Comments on: Typekit, Another Layer of Complexity?

By: Ant Gray

Ant Gray — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:54:21 +0000

Annoying thing of Typekit is font blinking.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:57:17 +0000

Right now, designers pay a fee to license a font to use on their computers and generate artwork with — but can not legally embed the font itself in a web page, because their license doesn’t allow that.

A bunch of people came up with an elegant solution that is 5% engineering and 95% negotiating with foundries, that will let people license fonts and make use of the @font-face css legally.

And you’re complaining ?

They didn’t create a layer of complexity, they just solved a whole shit-ton of complexity, by making it super-simple for you to use the fonts you want as plain text. If you don’t want to use it, then use font-face with free fonts, or use sifr/cufon/etc, or use standard fonts. This also addresses a likely reality that foundries will start to use spiders to find people using font-face on their websites, and suing folks who use theirs without license. DRM will always fail as a technology, but lawyers and greed never do, because they’re powered by basic and unending human greed.

This team didn’t set out to solve an engineering problem of making fonts embeddable online, they set out to solve an existing legal issue, came up with an elegant solution, and got the support of the foundries.

By: Tommie Hansen

Tommie Hansen — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:38:53 +0000

This is quite a no-brainer since copyright of such things as typefaces will never be respected by common users and the common users that launch most websites on the internet quite easily outnumbers anyone that have some knowledge of typfaces and copyright.

That + the fact that many typefaces actually can’t be protected from copy due to them being to similar to another creative work… well.. good luck in courts is all i say.

By: Stephen Agnic

Stephen Agnic — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:37:10 +0000

The typeface issue is certainly growing out of proportion. What was a great idea to give designers more functionality when using fonts, has become into a fearful mound of paranoia.

Not only that, but I have no idea what licenses apply to which fonts I use, I have about a thousand. Am I going to remember which ones have a commercial license or not? No! There has to be a better way. Either TypeKit does it for us, or we do it ourselves and the typeface designers will have to live with the idea that their stuff could get stolen.

By: Derek

Derek — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:51:56 +0000

So it seems that TypeKit will offer us the ability to link to font files hosted on their servers, okay, that’s a reasonable service. Clearly they won’t be placing the font files in a public accessible directory on the server. It’ll probably be similar to how one would install RoR or Django or some other application framework.

I guess that’s something I (or we) could do on my own server(s). A simple PHP (or Perl, