Okay, so this is a showstopper for you; it may not be for other FF customers. Remember, this is a new medium for font licensing, a new market, a new business model, and, so far, very little experience on anyone's part. It seems to me that FontShop are testing the waters, and I expect their eye is on what the response will be from larger, corporate, government and media customers will be. Which is not to say that they don't care about your opinion or your custom, but that they are sensibly trying out a model that they think will maximise their financial return. If this kind of licensing turns out to be a showstopper for too many customers, then that implies the market is different from what the font vendor thinks/hopes it is, and the licensing and pricing model will alter appropriately. That's how the market for creative works operates: you take a best guess at what you think you will be able to charge and what rights you will be able to grant or withhold, and you see how it pans out.

The per-computer or per-user licensing model of fonts was forced on the digital type business because there was no realistic way to monitor use in print media. The web is a different medium, and it makes possible different licensing models. Over the next couple of years, I think we'll see a lot of different approaches taken by various font vendors, and even if one model today is a showstopper for you personally, I think it is too early to be asking vendors to change that model before it has been seriously tested in the market.

"If I was licensing the OTF versions for traditional publishing purposes, this would be like charging me less if my newspaper has a small subscriber count (a local zine) and charging me more if I'm the New York Times."

This would seem totally reasonable, if it weren't for antiquated font licensing model we've grown to know and love since Adobe invented in in the 80's. I agree they should probably provide a discount to existing customers, but new mediums deserve new licensing models, IMHO.

If we changed OTF licensing to reflect how many readers you have, would that make any sense? Why does it suddenly make sense for the web?

Royalty-free digital font licensing was a mistake made in the 1980s that has been perpetuated far too long. Creators of great photos, illustrations, writing, video, music, etc. are all paid royalties. Great type should be the same way. People who don’t think that they should have to pay royalties for great web type do not deserve great web type and need to suck it up and stick to the same old Microsoft font stacks.

And if you don’t think that type designers have the right to just compensation for their work, stop charging by the hour. Just charge every client $780 up front for whatever work they want you to do. Or try actually creating a big font family, and if you ever finish it, see how you feel about giving it up with no limits to every designer who feels he’s entitled to cheap type because actually spending fifteen minutes discussing the cost of fonts with a client is an inconvenience.

Hey Rahim. I'm glad you're excited that FF Milo is now available for the web. I'm sorry you're diappointed in the pricing. I didn't set the prices but there are a few of things I feel qualified to respond to:

1. A basic web license at 3/4 the price of the OT version is actually less expensive than I thought it would be.

2. While there is no "upgrade path" yet, I'm sure license upgrade options are being considered for the future, including web/desktop bundles.

3. For a start, maybe consider the FF Milo Serif Web Basic Set at $142 if you can manage without all the weights of the full family.

I've been trying to find out who determines these average monthly page views. Take http://welovetypography.com for example: Alexa claims we get over four times the pageviews we actually get.

This also puts some limitations to how a high-traffic site using webfonts might be built. The current WLT loads a page every time a user clicks on something. The version I'm working on loads content dynamically. That means it only loads the site once, populating the views asynchronously and resulting in a single page view instead of the average 4.5 per user.

Can the "use" of WOFF be controlled by techniques like .htaccess?

That could lead to interesting scenarios, like websites trying to restrict the WOFF pageviews by showing a non-WOFF version to unimportant visitors (whoever that may be in the specific case).

tracking

I just looked through the FontShop materials on their WebFonts, and was a bit taken aback at the cost of some of the fonts. I could stomach the prices if they included print fonts as well, but that would be an additional purchase, really putting the fonts out of my range. Even if I only needed the fonts for web work, I would want a printable version to produce high quality comps for clients to approve.

I would be more likely to invest in web fonts if they were bundled with screen fonts (at a considerable discount to purchasing both sets separately).

.

"Web FontFonts are licensed by the average pageviews per month "

Well, I see two ways to think about this:

1) Lots of stock photography is licensed this way. So there is precedent in terms of it being a model.

2) Man, what a pain. A licensed based on legal wording that doesn't necessarily match with the technology's use in the real world. I might as well just use Georgia.

I have a hunch #2 is the bigger issue in terms of sales. FF is certainly free to charge what they want in any license they want, and perhaps there will be folks that want to pay those prices for a font for their web site. But the alternatives are so plentiful and cheap that it might not be much of a market.

I can see why Ikea switched to Verdana.

In the case of many of these new Web FontFonts, it is probably much more practical for smaller-scale licensees to go with a Typekit subscription. For instance, consider the following…

Cost to license the FF Meta Web Pro Basic Set of 4 styles via FontShop = $197
http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/downloads/fontfont/ff_meta_web_pro_basic_set/

Cost for use of the full Typekit library of 400+ fonts for 1 year, including those same 4 styles of Meta Web Pro = $49
http://typekit.com/fonts/512
https://typekit.com/plans

There are of course cases, like with Milo, where the option to get the fonts via a Typekit subscription doesn't exist and you would be forced to license via FontShop.

There is also the argument of people who would rather host the FontFonts themselves, but in many ways that notion is still invalid for anyone who aims to cover all their bases browser-compatibility-wise: the FontShop option uses Typekit for Safari and Chrome support.

Typotheque's model seems very reasonable: http://www.typotheque.com/webfonts

If I purchased a print font then I'd welcome some sort of discount for web VERSION. For WEB only purchase the prices seem OK.

Here's another way to think of the issue of how web and print use differ. To create thousands of impressions of a newspaper, the font is used once (basically) and those impressions are made by a plate that prints the newspaper - the fonts are no longer used. The web is different because for each impression, the fonts software is used over and over again to serve each page. Arguably, different use than if it were on someone's computer, but distinctions can be made.

I don't agree or disagree with the pricing scheme, but there's certainly something to be said for putting schemes in place. That's a start.

[tracking]

Good luck to FF in their uphill battle to change established pricing model to a substantially more expensive one. The one that looks pretty much like double-dipping and therefore is perceived as inherently unfair.

My only wish is that FF were a public company, so that their quarterly financials were public.

"If I purchased a print font then I'd welcome some sort of discount for web VERSION."

This makes sense to me as well.

.

The other reason for additional fees is to cover the engineering investment needed for Web-ready fonts - primarily hinting, but also additional engineering and testing work.

Nick wrote: it is probably much more practical for smaller-scale licensees to go with a Typekit subscription [...]

Cost to license the FF Meta Web Pro Basic Set of 4 styles via FontShop = $197
Cost for use of the full Typekit library of 400+ fonts for 1 year, including those same 4 styles of Meta Web Pro = $49

This tells me that if you don't need 400 fancy fonts of mixed quality, but just a professionally produced FF Meta Basic Set, you're actually better off with the FontFont model from the fifth year on, assuming Typekit don't change their prices.

After six years you would have paid $294 to Typekit, or still $197 to FontShop.

I don't know what you mean by small-scale licensee exactly, but even for a small business this would seem a reasonable investment time frame to me.

After giving this some thought, I believe FontFont made the correct choice going with WOFF.

If the only browsers lacking support are Chrome and Safari, they have very little to worry in the long run. The pageview-based pricing also makes the most sense for them and their type designers. Never mind the complexities of tracking the number of views or the seemingly high prices.

Their distribution model, and this is the big deal in my opinion, takes large sites into consideration. Hosting your site's assets on a 3rd party server makes absolutely no sense unless they offer performance parallel to a major content delivery network. Where I'm from, Finland, I pay a penalty even when I choose to load jQuery from Google instead of a local server. Just downloading the 1x1 pixel image required for Google Analytics makes for 10% of the total load time of my company's website. My point being, no sensible administrator is going to use TypeKit on a large scale.

Here's my prediction: FontFont will either set the future standard, or fail gloriously, should the industry fail to understand what they're trying to set in motion.

"but even for a small business this would seem a reasonable investment time frame to me"

A website would rarely last 5 years. And, these days, it seems that brand identities are lucky to last that long as well.

>FontFont will either set the future standard, or fail gloriously,

I don't see a "fail" scenario around the business model. Ascender had the page-view model six months ago, but has since moved to the fonts as a service subscription model - http://www.ascenderfonts.com/webfonts/ - the great thing about the Web is you can reinvent yourself if you're agile enough.

Failing on font rendering quality is the bigger risk.

I meant failing or succeeding in establishing the locally hosted distribution model as the de facto standard. Poor rendering quality would kill every distribution model.

I find the idea of charging per page view ridiculous, and totally agree with Rahim on the subject.

This makes about as much sense as paying car companies for every kilometer you drive, even after you have bought the car.

>This makes about as much sense as paying car companies for every kilometer you drive, even after you have bought the car.

I think this example justifies the practice. If you license (ie. lease) a car and exceed the lease in terms of miles, you will get charged a per mile fee.

This makes about as much sense as paying car companies for every kilometer you drive, even after you have bought the car.

I cannot believe anybody would bring cars into the argument. You buy a car for $30,000. The minute you drive it off the yard, it’s worth 3000 less. A year later, you’ve lost 10,000. A cheap car will last perhaps 160,000 km or 100,000 miles; a more expensive one as long as 300,000 km. And a car costs money even when it’s just sitting in your garage.

A font has no wear and tear. I am still using fonts I bought in the late 80s. More expensive fonts last longer because they get upgraded, to OT for example. Designers will specify a typeface because it communicates better than a generic one. Just because type got undervalued in the 80s when they were considered an easy way to sell filmsetters and the PostScript standard doesn’t mean it shouldn’t go back to being considered for its real value.

The good thing: nobody will stop anybody from using Arial. It’s still free, and for good reason: nobody would pay for it.

Just to throw another wrench into the pricing debate, I remember back in the 80s, when fonts were profitable. That was when they were only purchased by type shops and newspapers. It cost hundreds for each font, which would be a physical disk, filmstrip, or other tangible device.

The way that the companies made money was by changing the format every time they upgraded the machine that used it. Thus the font that works on the Compugraphic II didn't work on the IV (was there a III?). And then when the 7500 came out, another new font library was required.

Perhaps the solution would be to make digital fonts dependent on the OS, so that when you change from WinXP to Win7 you need a new font library.

:)

>I remember back in the 80s, when fonts were profitable.

So fonts are not profitable anymore? All those foundries lose money on every sale? But make it up on volume. :-)

I agree. This model isn't going to work for me. Even though our site (www.hexanine.com) isn't yet busting the boundaries of pageviews at the lowest level, this seems like a silly way to define the license. This is far too expensive for what you receive and as has been said earlier in the thread, I want a reasonable upgrade path from fonts I've already purchased, for use on the Web.

While it's true that these are uncharted waters, the licensing seems out of whack with demand. I'm not a type designer (and sympathize with how little compensation you type creators receive) I don't think Web fonts are going to solve that problem in one fell swoop. That's what it feels like these licenses are trying to accomplish for the foundaries. I would advise FontFonts to think about the "long tail" of this and reduce pricing so that ubiquity is the goal--and they will make much more money in selling relatively inexpensive web fonts to *many* people for use, rather than moderately expensive type to a handful. In many ways, getting to the ubiquitous stage could mean the survival/continued relevancy for foundaries in the future Web-enabled age.

Just saw Typotheque's pricing for web fonts:

OTF
Brioni Text Std (bundle)
8 fonts (60.00 per font)
480.00 EUR
(this is the full license which includes print and web)

WEB
Brioni Text Std (bundle)
8 fonts (12.00 per font)
96.00 EUR
(this is just web)

One time license cost, unlimited domains. As a potential buyer, I feel a bit appreciated seeing that.

As for others: just because you can set high prices for something doesn't mean you should and it definitely doesn't mean it's good business. It's not just economics. It's also customer relationship. Are you building trust? Isn't that how we think about business in 2010 or is the type industry still following some "rake in as much money as you can, boys" model?

And I'm sorry, just because you are a type designer it doesn't mean money will instantly roll into your lap. It's the same for musicians, painters, songwriters, etc, anyone who does anything for a living. You get paid well when you create lots of value for somebody. You don't get paid just for putting in the hours to create your art. I know you know this, but I think you forget and wish it was otherwise.

Just because you spend years working on something doesn't mean you deserve a million dollars. There are plenty of people who spend years working on 10 songs and have to charge $13.99 for a CD and HOPE they can pay the bills through volume sales. There are people who stayed up all night for 18 months straight to write that iPhone app that now sells for $0.99 and have only 100 people buy it so far.

You can't just create a tool, put it out there, and say, now pay me what I deserve. Are you kidding me? What kind of entitlement mentality is that? "Oh you're going to use my font on your server, I guess I'll charge you for every pageview. I gots to gets whats mine! I have the power, you know. It's a different industry than print. I can change the rules. Yes, I can. Watch me."

You have to create value for lots of people if you want lots of money and attention and praise. Create value, please. Stop thinking like Microsoft who charges us for every last bit of using their stuff when they can, however they can, however they can get away with it. If every software designer charged you for every time you used their software on your computer, you would be broke, bankrupt, and in massive debt collection proceedings. And type designers *like* this model and want to pursue it?

Trust and reputation go very far. Please focus on that. The rest is just bluster.

Rahim, could you maybe specify just who you are saying this to? Your beef seems to be with FontShop re: their pricing model, yet you specifically call out type designers as having an unrealistic entitlement mentality. I think you need to look a little deeper at what it is that type designers do. Mike Abbink spent as much time as the app developers and musicians you name developing your favorite FF font family, most likely on his own, unpaid time. I know Mike, and I know he isn't expecting "a million dollars", and I also suspect he doesn't propose to "change the rules".

Before this gets any more heated, consider once again that we are in the early stages of developing business models around web font licensing, there will be many more efforts, and we'll all have to assess each as it is proposed. Please do not demonize type designers because one foundry's licensing model doesn't fit your budget.

Rahim, take a look at this thread I started months ago: http://typophile.com/node/64534

It was surprising for me to see most type designers WANT a rental model and very few are open to buy once model . . .

Stuart

And type designers *like* this model and want to pursue it?

My point in response to your first message is that type designers don't know whether they like this model, because they don't know if it will work in terms of revenue, in terms of customer loyalty, etc. or how these things will balance out. People are experimenting with different models. Your response to FontShop's model is an important one, but its too soon to expect them or anyone else to just change their model because you say they should. What if the revenue from this model turns out to be significantly better than that from e.g. Typotheque's model or the various subscription models?
_____

To me, the problem with basing pricing on number of page hits is that it assumes some kind of correlation between the quantity of hits and the commercial value of the site, and hence the added value contributed by the fonts. This is problematic, because I don't think it is reliably the case. It also assumes that high traffic is an intentional goal of every web publisher, i.e. something that they want and hence are willing to pay for. But of course the amount of traffic a website gets is determined by the visitors, not by the publishers, so one is faced with the awkward situation of e.g. non-profit, non-commercial blogs generating more traffic than the bloggers can afford to license fonts for.

I'm also not generally happy with banded pricing models which, like tax brackets, have built in inequities. A licensee whose site receives 499,000 page hits per month pays the same amount as one whose site receives only 5,000 page hits per month, but another whose site receives 501,000 page hits pays almost four times as much.

@Carl

I know we're in the early stages and this is precisely the time to have a debate, conversation, throw down (heated or not) about this matter. The time to have a conversation is not after a monolithic winner has already emerged. And this is a forum to have these conversations/debates, is it not?

Also: I am not demonizing type designers. Demonize is a pretty strong word for these same type designers that I admire. All I'm trying to do is point out that some artists (including type designers) have a cognitive disconnect in their minds between doing their art and wanting to be financially recognized for it and creating value for their future customers.

And so when a foundry says, "hey, why not *rent* your typefaces?" do they jump because it means a bigger paycheck or do they think about the social implications for doing so?

If all my software design friends rented their software, you would have nothing but an operating system and Notepad to run on your machine--because every other piece of software would be metering you 24/7 and charging your bank account at the end of the month.

Is that the world you want to live in?

Rahim: I did not express or imply any support for any licensing model. So I don't know why you are being so defensive. So far you are coming across (to me) as hotheaded. Your language is very strong, and "demonize" isn't too far off from the portrayal you've made of this mythical greedy designer. I don't know any type designer who is that greedy or entitled.

If you consider that a retail typeface, on average, takes decades to pay for itself, if it ever breaks even, your language around greed and entitlement is sounding pretty disconnected as well. It isn't realistic to blame type designers for wanting to take advantage of an opportunity they see opening in a new market for web fonts. Many may not see the dire collapse you predict if subscription licensing models do take hold. I don't expect one single licensing model to replace all others, so I see this change as less than catastrophic.

If you want the situation to change, consider proposing a specific licensing structure to those foundries you disagree with. Tell them what you think are good prices. They might appreciate knowing what your boundaries are.

"And so when a foundry says, "hey, why not *rent* your typefaces?" do they jump because it means a bigger paycheck or do they think about the social implications for doing so?"

Suppose foundries are thinking about both? They aren't mutually exclusive.

@eriks - OK, bad analogy - what about MP3's? no wear and tear there ... an how would you feel if you had to pay the record companies if you played it over a certain amount of times after you'd bought it from iTunes (or where ever)? Or if you bought it when the band wasn't popular and then were hit with an extra fee just because the band was 'back in vouge'.

Just a point of clarification on the licensing structure. FSI's goal was to create pricing levels that were most equitable for a broad range of uses. With the three tiers at 500k, 5mil, and 50mil pageviews/month they’re dividing Web FontFont use into broad categories so that a large international corporation isn’t paying the same rate as a personal blog. They chose pageviews because they feel metrics like number of domains and bandwidth aren’t accurate representations of an organization’s popularity on the web, and would often be unfair to the licensee. FSI doesn’t want anyone to feel overwhelmed about “tracking their traffic”, and will only spot-check Web FontFont use from time to time. They simply want to be sure the fonts are licensed properly and fairly. They do not intend to monitor every pageview on every domain. In fact, they don’t even require a domain name when you license. Choosing a webfont license is the same as it has always been for desktop fonts: pick the license that best fits you. Extend when you need to.

> I'm also not generally happy with banded pricing models which, like tax brackets, have built in inequities.

I'm not sure how you get around that unless you have lots of levels (adding confusion) or monitor use systematically.

Aaron: OK, bad analogy - what about MP3's? no wear and tear there ... an how would you feel if you had to pay the record companies if you played it over a certain amount of times after you'd bought it from iTunes (or where ever)?

Digital music is the perrenially bad analogy to digital type, trotted out reliably every few months. Font are not consumer products; fonts are professional tools that add value to publishing. Fonts are not something licensed for private enjoyment by the person who buys the license; fonts are incorporated into published material. So, if you want to find an analogy in the music world, you have to look at something like broadcast rights, which is actually a pretty close analogy to served typography. And what do you find? Radio and television stations do indeed pay by play: they don't buy a CD for $9.99 and with it the rights to broadcast a tune as many times as they like. And why look to music anyway? There are plenty of direct analogies to be found in the rights licensing of other aspects of design: photography and illustration being obvious examples.

@ Stephen For me, the main issue in all of this is that what is being propose is selling a licence, PLUS charging for a service. By definition, a licence gives 'excessive freedom' and 'lack of due restraint'. Exactly what is being proposed does not do.

If foundries want to distribute fonts as a service, rather than a product, then by all means do that. But you can't have your cake and eat it. If this model was put into practice elsewhere, then we'd be paying Adobe not only to licence their software, but also additional fees once we'd produced X amount of documents.

In my opinion, services like Typekit are great. I pay a certain amount for a defined amount of access, without an upfront cost. If I want more access, I pay more. I really think it would be in Foundries best interest to look at rolling out a service like this for print as well as the web.

@john - i think my analogies are getting me into trouble. You're right, and as I mentioned above, I completely agree with a 'pay per play' or paying x amount for y amount of use. What I don't agree with is having to pay a licensing fee in addition to the 'pay per play'. Using your analogy, how long do you think a radio station would stay in business if licensing the right to even play the CD cost a few hundred dollars, and then there was the 'pay per play' fee on top of that?

Illustration and photography? Again, you either pay for a license granting you unrestricted use of that image, or you pay per use. Not both.

There seems to be some confusion.

A designer has purchased a license to use a piece of font software in ways that do not include serving that font on the Internet. He has not bought ‘unrestricted rights’.

Now he is being offered a different license for a different piece of font software that allows him to serve that font on the Internet.

The first license for the first piece of font software is a per user or per device license. The second license for the second piece of font software is a pay per use license.

~

.

|~@~|

John, no confusion.

Just so we're on the same page, can you explain for me your view/understanding of the 'different piece of font software' that the designer would be paying extra for?

As far as I understand it from the WOFF documentation, a WOFF font file is, quote "simply a repackaged version of a sfnt-based font in compressed form."

You can read more on it here: http://people.mozilla.com/~jkew/woff/woff-spec-latest.html

@Stephen

1. What tool will FontFont use to track pageviews?

2. Is there any internal discussion about a substantially reduced price for those who already have the print license, similar to what Typotheque offers?

you either pay for a license granting you unrestricted use of that image, or you pay per use.

Aaron, perhaps you should stay off the analogies for a while, they don’t make your arguments any clearer.
If you license an image, there are plenty of libraries that license for an exact print run – one fee up to a given number, another beyond that until the next number – just like the proposed webfonts license fee.

And, just as with images, there is a choice of libraries. If you don’t like one model, look for another one. They may not have the perfect image for your purpose, but you have to choose between your ambitions as a designer and what the budget allows. So, if Rahim loves FF Milo and thinks it is perfect for the project on hand, he’ll either get budget from the client – as you would with an image – or go for another typeface if the budget doesn’t allow for a few hundred additional dollars. We all know that you cannot design a decent website that expects a few hundred thousand page views for anything less than five figures, so the webfont license is but a very small portion of that. As you would not use more than four weights of a family on a website, we are talking about $142 for a font that will make this website look beautiful, be on-brand, legible, unique. If that is too much, then there are plenty of choices. Luckily, using less-than-perfect fonts on a website is not a matter of life and death, and nobody will get fined, punished or excommunicated for sticking with Georgia.

You can also rent FontFonts if you don’t mind them being served by someone else.

I am not sure what Rahim means by “social implications”. Do typedesigners have a particular responsibility towards webdesigners? Like making sure they can indulge their typographic phantasies without being disturbed by mundane issues like paying for fonts? What if FontShop International told their 30 or so employees that wages needed to be cut because they were now delivering a social service to the community? Which will love them in return? Will webdesigners starve because of the price of fonts? Does FSI have a monopoly like Microsoft, Apple or Adobe who are all well-known for giving away software?

And to venture an analogy myself: I love buying hardback books. Now and again I will also buy the paperback version of a book, to take it on a trip, to give it away or because I’ve misplaced the original version. Do the publishers give me a break? After all, they only have to take the same data and print it again.
Do they heck.

Finally: who says that volume is the only business model? Ten fonts @ 100 is the same as 100 fonts @ ten, but a lot less hassle with updates, complaints and invoicing. The iTunes model is not the only one. Fonts are not sold by the thousands, let alone millions, and to my knowledge there are no millionaire typedesigners. And if there were: do you expect Steve Jobs to lower the price of Apple products just because he is a millionaire?

Aaron wrote: As far as I understand it from the WOFF documentation, a WOFF font file is, quote "simply a repackaged version of a sfnt-based font in compressed form."

But not necessarily or likely a repackaged form of a font you already own or even can buy.

Sii already said this earlier:

engineering investment needed for Web-ready fonts - primarily hinting, but also additional engineering and testing work.

A WOFF FontFont is, from a technical viewpoint, a completely different thing than the OpenType FontFont by the same name. Different outline format, hinting, OpenType feature support, Small Caps available as an extra font ...

Hi Jens, thanks for clarifying that. I missed Sii's earlier post. I'm not trying to downplay the work involved in making a typeface. I've played around with a few myself, and know the work that goes into them. I just feel that this could be handled another way.

Eriks point above is completely valid, and yes, If I was working on 5 figure websites then it wouldn't be an issue, but this isn't always the case. I know a lot of designers who buy fonts not specifically for a job, but because they love the typeface. I do this, and I love it. It's great to be able to play around with it, knowing that you can use it down the track on a job.

But under the web font licensing agreement, if i purchase a normal .otf font I'm not able to use it online, and then if I turned around and bought the webfont, I wouldn't be allowed to use it on a clients website unless the client themselves purchased a separate license - "each of your clients will need their own licensing for use on their websites" - as mentioned by Ivan here http://www.fontshop.com/blog/?p=1661 (18th comment)

I just find this disappointing because at present, most sites I work on are mid 4 figures (at most), which means there isn't going to be much room for additional budget for type, and even if I buy a webfont family license for the studio, they are not permitted to be used on external sites for clients.

Though, Eriks, you totally lost me on the hardback book analogy.

What happens if someone sets up a script that hits your site millions of times bumping you over the "personal" into the "business" level?

Aaron:
the hardback book is the .otf font and the paperback the .woff. You pay separately for those two types of book which have the same content, as you will have to do for a print font and a webfont. If you design a brochure for a client, you need the font and you can send a pdf to the printers. As soon as the client or the printer makes any changes to the document, they also need a license. And if a client has chosen a typeface for their communication, it is very likely that they will want to use it in-house, for Powerpoint, for Word documents, even for design work. Over the life of a typeface, a license fee of a few hundred $, £ or € is negligible. One image from a professional photographer will cost more and can only be used once.

I also buy fonts because I like them but have no instant use for them. Like I buy books that I’ll read later (or not), have more than one bicycle although I can only ride one at the same time. (Disclaimer: we have access to fonts on our server by special arrangement with several foundries, but as soon as we use one of them for client work, we buy a license.) If type is a tool that you use, you need to buy it. If you build websites for less than 10k of whatever currency, then you cannot be expected to invest and will have to do with system fonts. But then those brands cannot expect to look different from others. An expensive way to avoid paying for adequate typography.

Aaron: Just so we're on the same page, can you explain for me your view/understanding of the 'different piece of font software' that the designer would be paying extra for?

In addition to what others have written:

The level of technical differentiation of web fonts from desktop fonts will vary. Obviously if a desktop font is in TrueType format and has been designed and produced with screen readability in mind, then it is going to be more directly converted to an .EOT or .WOFF web-servable font. If a font was originally licensed as a PostScript font, it will need to have been converted to TrueType format, both in order to be made to work as a .EOT -- due to a bug in IE's web font support -- and in order to improve screen rendering on Windows in both .EOT and .WOFF.

I've not seen the FontShop web fonts, so can't comment on the degree of work that would have been required to make them as distinct from the desktop versions of the same typefaces. But in terms of constituting a separate product under a separate license, it doesn't really matter.

What happens if someone sets up a script that hits your site millions of times...?

I doubt any lawyers would interpret average in the statistical sense. Perhaps mode is the more accurate term.

> Just saw Typotheque's pricing for web fonts:

Keep in mind that Typotheque's product is hosted on their network, so it could be considered more of a service than FontShop's product which delivers font files that you host on your own. This may or may not be appropriate for your needs, just as the Typekit option may or may not be more appropriate.

@johnhudson
>it will need to have been converted to TrueType format, both in order to be made to
>work as a .EOT -- due to a bug in IE's web font support

Unsure of what you mean by "due to a bug in IE's web font support".
I'm not aware of any bugs in IE's @font-face support. Only deliberately chosen features.
Could you explain?

Erik:

I'm not sure if the book analogy really works for me. As you pointed out before, a font has no wear and tear. Its digital not physical. But I understand what you're getting at.

What concerns me is how type is perceived to be 'used' on a website. It's true that the physical type file needs to be present in order to use @font-face, but if the site is hosted on my server (or even the .woff for that matter), is the client able to produce another site with that typeface? No more than then they are able to scan in the printed typeface on their flyer to use in a poster.

If you transfered this thinking to the print world, then I would be buying a new license for a typeface every time I used it on a different flyer, business card or poster, and then I would have to pay additional if greater than x amount of people were going to see that product.

Should clients purchase a license to use a typeface in Powerpoint, Word or other documents? Yes, as they can produce material with that typeface.

From my perspective (and in my situation), clients and public would have no more access to my .woff files than they do any other typefaces on my machine. If a font file is duplicated, by all means, buy a new license. But If I'm just using the one file as I would for print, then I don't see how these two situations are different.

Erik said: If you build websites for less than 10k of whatever currency, then you cannot be expected to invest and will have to do with system fonts.

Is this how you believe the printed world should work as well? Even if i've invested in a typeface myself, if the client can't afford to cover an additional license for their 1000 print run program and 300 print run poster, then I will have to stick with system fonts?

@sii
The other reason for additional fees is to cover the engineering investment needed for Web-ready fonts - primarily hinting, but also additional engineering and testing work.

sii, I didn't know you wrote fiction!
The plot needs some work. Too clichéd.
I have seen claims of fonts "optimized" for screen but I have yet to see a single side-by-side before-and-after comparison. Are you aware of any? I'm not. When I see it with my own eyes I'll believe it.
This sounds like a recycling of the usual BS you hear from all kinds of companies in all kinds of industries about how so much of the purchase price is going to be re-channeled into great products for the future and wait, you'll see. Just wait.

I've heard and sensed nothing but reluctance from font designers about this. And this skepticism has a foundation.
Here is what one fairly high-profile font designer had to say on the issue:

...TTF versions of fonts is complicated, labor intensive and expensive. It's that there are very few people who are knowledgeable about the antiquated craft of TrueType hinting. It's that the demand for hand-hinted TTF outlines is low despite the current "Web Fonts Now!" meme. It's that there is no reason to rush because most of the browser makers are too bored and/or antagonistic to make up their minds on a web font format.
...this is one of the main reasons why I think WOFF is a good format. It's a clean start. Microsoft will switch it's type rendering in the next IE in Windows 7 to DirectWrite. Firefox is working on the same thing. DirectWrite renders CFF fonts much, much better than GDI. Foundries can pick which format (TTF or CFF) best suits each font by weighing lots of variables—file size, intended point size range, browser targets, financial feasibility of hand hinting and so on.

