Your favourite font choices

[Bobby Henderson]

I guess you can add Microsoft to it too nowadays. They run their own type foundry and license most of their fonts as part of the Microsoft 365 service.

Microsoft has a very small library of typefaces they created in-house compared to other major type foundries. The vast majority of system typefaces bundled in Windows (including the dreadful Arial) were created by other companies, such as Monotype and Ascender. Microsoft appears to be trying to copy Adobe's CC model, but they have a long way to go at making the fonts package in Office 365 comparable to the Adobe Fonts service.

There used to be many more medium-sized players back in the 1990s and early 2000s, but Adobe and Monotype did a good job at gobbling them all up.

While companies like Monotype have acquired rivals like ITC/Letraset and Linotype many other independent type companies have continued to operate just fine. The current online-driven marketplace is making it easier for individual typeface designers to create and sell fonts on their own without any affiliation to a major type foundry. Fonts are no longer distributed as retail SKUs on physical CD-ROMs or floppy discs. Online font stores like MyFonts sell typefaces from hundreds of different independent designers and small companies located all over the world. And the Adobe Fonts service offers fonts from dozens of different foundries, including a lot of individual type designers. "Adobe Originals" typefaces are a small fraction of what's available to sync.

Sure, but the entire idea of this typeface being somewhat special was part of the appeal for this customer... I don't think this company or person ever published it to one of the common outlets and if they did, I guess it has since been pulled. People like to have "exclusive things", they often just don't want to pay for it...

At some point any company will need to re-fresh its branding system, including new typefaces. Old fonts files, especially any made prior to the 2000's, will often be deficient in terms of typographical features compared to modern OpenType, OpenType Variable and OpenType SVG fonts released now.

Having exclusive typefaces will always mean paying extra for it. If the typeface is either free or relatively cheap to buy then anyone can use it. The ultimate act is commissioning a type designer to create custom typefaces for exclusive use in-house. Gotham started out that way as an in-house typeface for GQ magazine before it was made commercially available. There are many other examples of this. The Subway restaurant chain updated its branding a couple or so years ago, which included adding a couple in-house sans serif fonts called "six inch" and "foot long."

But I sometimes wished there was something like a WORKING central copyright register, with the active need to register something and also to explicitly renew it. There is lots of stuff out there that's technically abandoned, but still covered by copyright.

Chances are essentially nil for anything like a global copyright registry to be established that has any enforcement power. Commercial fonts are pirated like crazy, even in countries like the US where there is far more legal protection for intellectual property. Nations like Russia and China appear to encourage IP theft. That reality makes something like the Adobe Fonts service a little more attractive to both type designers and people who want to use commercial type legally. The designers are going to get paid, not as much as selling type packages outright to users, but they get at least something. And the customers have a very simple way to use the fonts and have legal cover for doing so. We also can't forget that pirated content (music, movies, software and even commercial fonts) is sometimes bait used to deliver payloads of malware. It's safer to acquire fonts from far better known sources.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Microsoft has a very small library of typefaces they created in-house compared to other major type foundries. The vast majority of system typefaces bundled in Windows (including the dreadful Arial) were created by other companies, such as Monotype and Ascender. Microsoft appears to be trying to copy Adobe's CC model, but they have a long way to go at making the fonts package in Office 365 comparable to the Adobe Fonts service.

Fonts wouldn't be the first things were Microsoft is late to the party, yet it's clear they're starting to use fonts as a means to leverage their Microsoft 365 subscriptions. I'd guess that most fonts in their library have an external origin like URW or Monotype, yet they seem to have the full licensing rights to those fonts. Microsoft doesn't see fonts as a stand-alone business model, but as the behemoth they are, they do have the luxury to do so. But, their newer additions aren't just low-quality fonts. Most of them are fully featured, using modern features and support a broad range of codepages. Those aren't the cheapest fonts around. If you like them or not is also a bit up to personal taste, but I'm quite pleased with some recentish additions.

Their font library isn't the largest by far, but their userbase is gigantic, probably the largest on the planet. They're also rapidly adding new fonts, as I can see pop-up a new typeface to download about every few weeks. I think them expanding their "in house foundry" it is largely beneficial to us all, even if it's just the chances of seeing Arial and Comic Sans in the wild will diminish over time.

While companies like Monotype have acquired rivals like ITC/Letraset and Linotype many other independent type companies have continued to operate just fine. The current online-driven marketplace is making it easier for individual typeface designers to create and sell fonts on their own without any affiliation to a major type foundry. Fonts are no longer distributed as retail SKUs on physical CD-ROMs or floppy discs. Online font stores like MyFonts sell typefaces from hundreds of different independent designers and small companies located all over the world. And the Adobe Fonts service offers fonts from dozens of different foundries, including a lot of individual type designers. "Adobe Originals" typefaces are a small fraction of what's available to sync.

The absense of phyical media doesn't make the license audits much simpler, instead of a stack of yellowed purchase orders on paper, now you have e-mail inboxes full with order confirmations and PDF attachments with terms and conditions. Joy.

At some point any company will need to re-fresh its branding system, including new typefaces. Old fonts files, especially any made prior to the 2000's, will often be deficient in terms of typographical features compared to modern OpenType, OpenType Variable and OpenType SVG fonts released now.

Having exclusive typefaces will always mean paying extra for it. If the typeface is either free or relatively cheap to buy then anyone can use it. The ultimate act is commissioning a type designer to create custom typefaces for exclusive use in-house. Gotham started out that way as an in-house typeface for GQ magazine before it was made commercially available. There are many other examples of this. The Subway restaurant chain updated its branding a couple or so years ago, which included adding a couple in-house sans serif fonts called "six inch" and "foot long."

I think maintaining your own corporate fonts is only feasible for the largest businesses and you gradually see them slowly giving up on it, like my IKEA example, who switched to Noto. Especially if you want your fonts to keep up-to-date and support many international codepages. In this case, the font was primarily to be used for a limited run TV and video production.

Chances are essentially nil for anything like a global copyright registry to be established that has any enforcement power. Commercial fonts are pirated like crazy, even in countries like the US where there is far more legal protection for intellectual property. Nations like Russia and China appear to encourage IP theft. That reality makes something like the Adobe Fonts service a little more attractive to both type designers and people who want to use commercial type legally. The designers are going to get paid, not as much as selling type packages outright to users, but they get at least something. And the customers have a very simple way to use the fonts and have legal cover for doing so. We also can't forget that pirated content (music, movies, software and even commercial fonts) is sometimes bait used to deliver payloads of malware. It's safer to acquire fonts from far better known sources.

IP theft is rampant all around us, especially in poorer countries. Don't expect to find any legal copy of anything in your average African country for example, even not on government hardware... But if you confront anybody there, they'll come back at you with something like: Yeah, you western folks think you have the right to interfere with this too? How do you think we'll be able to pay for it if a legal copy of Windows costs more than an average month's salary? Don't you think we have other problems here? While I think IP enforcement is important, it's hard to argue with folks that sometimes struggle to get a decent meal to the table. Yet, they ALL seem to own a smart phone...

Regarding a global copyright registry: Yeah, I'm sometimes an optimist and a dreamer... I know that it will be unlikely something like this will ever exist. I guess part of the money in this whole IP stuff is all the lawyers making tons of money. Imagine how simple it would be if you could just look up someones IP ownership in a central database? That would make many of those lawyers and many (potential) court cases entirely unnecessary, so that alone is why it's not going to happen.

[Bobby Henderson]

Their font library isn't the largest by far, but their userbase is gigantic, probably the largest on the planet. They're also rapidly adding new fonts, as I can see pop-up a new typeface to download about every few weeks. I think them expanding their "in house foundry" it is largely beneficial to us all, even if it's just the chances of seeing Arial and Comic Sans in the wild will diminish over time.

If Microsoft intends for new typefaces like Tenorite, Bierstadt, Skeena, Seaford, and Grandview to become widely used that will not happen if they're confined to users with Office 365 subscriptions and always-on Internet connections. I don't have an Office 365 subscription and I don't even have a regular version of MS Office on any of my computers either. I don't need it. I'm not interested in paying $99 per year just to have access to a few MS-commissioned typefaces. Perhaps if MS bundles their new Tenorite, Bierstadt, Skeena, Seaford, and Grandview typefaces into Windows itself then they might have a better chance of gaining mass scale use. So far, other newer Windows system fonts like Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Corel and Constantia haven't made much of a dent in the over-use of Arial.

By the way, none of the typefaces available in the Adobe Fonts service are exclusive to it. All can be bought outright via traditional means.

The absense of phyical media doesn't make the license audits much simpler, instead of a stack of yellowed purchase orders on paper, now you have e-mail inboxes full with order confirmations and PDF attachments with terms and conditions.

Nevertheless, the commercial type marketplace is definitely very far from a situation where only a few major players are monopolizing the market. Anyone can create a typeface and release it commercially. The trick is making a typeface good enough to compete in market filled with many thousands of typefaces. That's the really hard part.

I think maintaining your own corporate fonts is only feasible for the largest businesses and you gradually see them slowly giving up on it, like my IKEA example, who switched to Noto. Especially if you want your fonts to keep up-to-date and support many international codepages.

I'm not seeing the custom bespoke typeface market slowing down. It has always been a specialized business catering to specific uses, typically "word marks" within a company's branding system. That's different from body copy on a web site accessible to many international visitors.

