the story: “dogma can destroy you.”

> That’s a very convenient attitude

Coming from “let’s keep up appearances”, yeah, right. Who is being more convenient? We both make and sell fonts. And you probably use fonts more than me; I really don’t use fonts very much, so you can keep your “piracy”/”terrorist” propaganda to yourself. You’re siding 100% with the font house position, I’m trying to strike a balance, to be reasonable.

Terry, good point.
The problem is the all-or-nothing absolutism.

hhp

>very similar to the war that is currently being waged in the music industry.

There’s nothing like the issue of font modification in the music business.
Except perhaps the use of songs in commercials.

Anyway, you can’t really compare the font business to the music business, because there is no mass consumer market for fonts, thanks to bundling.

>Consumers on the other hand (now I believe more than ever) pirate music as a backlash against record companies for putting out crap music and/or charging too much for it.

That’s disingenuous. People pirate music because they are greedy and they won’t get caught. The “anti-establishment” rationale is a gloss.

Terry - While I agree with your main point, please be careful when comparing the font industry to the music industry. One is in far better shape economically, with very little to fear.

“I think reasonable human behavior makes civilized life possible”

I would like to agree with you, but I see precious little “reasonable human behavior” in my everyday life (try driving on the Washington, DC Beltway at rush hour, for instance), which is why “formal rules,” repugnant as they are and serving only the interests of Evil and Oppressive Capitalism, are unfortunate necessities. Thinking oneself “beyond” such things is one of the distinguishing characteristics of sociopaths, criminals, career politicians and CEOs.

And Nick, the smaller you are (and you and I are both small) the more it’s plain dumb to blindly bend over for the system. Speaking of plain dumb, pragmatically, in the end it’s plain dumb to put a no-mods clause in a EULA. If your hubris or confusion about human nature cause you to be plain dumb*, hey, the most -and least- others should do is feel sorry; but just know that you’re the one who will suffer most for it.

* Nevermind that you totally ignore the question of why you don’t have such a clause while some other houses do. Certainly the products and clientele aren’t always totally different. Is it too much to think about? Or perhaps the results of your thoughts would put a hole right through your formal legal absolutist facade... People can sense what not to think about - it’s called a coping mechanism. Some of us are lousy at that though; we feel dirty about looking the other way.

Most tellingly, let’s try to figure out why font houses have gone back and forth about putting such a clause, while their product and clientele hasn’t changed. When were they right, when were they wrong? Oh, I forgot, A Business Is Never Wrong - it’s always the customer’s fault (since his lawyers are worse). What’s histerical of course is that this goes against a central tenet of Capitalism: The Customer Is Always Right. In the end, it’s neither. The truth is, The Customer Is Always Duped, And Made To Never Even Realize It.

hhp