Nobody is obliged to put in the work necessary to provide fonts suitable for use in browsers. I don't care if they do or they don't. The demand will be filled.
But publicly declining to do so is a bit of a public relations problem because nobody wants to appear as a naysayer or an obstructionist, or as out of step with the times.

Engage with the web or not, just don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, is all I ask.
Or feed me pablum.

>sii, I didn't know you wrote fiction!

I write checks (often quite big ones) for font hinting, engineering and testing services on a regular basis. Fiction, not so much.

What happens if someone sets up a script that hits your site millions of times...?

Assuming you don't run your own datacenter, your host will eventually stop and report the incident. I can't imagine being a victim of a DDoS attac, for instance, would bump you up to the next bracket.

*Tracking*

I like this pricing model because it makes other pricing models seem more appealing.

@sii
I am very appreciative of MSFT's commitment to screen readability as a part of its corporate mission - no firm has done more. But you seemed to be speaking on behalf of or in defense of others.
Anyway, touché.

@typodermic
You made me laugh.

Tracking this thread because all the cool kids are doing it.

I too would love to see some real life comparisons of what the hinting involves. Typoteque’s fonts are very variable in preformance in different systems and browsers.

I really like John’s comments on this discussion. I second them, especially his first one.

What we (FSI) already have learned from web designers is that most of them won’t buy licenses for a complete family like FF Milo anyway, since they are way familiar to work with just the standard weights Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic. That’s why we offer Basic Sets consisting of these weights (if they are available) and single weights only to allow for the greatest possible flexibility. Of course you can also license the entire family, but we don’t expect many Web FontFont customers who need complete super families. FF Milo Web Basic Set is $142 only, which should be okay for a website with less than 500k pv/m for an unlimited time (You can even use it on all of your websites). It’s not by chance that Web FontFonts are less expensive than their OpenType companions. Actually we discussed our prices also with a lot of web designers and already licensed some in the last months. Believe it or not, all of them considered our pricing scheme fair and comprehensible. Far from it! Some expected way more expensive fees.

>I too would love to see some real life comparisons of what the hinting involves.

Can you be more precise? Are you talking about the daily life of a hinter, VTT use or...

Here is Georgia, followed by Reogia (pronounced “Re-Org Ya”), which is Georgia with the instruction portion removed from the glyph table, (pronounced “hint-stripped”).

The specimen was set on a Mac with the smoothing preference in the Appearence control panel set to “12”.

I assume this is approximately the same difference a windows xp user would see in default Appearance mode (aliased) with Georgia vs. Reogia, but I’ve been accused of tampering with specimens to make windows rendering look worse than it is, so I only show those live now. I also assume there would be a less obvious, but clear difference a windows vista/7 user would see in default Appearance mode (antialised) with the same comparison, but I have no time to provide live video of samples being made there.

On the contrary, there is no significant difference on the Mac, Georgia vs. Reogia, when antialised, i.e. above 12 or whatever value the user sets on a Mac for a smoothing preference in the Appearence control panel, it just works.

If you are having trouble getting fonts to look good across all windows preferences and versions, it's likely you have too many fonts anyway.

Cheers!

> You can even use it on all of your websites

Pardon me if this is slightly stupid, but I'm still confused.
Is it true that: The client (organization that runs the web site in question) licenses the fonts, and then the fonts can be used on all domains this client owns/runs; but I, as a web designer in this case, do not have to license the fonts in my name as well in order to do work on the web sites on these domains?
And if the client uses the font on multiple domains, the average page views from each domain are just added together?

Is it true that: The client (organization that runs the web site in question) licenses the fonts, and then the fonts can be used on all domains this client owns/runs; but I, as a web designer in this case, do not have to license the fonts in my name as well in order to do work on the web sites on these domains?

This is true (as it is also for ‘print fonts’ when you have to do a project with your client’s corporate font), but you as a designer may transfer your license to your client after you have finished the work on the website (provided that you delete all your copies of the fonts and the transferee accepts and agrees in writing [with copy to FSI] to be bound by the EULA).

And if the client uses the font on multiple domains, the average page views from each domain are just added together?

Yes.

@frode frank

>I too would love to see some real life comparisons of what the hinting involves.
>Typoteque’s fonts are very variable in preformance in different systems and browsers.

We're moving OT here, but....

That's a question you should put to Paul B, of Typotheque. (Or maybe I will.)
In Windows, at least, it seems TrueType hinting can homogenize - there are still differences, but they are less apparent, from browser to browser.
It's interesting that the variations in font rendering within browsers has only now fallen under scrutiny with @font-face. It happens with the "web safe" fonts, too, you know.
Perhaps when you are powerless and have to accept a thing you cannot change, there is a willing suspension of discernment.
What we have managed to milk out of the web safe fonts for fifteen years is unbelievable.
@font-face is one way to tackle the lack of variety. But there are technical and learning barriers to overcome. The other way would be to add to the web safe fonts.
In 2005, Joe Clark wrote a blog post urging Apple to license the ClearType fonts from Microsoft for inclusion on the Mac.
http://blog.fawny.org/2005/01/21/ccccccm/
This would have, at least, doubled the typographic palette that web designers had to work with and, considering how much mileage has been gotten out of Verdana, Georgia, et al, this would have been no small thing. It's not too late for this, either.
Here's a great survey question:
Where do the web safe fonts on the Mac come from?
1) They've been there since the beginning. (circa 1995, when the world began)
2) Steve Jobs won the rights to use them in a card game with Bill Gates.
3) Steve Jobs invented them.
4) Apple licenses them from Microsoft.
5) The web safe fonts are public domain, free for anybody to use.

Apple users would most probably pick number three (just joking, I'm buying a Mac in a couple of months) but I'm betting number 5 would get selected the most.

Lastly - when you get charged monthly by the number of page views, what happens if you fall behind in your payments? Does the font company stop by like the electric company does and give you one last chance to cough up before turning off the fonts?

"Hey man, don't turn off the fonts, please. I got kids."

Later frode,

rich

Got it Ivo, thanks.

@davidberlow
On the contrary, there is no significant difference on the Mac, Georgia vs. Reogia, when antialised, i.e. above 12 or whatever value the user sets on a Mac for a smoothing preference in the Appearence control panel, it just works.

But works how well or how poorly, in comparison to Windows?
That Windows needs the hints for the font to "work" we know.

Hmmm...?

Rich

David: I’m not directing this question to you specifically, but what I would love to see in the marketing for web fonts is the different results of auto hinting (or no hinting in case the fonts updated for web doesn’t have any) and manual hinting. Some of my fonts actually preform reasonably well without any hinting at all (at medium sizes), by the way.

Here's a comparison of the various appearances of FF Clifford Nine Roman in its OpenType CFF and TrueType incarnations. The first line of each size has no hinting at all, the second line has autohinting by FontLab Studio, and each third line is the font as offered by FSI (FF Clifford Pro Nine for the CFF sample respectively FF Clifford Web Pro Nine for the TT-based fonts).

-
CFF fonts (no difference if ClearType is on or off):

-
TrueType fonts, first with Windows Standard font smoothing:

-
TrueType (= EOT & WOFF FontFonts)with ClearType font smoothing:

-
And another one with TrueType and ClearType:

>This would have, at least, doubled the typographic palette that web designers had to work

... that's because you don't know what a web font is, or you missed the long discussion between myself and others over just exactly what the CT collection represents.

Cheers!

