I read that interview and I pretty like it! You've done nice typefaces. Keep going.

thank you, André!

Ever wondered what happened to Chelsea’s £30.8 million Ukrainian striker? He grew a mustache and started drawing fonts :)

Андрей, молодчина.
Очень горд за вас!
Russian bears come! )))))))))

Andrij, are you selling many font licences in Cyrillic countries, or is the bulk of your retail font income from Latin script users?

@Nick Shinn
I do not want to answer for Andrij, but the in Russia and Ukraine is the majority using unlicensed fonts.
So I think is bulk of retail font income from Latin script users.
piracy - is a very big problem in Russia (and Ukraine) (((((

omg, soccer players and russian bears in comments!

Nick, ukrainian users is very important in my list. here is some statistics for last year (Ukraine is yellow, USA is blue, Russia is light blue) http://andrij.livejournal.com/72499.html

i hope that belarusian, serbian and bulgarian users will be interested in my fonts too.

and what about your cyrillic fonts?

Congratulation, Andrij.
Nice one.

thank you, Dušan

hope we can do some pan-cyrillic activities.

Andrijko, my Shinntype Cyrillic fonts have sold poorly.
I could probably repackage and reprice them to be more attractive, but I don’t think it would be worth the effort.
Marketing is an issue for a Westerner.
For instance, they do not show up in a search for “Cyrillic” encoding at ParaType.

I thought Fontesque Cyrillic would do a little better, but again, AFAIK FontFont doesn’t specifically target the Cyrillic market, and no doubt Fontesque is out of style right now.

However, I will be releasing a new face later this year with Cyrillic and Greek, and I will try and do a better job of marketing to Russia and Ukraine.

> my Shinntype Cyrillic fonts have sold poorly.

But are you also seeing much piracy of them?

hhp

It’s not something I monitor.

>It’s not something I monitor

It's not quite right thing to do...
Often, on pirate use you can earn more than the sales.
Here is a recent example - noticed the pirated use of Cyrillic Fedra (Russian Bank adds)
http://s59.radikal.ru/i166/1203/b5/e584dd02e830.jpg
We contacted with Peter, now we find out the details.

again Fedra? http://typophile.com/node/84671

So what happened with those two cases?

hhp

Dennis, I don’t actively search for piracy, it’s not a battle I choose to fight.
IMO it’s just part of the “shrinkage” (the trade term for shoplifting) of the digital marketplace.
I have enough to do.
For instance, I have been exchanging emails with Lineto for many months, trying to persuade them that they should not have named a new release “Brown”, as that is a longstanding Shinntype trademark.
If I wanted, I could spend all day running my business and not designing typefaces (or posting on Typophile).
However, this is not to say that I wouldn’t go after a particularly egregious act of piracy if I came across it or it was brought to my attention.

Nick, you don't have to fight - it could simply be
useful information for you. For example if there
is in fact much piracy of your Cyrillic fonts that
means you're on to something; if there isn't that
might mean people are looking for something else.

> they should not have named a new release "Brown"

?
That's just a color, so it's probably too generic to
be able to protect. So yeah, don't choose generic
names for fonts. :-)

hhp

Andrij, looking forward.

Question for Western typodesigners: did having Greek and/or Cyrillic character set helped your fonts reaching better raking in font shops and between Greek and Cyrillic, which one seems more payable to make if you're looking at market for each one?

…if there is in fact much piracy of your Cyrillic fonts that means you're on to something; if there isn't that might mean people are looking for something else …

One way or the other, realistically speaking I’m not in a position to monitor or market to Cyrillic countries, either directly or through distributors. I’m better off concentrating on Western markets, with Cyrillic & Greek as features for Western corporate customers selling in those markets.

And the types in question, Scotch Modern and Figgins Sans, are not productized for mass sales in the first place, in the West.

That's just a color …

It’s more than a colour, it’s also a surname (Brown is a newspaper face, named after the publisher). There’s no Mr Red or Mr Yellow, outside of Resevoir Dogs—not all colours are equally generic.
But that’s not the issue — Lineto didn’t do an adequate name search.

And then there is the sound-alike clash with Braun GmbH.

Braun isn’t in the font business.
Neither is Kia, hence the Optima car.

Didn't you hear? Monotype bought Braun.

hhp

Still, Braun and Brown share pronunciation and meaning. Hence, a bloke can wonder at times which witch is which.