|
|
 
|
|
Author
|
Topic: Fonts - expensive vs. cheap ones
|
Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
|
posted 07-10-2013 05:49 PM
This is really directed at Bobby Henderson but I thought it would make a good topic and will have information we can all use.
My question is, what's the deal with fonts? You can download jillions of them for free on the internet, and a lot of software programs like Photoshop come stuffed with hundreds of them.
So what are the differences between those font packages you pay hundreds of dollars for, the ones that come in software, and the freebies on the net? Is there any "pitfalls" to using any of the free ones? (I'm sure some of them come complete with fun spyware...)
About 25 years ago I bought a package of fonts from Parsons Technology, which was the company who made MoneyCounts, the first bookkeeping program I used. I still use those fonts -- lots of cool ones in there. I think I paid $49 for it.
Then a few years after that, and before the Internet was such a big deal, I bought this graphics program that had a "million graphics" in it (and it does....just about everything you could want). That package came with a thousand fonts as well, some of which I installed and they seem to work fine.
My point is, all of these fonts seem to work fine. They scale fine, they look good to my un-trained eyes....in fact I even used one of them to make a 10x3' banner for our county fair that I must say, turned out awesome.
So...Is there some great thing I'm missing out on by not having any of the multi-hundred-dollar font packages?
| IP: Logged
|
|
Frank Cox
Film God
Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011
|
posted 07-10-2013 06:33 PM
One of my "sidelines" is providing computer support and custom programming for a printing and publishing business, so I have bumped into this issue of fonts numerous times.
Some fonts are great and some are absolute crap. They may look fine on your computer screen but when you start doing things like rotating the pages and imposing them onto press plates things can go bad very quickly.
I wrote a custom imposition and RIP program for them that works with their press. It took me a couple of months on-and-off, mostly research and experimenting, but the end result works fine and cost them a lot less than the $100,000 that they would have paid for an off-the-shelf solution that does more-or-less the same thing.
But: The program doesn't work well with crappy fonts. Properly formed fonts are what the program expects and it works fine, but fonts sourced from "10,000 Fonts for $1.99" CD's and whatnot tend to cause problems ranging from missing elements on the plates to stuff that's magically moved, or occasionally the whole program crashing entirely.
You can occasionally get away with using a crappy-but-decent-looking font if you outline it, but it's usually way more trouble than it's worth (and might cost you a few wasted plates) to track it down, so the best advise remains, stay far away from crappy fonts.
The folks with the print shop have learned not to use crappy fonts, and I know a lot more about printing and presses than I would otherwise have needed to.
| IP: Logged
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 07-10-2013 08:34 PM
There's a number of reasons why some commercial fonts cost quite a lot of money versus the ones that are cheap or free.
Generally speaking, high priced commercial fonts are better drawn/digitized than the free fonts. Like Frank said, these better drawn letters will work more reliably on a variety of printers and image setters. There are certain guidelines with how vector-based art should be drawn when creating Postscript or TrueType vector based font outlines. If someone merely auto-traces some scans of letters he sketched and generates a font from that it could have technical problems when installed and used.
Commercially sold fonts typically have custom hinting for improved display on computer screens. They'll usually have a lot more built in kerning pairs. A kerning pair is data built into the font that tells any software using it how to space two specific characters together when certain letter pair combination occur, such as "VA" or "LT". A good font design program like Font Lab Studio might automatically get the spacing right on those pairs, but if the type design has some unusal features the designer might have to go back and tweak the results.
Most new fonts are being distributed in OpenType format. Free fonts usually have basic or even minimal character sets. I've seen many free fonts missing lower case letter assignments, missing certain punctuation marks and even missing numerals.
Many commercially sold Open Type fonts will have a full standard character set and also feature extended character sets to cover other features. These can include alternate versions of letters, ligatures (2 or 3 letters joined into a single character such as "fl" or "ffl"), small capital sets, fraction sets, other alphabets (Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, etc.) or other custom features. It usually takes a good graphics program like Adobe Illustrator or InDesign to utilize those extended features of OpenType.
It's also common for commercially sold typefaces to have numerous "weights." Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold-Italic are the basic weights and many freebie fonts don't even cover those. Many just have one single weight. A commercial type family may have dozens of weights ranging from hairline or ultra light to ultra bold or extra black. Some families, like Helvetica Neue or Proxima Nova, throw in naturally condensed, narrow, wide or extended versions in all those various light to very bold ranges.