Jens,
I can't believe these hinting enhancements are worth the hassle. For these kinds of font designs we need a mutch higher monitor ppi. :-) Hopefully it looks better on Win7 and OSX.

If I remeber right some people say a true type hinting with VVT of a std font will cost between 1000 - 2000 €. Even if these are moon prices and its done for 400 €, its a lot.

I have to consider this from the perspective of a high school digital publications adviser (that's what yearbook/newspaper/lit mag are called by the kiddies now).
I read earlier by @James Puckett:
"Royalty-free digital font licensing was a mistake made in the 1980s that has been perpetuated far too long. Creators of great photos, illustrations, writing, video, music, etc. are all paid royalties. Great type should be the same way."

This makes complete sense to me, it really does!! But I wonder how you feel about programs like yearbook and literary magazines that certainly make a profit each year using designer fonts... shouldn't we be teaching our high school students typography? How can we if we can't afford to buy the licenses? I know in my experience, our publisher provides a font book to us each year, but man are they lame.... and very over-used. I encourage my kiddos to get online and find fonts they like instead. This is not to say I have a garage sale of fonts in my yearbooks, but I do go beyond the comic-sansish fonts provided to us.

What are all your thoughts?

As this thread has veered a little bit off topic I hope you don't mind me posting a link to this article that mentions FireFox switch to Direct2D font rendering... http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000104-264.html linking to this blog post http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2010/02/direct2d_landed_in_f...

>What are all your thoughts?

The model for licensing fonts for print production is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. The fact that most font EULAs do not currently allow EOT and WOFF conversion enables this and other new models.

On Clifford: I’m not really sure which is best at medium to large sizes, autohinting or manual hinting? The real difference is in the small sizes. How would this translate to a simpler sans serif?

To steer this back on topic: this is what we’ll be paying for, and such these kind of comparisons should be a vital part of the marketing. What separates the hinting of Typotheque fonts from FSI’s?

@ Jens: Any reason for the lining figures in the web version?

I think if you want to judge hinting quality, you have to learn to look at rendered fonts the right way. Just like you need to develop an eye for proportion and rhythm if you want to design type. It helps to know what hinting can and cannot do in order to judge its quality. Differences may not be visible at a glance, but remember that letters will be repeated over and over when fonts are used, and small faults can really become annoying over time. All the little details add up.

It's true that autohinting works well for some sizes. Unfortunately which sizes are affected is always different. And if you do the hints right in one size, that usually also fixes the other sizes.

Here are some more samples, using FF Kievit. I made these using Word 2007, which switches between ClearType and Greyscale smoothing at a certain size, so don't be confused :) I've added a grey dot to the lines that use Greyscale ("Windows Standard") smoothing.

-
FF Kievit Thin Italic. First line is Autohinting, second line FSI hinting. Look for inconsistent stem widths.

-
FF Kievit Light. Lines 1 & 3: Autohinting, 2 & 4: FSI hinting. First two lines: Autohinted CDO are flat on the bottom, vertical proportions of a are off, g has a black spot, pq have kinks in the bottom, u looks rectangular.

Second two lines: inconsistent pixel widths of stems.

-
FF Kievit BoldItalic: In the first line (Autohinting), inner stem of B is too thin. Upper right corner of PR is too dark. Stem widths are inconsistent between top and bottom of bowls in abdgop, also visible in the bigger size.

Third line: stem of B gets wider from bottom to top, bottom bowl is too dark on the right curve. Q is too thin where it touches the baseline. Spine of S is too thin.

-
FF Kievit Black: First line (autohinted) is barely readable. I've marked some more of the problems I'd correct manually. The fifth line shows some errors that are apparent in Greyscale mode but not in ClearType: The top bowl of B is farther right than the bottom one, but in the actual design it's of course the other way round. S leans to the right. Left curve of e doesn't follow through. Dot of i is misplaced.

-
I'm not so sure any of these comparisons should be used in marketing. It's too complicated, I doubt a non-typedesigner person will even have an idea what this is all about. And if you take the effort to explain this to your font-buying customers, keep in mind they are not the ones who will be reading the fonts most. Especially with regard to web fonts. Web site visitors will not care what effort went into hinting, they just see (hopefully) if a font looks good or not on the whole.

I know analogies are bad and quite flawed when comparing...but Jens post got me thinking about cup holders.

Cup holder are likely the least important aspect in terms of judging a car's quality overall, but it's what people focus on. Hinting is the core indicator of quality for on-screen type but most folks are likely just going to be looking at price or ease of implementation (ie, the cup holder) and "yea, that looks good enough".

I appreciate all the samples being posted...it's really useful to see the differences.

For those of you taking the time to do the proper hinting, do you feel it's worth it or that perhaps, if we're lucky, in short time screen resolutions will finally start creeping up again ultimately making it less of an issue?

I'd like to believe that a premium price for premium hinting would be a selling point, but, well, clients are cheap.

Great samples, Jens! Thank you!

Thanks for posting these samples, Jens. Perhaps you are right about this being to complicated for marketing, but for me seeing the comparisons is the only way to tell if I get my moneys worth. That said, I trust FSI to deliver high quality work.

Btw, where you at Typostammtisch last week?

@jens

I'm not so sure any of these comparisons should be used in marketing. It's too complicated, I doubt a non-typedesigner person will even have an idea what this is all about.

This is so endearing. You're right, us non-typedesigner persons couldn't have any idea what this is all about. Thanks for climbing down off your pedestal and letting us know.

@dberlow
missed the long discussion between myself and others over just exactly what the CT collection represents.
What it represents? Ah, so deep, so lofty, so metaphysical. And such doubletalk, too! You're such a kidder. What it represents really doesn't sound worth my time, frankly. What the CT fonts are, I can see for myself, but thanks.

@sii
The model for licensing fonts for print production is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. The fact that most font EULAs do not currently allow EOT and WOFF conversion enables this and other new models.
I don't understand the "enables this and other new models" part. What models do you mean and what's WOFF/EOT got to do with licensing for print production? Serious. Not following at all.

regards,

rich

“You're right, us non-typedesigner persons couldn't have any idea what this is all about.” (Richard)
Looking at your blog post about hinting almost three months ago, I am not sure you really understand it.

@Rich:

I believe Si's referring to the idea that most existing desktop licenses do not allow for web font usage (for example, not allowing EOT conversion), which is what creates a "gap" allowing for new licensing models for web fonts.

Cheers,

T

> What the CT fonts are, I can see for myself, but thanks.
lol. who's kidding now? so how do they look on the Mac?

cheers!

I just grabbed this screenshot from Typekit on a Windows computer. Are there less hinting involved in the fonts offered there than those offered directly from Fontfont?

Btw, there are some jpeg artifacts (I had no professional image editing program at hand), but the appearence of the fonts isn't that far off from how it looks on this screen.

Wow! That looks pretty bad, Frode. Is this normal looking for you?

I'm usually on a Mac. I borrowed this computer from my brother, It's a laptop running Windows Vista. The web browser is Google Chrome and Cleartype is not enabled (by default?).

Frode, these screenshots are fully aliased, with no font smoothing at all, which is very odd as this kind of rendering is pretty uncommon these days, and at these sizes borders on the prehistoric.

Cleartype is not enabled

Options for font smoothing are ‘None’, ‘Standard’ (greyscale), and ‘ClearType’. This is ‘None’, unless these fonts have gasp table settings that disabled smoothing in ‘Standard’, which would be very unusual.

The funny thing is that Frank Chimero's website using FF Tisa Web looks amazing.

The font smoothing on this computer is set to "None".