[Marcel Birgelen]

If Microsoft intends for new typefaces like Tenorite, Bierstadt, Skeena, Seaford, and Grandview to become widely used that will not happen if they're confined to users with Office 365 subscriptions and always-on Internet connections. I don't have an Office 365 subscription and I don't even have a regular version of MS Office on any of my computers either. I don't need it. I'm not interested in paying $99 per year just to have access to a few MS-commissioned typefaces. Perhaps if MS bundles their new Tenorite, Bierstadt, Skeena, Seaford, and Grandview typefaces into Windows itself then they might have a better chance of gaining mass scale use. So far, other newer Windows system fonts like Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Corel and Constantia haven't made much of a dent in the over-use of Arial.

By the way, none of the typefaces available in the Adobe Fonts service are exclusive to it. All can be bought outright via traditional means.

It's not Microsoft's intention to get those fonts adopted for free, it's the typical Microsoft way of doing business. Many companies have converted from Volume License agreements for their Office products to Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365...). Many businesses have transferred from having their on-premises Exchange server to the e-mail offering as part of Microsoft 365, as their full suite, including the whole cloud offering, is often CHEAPER than the licensing for all the components you need to host it on-premises. Plus, you no longer need to support that dreaded on-premise Exchange server...

Now their "newest" move is to add all kinds of "free" fonts to their subscription services. Installing them is as easy as selecting them from the pull-down menu. As soon as you send over your Word document in this shiny new font to someone with a traditional Office license, MS Office will start to complain about the missing fonts... The only "correct
way" of getting that font is for this user to also buy into the MS365 model... It's a switch-and-bait kind of scheme. The fonts are just part of the bait.

[Frank Cox]

Is hand drawing (or whatever the modern equivalent of that is) common in making such things as signs and logos, or is everything just assembled from pre-existing building blocks like fonts and whatnot?

A lot of computer programming seems to have become an exercise in assembling pre-built libraries and putting a front end on it, and dinosaurs using C and stdio.h are becoming less common in things other than hardware. Which is unfortunate since you get a lot of "programmers" who really don't understand what their programs actually do.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess copy/paste artists are something like a virus transcending industries. What is true for modern-day "programming" is also applicable to modern-day graphics design, a lot of it is just copy/paste or re-implementing existing templates. There are templates for almost everything now... Nevertheless, a unique and real good product will still require someone with some real skills working on it, not just a copy and paste artist.

The pipeline of how such a process works, differs between shops, artists, etc. My wife usually starts out with sketches, those are either made on paper and scanned in or are made on a computer using tools like a Wacom Cintic. From there the digital artwork will be created, which usually involves largely Illustrator if it's something vector based or Photoshop if it's something pixel-based. My wife does have a native talent, she really can draw and paint the traditional way. Some of her paintings can be seen in themeparks which I can't legally name, for example.

Going back to programming: Using pre-existing libraries isn't necessarily bad. The whole idea is that a programmer can focus on the stuff he/she is good at and let other people deal with the problems they're good at. That being said, the endless noodle salad of current libraries makes my head explode. I've developed a profound hate for certain kind of technologies, because of the utter mess what their libraries have become, that includes anything that uses NodeJS...

[Bobby Henderson]

It's not Microsoft's intention to get those fonts adopted for free, it's the typical Microsoft way of doing business.

Microsoft doesn't typically market typefaces. MS Office has a very large install base of traditional perpetual license users who are not going to change to a subscription based version any time soon. The office productivity market is a very different thing compared to the graphic design industry. If they intend to make certain typefaces exclusive to Office 365 users they're going to create a hell of a lot of document compatibility headaches as a result. Users will have to avoid using those 365-only fonts if they intend to share Word or Excel documents with other people.

Is hand drawing (or whatever the modern equivalent of that is) common in making such things as signs and logos, or is everything just assembled from pre-existing building blocks like fonts and whatnot?

In sign design all kinds of different approaches are used. Some elements have to be created from scratch while other items, such as a pre-existing logo, can be used and re-used. A lot of technical drawing can be involved, such as reproducing a building elevation from field measurements or showing a "section detail" drawing of the electrical work of a sign cabinet and its installation on a building. Some sign codes require that extra work while others don't.

When brand new artwork has to be created from scratch it is usually drawn/painted by hand onto paper or art board, scanned into a computer and then (if necessary) digitized into clean vector-based artwork. More and more I use apps on an iPad Pro to create natural hand-drawn elements to remove the old fashioned scanning step.

Most type designers do a lot of sketching, inking, calligraphy, etc on paper before bringing elements into the computer. A lot of planning has to go into a typeface project. Professional level applications such as FontLab Studio or Glyphs can automate some repetitive tasks and utilize Python. Many type companies have small teams of people with different specialties. A more artistic person might concentrate on the actual glyph drawing while another does all kinds of coding work.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Microsoft doesn't typically market typefaces. MS Office has a very large install base of traditional perpetual license users who are not going to change to a subscription based version any time soon. The office productivity market is a very different thing compared to the graphic design industry. If they intend to make certain typefaces exclusive to Office 365 users they're going to create a hell of a lot of document compatibility headaches as a result. Users will have to avoid using those 365-only fonts if they intend to share Word or Excel documents with other people.

I don't think that Microsoft is particularly worried about customers ending up with type compatibility issues. Their intention is simple: Entice as many people as possible to switch to their subscription model. Those document incompatibilities simply are part of their plan. It's not like their plan is to get people to switch away from Arial. And, it's not like they never did this before. MS started to bundle Internet Explorer and actively encourage Netscape-incompatible web-technologies back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They create chaos on purpose, because it fuels into their bottom line.

Eventually, those perpetual licenses for Office will simply disappear. Those not switching, will eventually be stuck with software without updates. It's not like they're the only guy in town going down that route. Adobe has essentially killed their perpetual license model some years ago already. While Adobe may still sell you individual fonts, with Microsoft, you can still buy perpetual licenses for Office as for now...

When brand new artwork has to be created from scratch it is usually drawn/painted by hand onto paper or art board, scanned into a computer and then (if necessary) digitized into clean vector-based artwork. More and more I use apps on an iPad Pro to create natural hand-drawn elements to remove the old fashioned scanning step.

I haven't checked the iPad Pro for a while now, but it would be a more mobile solution to a Cintic, which is also a complaint from my wife. Last time I checked the mobile versions of those tools, I found that some of them were stripped off of certain features. The worst contender was Sketchbook Pro, for which the "app version" was almost a completely different product... She likes Sketchbook Pro for sketches, because according to her, the tools feel much more close to real paper and pencils than Photoshop's tools. The iPad Pro should be sufficiently beefy to run full versions of Photoshop and Illustrator nowadays, so what's your experience with the Adobe products? Are they essentially the same as powerful as the desktop products or are they feature limited clones?

[Bobby Henderson]

I don't think that Microsoft is particularly worried about customers ending up with type compatibility issues. Their intention is simple: Entice as many people as possible to switch to their subscription model.

Office productivity users don't give enough of a damn about fonts to be willing to pay good money for them. Not like graphics workers. And creative workers aren't using applications like Word or Excel to do their work. If MS wants to confine their new fonts inside the walled garden of Office 365 those fonts will ultimately see very limited use. Those new fonts from MS will make no roads into advertising and graphics circles. I use Illustrator and InDesign for page layout work, not freaking MS Word.

There is little doubt Microsoft wants to push all Office users into Office 365 subscriptions. But they're only going to have limited luck doing that. There are legions of Office users who are running ancient versions of those applications on old computer hardware. Many users who actually need MS Office will get it when buying a new computer and then they just keep using that version until the PC dies. Today it's fairly easy to get 10 or more years of use out of a modestly equipped PC. As for support, there's still a bunch of people using old versions of Windows and old software that is no longer supported. Even on a newer PC originally loaded with Win 10 it's not hard to set up a virtual machine. Right now there is a lot of incentive to hold onto old hardware.

Currently it is a lousy time to buy a new PC, especially one running Windows. I think the combination of negative factors now are arguably as bad as they've ever been in the nearly 40 years since the first IBM PC debuted on the market in August of 1981. Intel shit the bed with an overly slow, conservative chip development strategy and is now getting bitch-slapped by AMD and Apple. It will probably be at least 2 or more years before Intel can bring CPUs to market that are relevant. Add a semiconductor shortage due to pandemic-related plant shut-downs. The crypto currency fad has poisoned the graphics card market. So anyone who wants or needs a reasonably well-equipped PC or notebook is going to pay a lot more money for out of date hardware.

On top of that, there are alternatives to MS Office, such FreeOffice, Google's online apps, etc. That's a lot of head winds for Microsoft to face for mass scale adopting of Office 365 subscriptions.

I haven't checked the iPad Pro for a while now, but it would be a more mobile solution to a Cintic, which is also a complaint from my wife. Last time I checked the mobile versions of those tools, I found that some of them were stripped off of certain features. The worst contender was Sketchbook Pro, for which the "app version" was almost a completely different product... She likes Sketchbook Pro for sketches, because according to her, the tools feel much more close to real paper and pencils than Photoshop's tools. The iPad Pro should be sufficiently beefy to run full versions of Photoshop and Illustrator nowadays, so what's your experience with the Adobe products? Are they essentially the same as powerful as the desktop products or are they feature limited clones?

For drawing graphics directly onto a screen I think the iPad Pro is the best value on the market. I've looked at Wacom's Mobile Studio computers. The stylus is great, but the cost of the overall product (with mid-range hardware inside) is very high. The 13" version is $2600 and the 16" version is $3500. I also looked at the Microsoft Surface notebooks (and their elegant looking Surface Studio computer). The Surface pen is not very good for creating artwork.