Commercially sold fonts are usually more aesthetically pleasing. Most typefaces that are on the cutting edge of design trends cost quite a bit of money. Some companies or organizations will spend a lot of time and money developing a custom typeface family. Newspapers have done this, futzing over everything from legibility to ink use at different point sizes. More than a decade of research and testing went into the Clearview Highway type family which replaced the FHWA Series Gothic type family on highway signs in a couple dozen states over the past few years.
Ultimately though, commercial fonts cost a lot of money because too few individuals and businesses have an appreciation for type. A great type designer can easily spend years working his ass off creating a professional quality type family. He needs to get at least something for his efforts. Amortized out among a limited customer base it's easy for a commercially sold type family to cost hundreds of dollars or even more than $1000.
Unfortunately the high price of many commercial fonts will translate to sales only when a design client wants/needs a specific type family. Very few people are going to fork over $300-$1000 for a dozen or so fonts just because they love the design.
The MyFonts web site has been trying to get around that by offering introductory pricing specials on some new type families or running sales on other type families. Some of these discounts are pretty aggressive. We're talking 90% off in some cases. I've been jumping on a lot of those specials. It's a hell of a lot easier spending $20-$50 for a professional quality type family just for the look of it than spending 10 times as much. Maybe those specials will translate into a lot more customers and actually get more money into the pockets of type designers.
A couple free font web sites are pretty good. Font Squirrel has some good quality freebie fonts there. The League of Movable Type is a designer-driven shareware foundry. Hobbyists can download the fonts and pay whatever they can afford, even if it is zero. Commercial users are supposed to pay at least something.
Adobe is kind of an oddity. They do have a very good type foundry of their own and their fonts are typically very good. Over the years they've become more stingy on how many fonts they bundle into their creative applications. Rivals like CorelDRAW and Deneba Canvas have offered far more fonts, but not quite in the same level of quality as Adobe's. With the new Creative Cloud service Adobe is supposed to start allowing users of Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. to "sync" Typekit fonts into their computers and applications as part of their subscription. Adobe hasn't turned on that feature yet.
| IP: Logged
|
|
John Roddy
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 114
From: Spring, TX, United States
Registered: Dec 2012
|
posted 07-10-2013 08:49 PM
The difference between free and every level of paid is entirely dependent on what you plan to use it for. If all you're doing is typing a research paper for school or something, you don't need to shell out $800 for Super Sexy Sans Serif. Just using one of the system fonts is good enough. I, on the other hand, do a lot of comic lettering. That's such a specific application that it requires special fonts to get the best result. I have a lot of fonts thought I bought from Comicraft and Blambot, most of which cost me quite a pretty penny. But the ease of using them and guarantee that they have the characters & support I need make it all worthwhile.
Another thing to keep in mind is the license. You don't own any fonts that you didn't make yourself. You simply have permission from the creator to use it, and 99/100 times, it's gonna be limited to "free for personal use." This means that you can use the font however you want as long as you're not relying on it for major business purposes. For example, Blambot has a wide selection of free fonts, but if you want to use them with a comic published by a major publisher, you are expected to shell out some cash for them anyway.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 07-11-2013 08:58 AM
quote: John Roddy
You simply have permission from the creator to use it, and 99/100 times, it's gonna be limited to "free for personal use." This means that you can use the font however you want as long as you're not relying on it for major business purposes.
Even with "business purposes" a commercial font license can be tricky. Typically the EULA will allow the font file to be installed on 1 personal computer and used for the kinds of graphics work that only a single computer would output. The font customer might have to fork over more money to use the typeface on a mass publication, such as a large newspaper, the opening titles or end credits on a movie, etc.
Adobe's Typekit service adds a little more confusion to licensing. Currently Typekit fonts can only be used in Adobe's web design applications that are capable of loading web fonts into layouts. There's a huge number of typeface choices, many of which are pretty expensive to buy on their own. At some point in the future (Adobe hasn't said when) 175 Typekit font families will be made available "to the desktop" as computer system fonts. Unfortunately you'll have to be connected to the Internet for the fonts to work and there are limitations on how they can be embedded in PDFs. They can't be "packaged" with design projects to send off to service bureaus for printing. I don't know why the Typekit desktop fonts aren't already available. I can only guess two possible reasons: 1. software issues, 2. legal issues. Typekit fonts come from at least a couple dozen type foundries. Adobe obviously has the largest collection of fonts hosted by Typekit, but they're having to pay fees of some kind to other type foundries. Maybe there's some ongoing negotiations regarding the Typekit desktop fonts. I don't know. I just wish the feature was working already.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
Printer-friendly view of this topic