@frode
Hey man, gotta upgrade from that 386 Windows 3.0 machine.
But seriously, how do the web safe fonts like Verdana, Georgia, etc.. look in comparison? As has been noted many times, cleartype/font-smoothing can be turned on and off. Also, what kind of screen?
The baseline is: how do the intalled workhorse fonts look in comparison? You can't evaluate in a vacuum.

@miha
Ah, a faithful subscriber. Thanks for the link. Well, it's a pleasure to lock horns with someone besides Hudson or Berlow for a change. You're right, I don't understand hinting. Enlighten me.

@db
so how do they look on the Mac?
Don't rightly care at the moment.

@TP
Thanks for explaining. Frankly, I'm still having trouble understanding it. Will give it another go tomorrow. Maybe the light will go on.

>The font smoothing on this computer is set to "None".
Frank that specimen of the other Frank's site looks like the Mac, where "none" is not an option after OS X.

Cheers!

Both screenshots are from the same Windows computer running Google Chrome. I didn’t change the settings.

Let's say that the business model is on, everyone is happy, type designers get royalties and web designers use the fonts on their websites

@sii and @kari get the main problem: Failing on font rendering quality is the bigger risk, Poor rendering quality would kill every distribution model.
It actually looks horrible with Windows' ClearType –about 58% of market share–

@Don McCahhill, Perhaps the solution would be to make digital fonts dependent on the OS, so that when you change from WinXP to Win7 you need a new font library.
Kind of yes, microsoft will switched to DirectWrite on Win7, the drawback is that IE9 CANNOT be installed on WinXP, forcing the consumer to buy a license for Win7, so they have to pay to have de possibility to enjoy a better Web

I have a few websites which use typekit, and as @frode's screenshot shows, you'll get the idea of how it looks on the mortals' computers.

if ClearType is disabled, and you made no other changes, then its likely that that the screenshot above is rendered in Greyscale. Turning ClearType off, does not disable all font smoothing. If its a TrueType font, then the GASP table settings must be set to allow font smoothing at the lower sizes. When I zoom in on the text it is Greyscale text.

here is how it looks in IE9, the Regular font looks to be well hinted, but the italics and bolds on the site seems to be faked.

@mike_duggan sounds like we have to set a tutorial on our websites for the visitors, so they can enable ClearType. the thing is we all here now that, but the visitor does not…

@sannorozco
on Windows Vista and Windows 7, ClearType is the default rendering on the system. It may be that frode frank is running Windows XP, where the default is set to Font Smoothing, with the option to turn on ClearType.

So, in a lot of cases the customer does not need to choose ClearType

more info here

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/06/23/engineering-changes-to-clear...

@sii
Failing on font rendering quality is the bigger risk.

Nonsense. Everything favors the early entrant with the lowest barriers. Ugly, beautiful, whatever. Not everybody shares your allergic aversions to what constitutes "ugly" type. The uglier it is, the better I like it. I've told you that.
What counts more is that it's not the same old web safe mix. It's a different look.

@frode

Me:
The baseline is: how do the intalled workhorse fonts look in comparison? You can't evaluate in a vacuum.
If the user is quite used to Arial and Georgia and Verdana looking like crap, they won't care less about some other font chosen by the web designer that likewise looks like crap.
frode, baby, bubby, what do those fonts look like on the machine you did your screen grabs on? "None", "grayscale", "font smoothing", "ClearType" - these are causes which mean nothing without the context of their effect on every font the user is seeing in the browser.

Rich

Rich: ‘Arial and Georgia and Verdana’ were all heavily hinted for aliased text rendering (i.e. no font smoothing at all, just square, monochrome pixels). In addition, Georgia and Verdana were expressly designed for screen reading in aliased and greyscale rendering (grid fitted, hinted, and spaced for screen). ClearType rendering ignores the whole pixel x-direction delta hints in such fonts, but retains all other aspects that make these fonts well-suited to text on screen. So whatever the current rendering environment, whether with no antialiasing, greyscale antialiasing or sub-pixel antialiasing, these fonts are still going to perform better than the vast majority of other fonts.

Further, as I demonstrated earlier in response to your ‘Ten Great Free Fonts Cross-Browser’ TT conversions, comparisons of potential web text faces need to be made at text sizes, not looking at half-inch high glyphs. If one is comparing display faces, okay, show them as large as you like, but what fundamentally matters is not whether big type looks pretty or ugly but whether small type is readable.

I'll meet up with my brother later in the week again. Perhaps I can get some screenshots of Verdana/Georgia then.

@mike_duggan You are right, it's enabled by default on win7 and vista, my concern is the nearly 59% with WinXP

@John Hudson I'm with you, web typefaces must be readable at any size, and that require manual hinting

Rich, I wrote my comment only because of your sarcastic response to Jens, that you have no idea what hinting is all about – yet in your explanation confuse hinting and subpixel rendering, which are two very different methods. But your blog post is almost three months old and I am sure you know much more now.

@jh

So whatever the current rendering environment, whether with no antialiasing, greyscale antialiasing or sub-pixel antialiasing, these fonts are still going to perform better than the vast majority of other fonts.

OK. So, Frode, you still there? Take a grab of Georgia and Verdana in that same environment and let's see how much better, if at all measurable, those fonts look.
Seeing is believing.

(Frode, frankly, I don't really have the time right now to boot my XP SP2 machine with IE6 and start playing with settings, let alone displays. Help me out, willya?)

Congruence is the issue, not some system settings.
Do you think computer users with older systems running older browsers are unaware that what they are getting is a degraded version of what they could get with a newer system running the latest version of an A-list browser? I don't.

If one is comparing display faces, okay, show them as large as you like, but what fundamentally matters is not whether big type looks pretty or ugly but whether small type is readable.

Not if it never gets small. I really don't think anybody is going to use a font like Tagesschrift for paragraph text. Fonts have "sweet spots". Certain sizes, measures, just work better than others. (Telling you that is absurd, but a lot of people don't know.)

Play the song "Begin The Beguine" in the key of C and then play it in the key of A Flat and there will be a very discernible difference you can feel, even though all the internal relationships - that is, the harmonic intervals, melody, et al - remain exactly the same. (Sorry to non-musicians for the analogy, but I assure you it's on the money.)

Computer screens, as a medium, would appear to make a strange demand on typefaces as opposed to print - the demand to look equally "good" at any size. I think this is unattainable. In fact, I don't even think it's worth the try. What to do about it, I don't know.

So anyway, to cap off, it seems to me you're saying that what type designers looking to cater to web designers should strive for is as close as they can come to the construction of the web safe fonts.
Sounds good to me.
After all the sturm and drang of last year over EOT/CWT and its main advantage being backwards compatibility with IE 6, 7, and 8, I would assume type designers would want to take advantage of that.

Frode?

Rich

>>@sii
>>Failing on font rendering quality is the bigger risk.

>Nonsense.

I think you missed the point. I said rendering is a bigger risk than business model, as if you have good quality fonts the business model can be changed instantly, you can't fix a rendering issue instantly.

Should add that when I made that comment back on Feb 25, this thread was about FSI’s licensing model, and that remained the focus for another few weeks. I didn’t change the subject to rendering, the people looking at the fonts changed the subject. At the end of the day it always comes down to quality.

Rich: Seeing is believing.

What, you don't remember what aliased Verdana and Georgia looked like on your CRT monitor for all those years?

Here are some benchmark (representative) images of available renderings of these fonts in Vista: GDI aliased, GDI ClearType antialiased, and DWrite ClearType antialiased (the latter with y-direction greyscaling, subpixel positioning, and subpixel kerning). I can't make greyscale antialiasing showings at this size without hacking the font gasp tables: these are set so that greyscale antialiasing kicks in at larger sizes.