The iPad Pro technically isn't a full blown traditional computer. But the Apple Pencil works on the screen just about as good as a Wacom stylus. It is battery powered though, unlike Wacom's pens. There is a fairly wide variety of graphics applications available for the iPad. Procreate is a very popular painting application and costs only a few bucks in the App Store. Adobe has several light weight Creative Cloud apps for the iPad and larger iPad applications such as Fresco. Adobe recently released somewhat full versions of Photoshop and Illustrator for the iPad. They're not quite the same as their desktop counterparts but have full AI, PDF and PSD file interoperability. Any fonts synced from Adobe Fonts will be accessible on the iPad (you can install fonts directly in the iPad too). Apple added mouse support to the iPad not too long ago, so now it's possible to have a keyboard and mouse setup to more closely replicate a desktop or notebook computer experience.

I've been needing to buy a new notebook for quite some time, but can't see buying one under the currently lousy state of the market. If I have to cave and buy anything new right now I would actually be more tempted to trade in my nearly 4 year old iPad for one of the new ones with the M1 CPU and upgraded screen.

[Mike Blakesley]

There are legions of Office users who are running ancient versions of those applications on old computer hardware.

That'd be me. I'm still using my 1997 version of Photoshop. I've probably had that thing on at least 12 different computers over the years. I'm not even sure what Windows I had when I got it -- XP, probably.

I'm weaning myself off of Office software. The only thing I really use a lot now is Publisher, which does what I need in terms of making signs for the store and theatre. Although it drives me crazy when it tries to outthink me, I can usually finesse it into doing what I want. I used to use Adobe PageMaker -- I think I first got that when their 5.0 version came out in the mid '90s. I haven't used it for a long time but I liked the precision of it compared to Publisher. It never did anything I didn't tell it to do, which was nice.

Nowadays for plain old text docs I use Google Docs. I like that I can get to my documents on any computer and I like how it insta-saves everything so I never have to worry about losing it.

Photoshop, I keep thinking I might upgrade to something more current, but every time I look at their website and all the options offered, it gives me a headache. Plus I hate the thought of a monthly subscription. I'm quite sure whatever I buy, eventually I'll want to have the next feature that requires an upgrade and next thing you know I'm fully in the rabbit hole. But, a lot of those features and capabilities sure make me salivate. I would get a lot of use out of the "content-aware editing" feature just removing the release dates out of movie posters for our website.

[Bobby Henderson]

Adobe shut out a lot of more casual type users when they shifted everything to Creative Cloud and did away with nearly all the perpetual licenses with their software. $600+ per year is quite a bit for someone to pay for software unless they're directly making a profit by using it.

I remember a lot of the doom and gloom predictions for Adobe when they took the big chance on Creative Cloud. Many were saying Adobe was going to lose a lot of customers and that its overall user base was going to shrink dramatically. The thing is a LOT of people who were using Adobe's software were using cracked versions that didn't cost them anything. Adobe's applications were among the most desired by software pirates. I don't think the CC apps are piracy-proof, but any would be far more difficult to keep operational. Some features, such as the Adobe Fonts service, cloud storage and even some of the "Sensei" functions within the applications don't work without the applications "phoning home." The fonts service doesn't work without an always-on Internet connection. The Creative Cloud panel application seems to be updated every few days. At any rate, Adobe dramatically increased its percentage of legit, paying users with CC.

I wish I would have had the foresight to buy a bunch of stock in Adobe at the time. Adobe's stock price has multiplied more than ten-fold since the initial CC release. Now a bunch of other software companies are rushing to the subscription model, trying to replicate the success. I don't think it will work out the same way for most of them (including Microsoft with Office 365). Very few have similar captive markets like Adobe does with professional-level graphics software.

On the bright side, for people not doing paid professional graphics work, there are more affordable alternatives for graphics software. They're not in the same class as applications like Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. But most of them cover a lot of the basics, which might be enough for users on a tight budget.

Serif has its three Affinity applications: Designer, Photo and Publisher. All 3 are currently priced 50% off, which I think puts them at $25 per application. Future upgrades are free. The apps run on Windows and OSX. Affinity Designer and Photo also have iPad versions; the applications can trade artwork between iPad and desktop environments just as easy as it is with Adobe's software. I have Affinity Designer on my iPad and PCs, mainly to have handy in case I get any .afdesign files from customers.

Vectornator is a pretty good vector drawing application for OSX and iPad. I think I paid $8 for the iPad version. The last time I checked they were offering it free.

Inkscape is a popular open source vector drawing application. It has a lot of capabilities, but is mainly geared for creating RGB-based SVG files for use on the web. But the SVG files can be imported successfully into apps like Illustrator. One thing I don't like about Inkscape is the clunky user interface. Using it feels like going back in time to the 1990's.

GIMP is probably the most popular open source image editing application. Scribus is arguably the best open source page layout application. It's not nearly as good as Adobe InDesign. But it should be an improvement over an old copy of PageMaker.

[Frank Cox]

I use Scribus to make my print ad and other odds and ends, none of which is particularly demanding I suppose. A friend of mine uses it to do the layout of his weekly newspaper, though, and it seems meet his needs.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't have much experience with Scribus, but I guess it's perfectly fine for any small-scale operation. Most publishers around here use InDesign or QuarkXPress. QuarkXPress is mostly a leftover from the 1990s, when they were the biggest player in desktop publishing software. It seemed to be more popular in Europe than in the U.S. though. Quark was very late to the party when Apple made their switch from MacOS Classic to MacOS X and allowed Adobe to eat ther cake by offering software that wasn't just a bit cheaper and integrated better with all the other software those people were already using, they simply made it work on MacOS X without the dreaded MacOS Classic compatibility mode.

Serif has its three Affinity applications: Designer, Photo and Publisher. All 3 are currently priced 50% off, which I think puts them at $25 per application. Future upgrades are free. The apps run on Windows and OSX. Affinity Designer and Photo also have iPad versions; the applications can trade artwork between iPad and desktop environments just as easy as it is with Adobe's software. I have Affinity Designer on my iPad and PCs, mainly to have handy in case I get any .afdesign files from customers.

I think that all three current Serif/Affinity applications offer very good value and are a real replacement for most users that don't depend on others sending them files in Adobe formats. While you can still open most common Adobe files, expect some compatibility issues.

For people who're looking for replacements for their aging Photoshop, Illustrator or even MS Publisher or InDesign installations, I'd say that those applications offer excellent alternatives. Most people with some basic knowledge of Adobe products, the switchover is also pretty easy, at least that's what I've seen. Serif made sure to keep many aspects in line with their Adobe counterparts, without cloning the software outright.

Office productivity users don't give enough of a damn about fonts to be willing to pay good money for them. Not like graphics workers. And creative workers aren't using applications like Word or Excel to do their work. If MS wants to confine their new fonts inside the walled garden of Office 365 those fonts will ultimately see very limited use. Those new fonts from MS will make no roads into advertising and graphics circles. I use Illustrator and InDesign for page layout work, not freaking MS Word.

I doubt that's even Microsoft's plan. They know that most creative workers take type to be a pretty serious topic. Even if MS is stepping up its game, I don't see them to become a very serious contender in the "professional type game", but that's also not their intention. While MS does have a program called "Publisher", it's hardly targeted at hard-core desktop publishing.

While Microsoft has made some strange moves in the past, like buying Softimage 3D (which they subsequently sold to Avid, who sold it to Autodesk, who killed it off...), they seem to be happy to leave professional graphics market (both 2D and 3D) to other players, at least for now.

There is little doubt Microsoft wants to push all Office users into Office 365 subscriptions. But they're only going to have limited luck doing that. There are legions of Office users who are running ancient versions of those applications on old computer hardware. Many users who actually need MS Office will get it when buying a new computer and then they just keep using that version until the PC dies. Today it's fairly easy to get 10 or more years of use out of a modestly equipped PC. As for support, there's still a bunch of people using old versions of Windows and old software that is no longer supported. Even on a newer PC originally loaded with Win 10 it's not hard to set up a virtual machine. Right now there is a lot of incentive to hold onto old hardware.

That's why you'll see Microsoft to start using all kinds of annoyances to push people to newer versions. Stuff like still being able to open 20-year old .doc files, but not being able to save them back to that same format are on the horizon. This whole "Cloud Fonts" thing is just one of those things. In the near future, you'll see them switch to a new default font, so many people who don't care about fonts and/or consistency will be happily typing their Word documents in this new "default font" and you'll see that the only legal way to get it, will be via a MS365 subscription...

Currently it is a lousy time to buy a new PC, especially one running Windows. I think the combination of negative factors now are arguably as bad as they've ever been in the nearly 40 years since the first IBM PC debuted on the market in August of 1981. Intel shit the bed with an overly slow, conservative chip development strategy and is now getting bitch-slapped by AMD and Apple. It will probably be at least 2 or more years before Intel can bring CPUs to market that are relevant. Add a semiconductor shortage due to pandemic-related plant shut-downs. The crypto currency fad has poisoned the graphics card market. So anyone who wants or needs a reasonably well-equipped PC or notebook is going to pay a lot more money for out of date hardware.

Apparently, you're waiting months now for a notebook to be shipped, due to chip shortages all across the board. It's not just graphics chipsets anymore.

I burned my fingers years ago on some of AMD's duds, so even though more expensive, I kept buying Intel instead of AMD, but Intel seems to be in serious troubles as of late and it looks like our next workstations may be getting AMD CPUs. It feels like Burger King overtaking McDonald's...

On top of that, there are alternatives to MS Office, such FreeOffice, Google's online apps, etc. That's a lot of head winds for Microsoft to face for mass scale adopting of Office 365 subscriptions.

For many businesses it's a similar situation like you have with Adobe products. While there are alternatives that can get the job done equally well in almost all cases, you're still stuck with Adobe products, because you invested a lot of time into your feature skills and you're dependent on others sending you stuff in Adobe file formats. The same is true for MS products for many shops around the world. While you can type a letter in any Word processor, many companies have built those Office products into their workflow. There is a lot of Excel-wizardry out there, for example, that simply doesn't work in LibreOffice or even Google Docs.

For drawing graphics directly onto a screen I think the iPad Pro is the best value on the market. I've looked at Wacom's Mobile Studio computers. The stylus is great, but the cost of the overall product (with mid-range hardware inside) is very high. The 13" version is $2600 and the 16" version is $3500. I also looked at the Microsoft Surface notebooks (and their elegant looking Surface Studio computer). The Surface pen is not very good for creating artwork.

We've been using Lenovo's X1 Yoga for a while now. It comes with a stylus and it's compatible with many of Wacom's pens. I don't think there is much that beats Wacom when it comes down to stylus technology. I've been looking at the Mobile Studio computers too, but they're pretty pricey and bulky for what it's worth. They're not sufficiently mobile and for a workstation replacement, the hardware just isn't good enough. The good thing about the Cintic is that it's not coupled to any hardware, but even the smallest model isn't all that portable and you still need a computer to connect it to.

I've given up on MS Surface, after having owned a Surface Pro 3 for a while (At least, I think it's a Pro 3). Not only does their stylus suck for almost anything, the machine caused me many headaches with crappy firmware, bodged updates by Microsoft that required all kinds of recovery operations and I found the build quality to be lacking. It's currently being used as "touch panel" for domotics control... It's now running Ubuntu. While it was a pain to get that on there, it now seems to be stable...

The iPad Pro technically isn't a full blown traditional computer. But the Apple Pencil works on the screen just about as good as a Wacom stylus. It is battery powered though, unlike Wacom's pens. There is a fairly wide variety of graphics applications available for the iPad. Procreate is a very popular painting application and costs only a few bucks in the App Store. Adobe has several light weight Creative Cloud apps for the iPad and larger iPad applications such as Fresco. Adobe recently released somewhat full versions of Photoshop and Illustrator for the iPad. They're not quite the same as their desktop counterparts but have full AI, PDF and PSD file interoperability. Any fonts synced from Adobe Fonts will be accessible on the iPad (you can install fonts directly in the iPad too). Apple added mouse support to the iPad not too long ago, so now it's possible to have a keyboard and mouse setup to more closely replicate a desktop or notebook computer experience.

I've been needing to buy a new notebook for quite some time, but can't see buying one under the currently lousy state of the market. If I have to cave and buy anything new right now I would actually be more tempted to trade in my nearly 4 year old iPad for one of the new ones with the M1 CPU and upgraded screen.

One thing were Apple seems to be lagging behind is the integration between touch and traditional desktop use, none of their notebooks ever sported a touch screen and MacOS X and IOS seem to be an isolated affair, for now. I like the fact that I can switch around between "tablet mode" and "desktop mode" on the Lenovo for example. While not all applications are touch-optimized, most work pretty well when you're using a stylus though. My wife's favorite sketching app, Sketchbook Pro, works fine on it, but the machines are starting to show their age. The future of Sketchbook itself also isn't certain, it looks like Autodesk has somehow given up on it. It used to be a paid app, but now is available for free and updates have since stopped. Those aspects combined made me shop around for alternatives. So, maybe I'll give the iPad Pro a go... if it doesn't work out, I'll guess I'll end up with another touch panel for domotics.

If i'd needed a new notebook RIGHT NOW, I'd probably go for a MacBook Pro with an M1 CPU, even though most of our machines are Windows PCs nowadays. Otherwise, I'd probably hold out until a new iteration of "M2" CPUs would pop up.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think that all three current Serif/Affinity applications offer very good value and are a real replacement for most users that don't depend on others sending them files in Adobe formats. While you can still open most common Adobe files, expect some compatibility issues.

While many of the basics are covered there is a considerable lack of overlap for more newer and more advanced features in applications like Illustrator. Anyone sending artwork from Illustrator to Affinity Designer will have to expand/flatten certain effects. Obviously any live effects from third party plugins, such as those from Astute Graphics, would have to be expanded. Newer fill types like free-form gradients won't translate. I'm a little surprised Variable Fonts are still not supported in Affinity applications (they are in Inkscape).

Exporting artwork from Affinity applications for use in Adobe applications, CorelDRAW or other graphics applications has its own pitfalls. Serif is improving on this, for instance I'm seeing fewer instances of fills for vector objects being turned into raster-based objects clipped to the parent vector path. It looks like a work in progress.

That's why you'll see Microsoft to start using all kinds of annoyances to push people to newer versions. Stuff like still being able to open 20-year old .doc files, but not being able to save them back to that same format are on the horizon. This whole "Cloud Fonts" thing is just one of those things.

It's one thing to be able to save a file from the current version of an application back to an earlier one. For certain work-flows that's pretty important. I think it's even more important for a given application to be able to open files from any previous version of that application. Archived files, assets, etc have value to them. If a software vendor cuts off all file-open/import of files made under a certain version it is an onerous act to customers. It will give them every incentive to keep using old software rather than upgrading.