It's worth noting that screenshots of CT rendering may appear different on your computer than the local CT rendering due to gamma, resolution, and other factors. However, with that caveat, I suggest that any and all showings of web fonts intended for body text should be comparable to these benchmarks; most importantly, they should be at the same or similar size.

John:

To me the ClearType samples look awful, because I see all colors of the rainbow in what is supposed to be black text on white background. (Maybe my eyes are weird with colors. But from what I have been gathering, many other people's eyes are, too.)

Aren't all “font rendering problems” in discussion these days actually created by the wysiwyg-philosophy? If we treat the screen as a screen – and not as an emulation of paper – all problems seem to disappear.

And as more and more of our content is produced and consumed online and on screens – what's the point of wysiwyg anyway?

All exits are closed, but we can always escape through the main entrance... :-)

hi Gustavo

as John mentioned, It's worth noting that screenshots of CT rendering may appear different on your computer than the local CT rendering due to gamma, resolution, and other factors. If you are using Windows, and ClearType that is?

I tried to make the same screenshot of DWrite rendering as John, but I just can’t. Subpixel rendering looks very weak (my example is second):

Hi Mike,

I am looking at the screenshots on Mac OSX. But I see colors every time I look at ClearType on Windows, too. I find it more disturbing than Quartz, even though I dislike Quartz subpixel rendering for the same reason (colors). My favorite setting is simple greyscale anti-alias, if possible gridfitted. Maybe I'm just hypersensitive to colors?

The point I am trying to make is that many of the recent ‘problems’ with font rendering on the web come from using fonts and conventions from print (wysiwyg). From my (very peculiar) point-of-view, the issue of sharp screen type has been solved several years ago with bitmap fonts and pixel fonts for Flash. Such fonts don't look good on print, but with html/css one can easily specify a proper stylesheet for printed media, with proper print fonts.

>So, has new ClearType really weaker colors of subpixel rendering?

GDI and DWrite CT can be tuned separately (hence the multiple screens on the CT tuner), and by default DWrite uses a different setting to the default GDI setting (a result of much testing AFAIK) - try re-running the Windows 7 ClearType tuner.

Thanks Sii, it worked – the new setting just wasn’t instantaneously visible like in old CT.

@sii

First, sorry for responding to a second hand account of what you said. Shame on me for that. Nullius In Verba.

>At the end of the day it always comes down to quality.
Yes and no. Depends on the definition of quality. (Having spent years in manufacturing, I'm inclined towards the philosophy - and science - of Edward Deming.)
More often than not what those within a craft consider the important "qualities" are not the most important to the bulk of customers.
Free is still free, after all. And price is a quality.
But enough.

@jh
>What, you don't remember what aliased Verdana and Georgia looked like on your CRT monitor for all those years?
Is that what that strange, recurring dream I have is really about? Now I can seek treatment. Thanks! (Thought it was due to some of the pharmacological delights in which I indulged as a young bacchant.)
(BTW - Yet another reason why web fonts failed to gain any traction until recently was the predominance of CRTs. When the benefit is going from not too awful to different but still pretty awful, there isn't much of an impetus - even if the bandwidth had permitted it.)

Great screen shots, BTW. Hope you don't mind if I appropriate them.
Re: rendering with bitmap screen shots - as was pointed out to me by my FB friend Bill Hill some time ago, compressed raster formats like GIF, PNG, JPEG, fail to accurately re-create. You need BMP or TIFF to grab the full color spectrum. Seems only logical, and to my eye, that certainly seems the case. (True?)
But of course the size of the image is a deal-breaker when posting to a forum.

@miha
When you say "weaker", I'm sure you're right in some sense because the one thing I'm not seeing in CT 2 is the "fattening" of the font that I see on the Mac.
And I'm quite happy about that. Looks like better fidelity to me. And a much more readable font at small sizes.

@ RahimSnow

My sincerest condolences! I think I would be less polite, if I had licensed FontFonts. The upgrade should not cost more than 20%. Everything else is usury.

>The point I am trying to make is that many of the recent ‘problems’ with font rendering on the web come from using fonts and conventions from print (wysiwyg).

Don't bother. ;-)

Cheers!

So, has new ClearType really weaker colors of subpixel rendering?

I realise, looking at Miha's comparison, that my examples may not be representative of default tunings in the release version of DWrite, as I made them with a rendering test tool. [So, Rich, perhaps best if you don't appropriate them, but try to get some renderings from e.g. IE9 or the latest FF pre-release builds.]

Verdana's alright, Georgia's alright, they just seem a little weird,

duh-render, duh-render, but don't give yourself away.

Are there one-size, one-platform benchmarks in web type? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

Or is it duh-render, duh-render, but don't give yourself a way?

Hard to decide with all the cheap tricks flying. ;)

Cheers!

Are there one-size, one-platform benchmarks in web type?

No, and I didn't suggest that there were. But there are one-size, one-platform benchmarks for comparing different text fonts at the same size on the same platform, which so far has not happened with all the rush to embrace the desktop publishing c. 1985 approach to web fonts.

>But there are one-size, one-platform benchmarks for comparing different text fonts at the same size on the same platform,

I think this is a thin slice of bench and not much of a mark.

For example, what if the comparison font is designed based on the ppm grid at which you want to compare a perfectly good text font designed based on another ppm grid? The benchmark font could look GREAT on its grid but CraPola on the grid of the font you want to compare it to... Is your font better than the benchmark, or worse? Or.... should all fonts be drawn to the grid of the benchmark? Are fonts with built-in leading of any amount, forever inferior at all text sizes?

And once you've seen these fonts on one platform at one size, and determined that they are equally brilliant or mediocre, What do you know about them as web text fonts?

>... which so far has not happened...

I think a number of people have lent little voices all along, and others have been making more noise based on tests such as this but older. The results then were that we need all the great digital font technologies we've ever had ('cept for maybe 1), not a lowest common denominator of two, to really solve the issues of web typography.

I needed most of these technologies to design a puny-human web-font-format bench, before I could begin to mark it ;)

Cheers!

Forgive me, I did a screenshot with cleartype enabled as well. Must have picked the wrong one.

Yes, Frank, there can be large differences in horizontal metrics between aliased and anti-aliased type of the same text on the same computer.

Mr. Hudson's 'benchmarks' e.g. do not show this because they are chosen fortuitously, or something.

Or is it something about the aliased type on the right? or the missing grey squares,

Cheers!

I take it you are referring to the darker grey squares on the grey background, David. They're merely a design feature (see www.mosaicsolar.com).

I'm really not a part of the discussion in this thread, which unfortunately seems a bit heated. I just wanted to know if there was a difference in hinting between the Web Fontfonts offered on Typekit and those they sell from Fontshop.com. Turns out it's only a case of my brothers computer having Cleartype (and "Greyscale") disabled.

All the best, and happy holidays!

Mr Berlow: Mr. Hudson's 'benchmarks' e.g. do not show this because they are chosen fortuitously, or something.<.em>

Or because they're Georgia and Verdana, and are designed to be close to grid-fitted stems and spacing -- at or somewhere close to the ppem size I show --, so don't vary in width horizontally between aliased and antialised as much as a lot of other fonts will.

Mr Berlow again: And once you've seen these fonts on one platform at one size, and determined that they are equally brilliant or mediocre, What do you know about them as web text fonts?

So far, you'll know that most of them are crap, and that the web is going to become a very ugly and difficult thing to read in the next couple of years.

Re. fonts designed for specific ppem sizes: a) obviously they should be compared at the size at which they look best and b) they don't worry me, especially not if you are making them.

Can I go back to calling you David now?