One example: Corel. The company is already running the great risk of slashing its throat from other decisions. In recent versions of CorelDRAW they've been incrementally changing how many versions back one can save a CDR file. And they've been changing how many versions back one can go at just opening old archived CDR files. That's starting to harm long time users with lots of old files. Right now if someone wants to open a CorelDRAW file made prior to CorelDRAW 6 they either have to use an older copy of CorelDRAW or even a different application such as Inkscape to import it (and that's not a 100% compatible thing either). Meanwhile, Adobe Illustrator can open ANY previous version Illustrator file, going back 34 years. Plus you can save as far back as version 3 from 1990. Obviously a bunch of features and effects are not backward compatible. But if the artwork is just pure raw vectors with flat fills it will work.

I burned my fingers years ago on some of AMD's duds, so even though more expensive, I kept buying Intel instead of AMD, but Intel seems to be in serious troubles as of late and it looks like our next workstations may be getting AMD CPUs. It feels like Burger King overtaking McDonald's...

Intel got stupidly complacent out of sheer pride and greed. They kept going along with a horribly outdated 14 nanometer chip process despite all the warnings signs rivals were going to 10nm, 7nm and even thinner. IBM just announced a 2 nanometer design. Intel just kept milking that 14 nanometer process. That made them very late at getting 10nm designs released. It may be 2 or more years before Intel has any 7nm chips. Meanwhile Intel's rivals have 7nm chips out now. They'll probably be at 5nm or thinner by the time Intel gets to 7nm.

Apple and others were not happy about the terrible thermal performance of Intel's CPUs; that makes a giant different in notebook computers. Intel didn't listen. They kept waltzing along thinking all the vendors would stick with them no matter how slowly they plodded along with their "product roadmap." A bunch of AMD's past CPUs were duds, by the Ryzen platform has been very different. Then Apple totally caught Intel off guard with its shift to the ARM-based M series.

The other thing pissing me off about notebooks is all the needlessly stupid decisions the OEMs make in their designs. Last year I was tempted to get a Dell XPS 17 notebook when it was announced. But then I found out it would charge via USB-C. Sure enough all kinds of problems cropped up. Give me a damned barrel port and an AC adapter that can do 180W or more. Apple is notorious for making its notebooks completely not user service-able and nothing user upgrade-able. I flatly refuse to buy a notebook whose RAM is soldered into the mother board. Yet we have a growing number of PC vendors trying to copy Apple with this shit. Alienware's new M17 notebook has its RAM soldered into the motherboard. I want to be able to crack open a notebook and be able to replace/upgrade the RAM, SSDs and battery if I want/need to do so. If I can't, then no deal.

For many businesses it's a similar situation like you have with Adobe products. While there are alternatives that can get the job done equally well in almost all cases, you're still stuck with Adobe products, because you invested a lot of time into your feature skills and you're dependent on others sending you stuff in Adobe file formats.

The situation between MS Office and Adobe Creative Cloud isn't really the same.

With documents in Word or Excel the only thing that matters is the text content, not its visual styling. As long as the message is getting across when the file is opened in a non-MS application it still essentially works. That's all that matters with an office productivity application file. When it comes to things like logos, other branding assets and various kinds of digital artwork, visual accuracy is everything when that file is opened. Most corporate branding and other artwork assets are developed using Adobe's applications. I've seen plenty of glitches with that material when importing it into non-native environments of non-Adobe applications.

Going all the way back to the 1980's Adobe's applications have been central to brand development and graphics work-flows. There have been exceptions in some areas, like QuarkXpress dominating the page layout segment for much of the 1990's or the sign industry being very Windows-centric and more reliant on applications like CorelDRAW (along with other industry-specific apps). Adobe is now dominating those areas too. We have 3 large format printers in my workplace; the Onyx and Rasterlink Pro RIPs we use to drive those printers are very Adobe-centric. We get the best, most consistent results feeding them EPS or PDF files output from Illustrator or InDesign.

[Scott Norwood]

I'm just now seeing this thread.

I'm not an expert in typefaces, but I have a high degree of respect for typesetting and printing as crafts. I'm also nerdy enough to read the "colophon" section of books that include it.

For body text in normal sizes, I think that Garamond is hard to beat for most books and similar material. It is very readable and also quite beautiful. Times New Roman isn't good for books because it was designed for the narrow columns used in newspapers. It becomes harder to read in wider column widths (though I cannot say exactly why). I am also a fan of Baskerville, which is a somewhat lighter weight.

For print material, sans serif typefaces are not really good for body text, although they are considered to be more readable than serif typefaces for web pages and other text intended to be read on a screen. I would not want to read a book set in Helvetica, Univers, or Gill Sans, but they excellent for things like transit signs.

I'm also a fan of the Computer Modern typefaces that come with the TeX typesetting system. I believe that there are now Truetype versions of these available as well. They are all very well designed and easily readable.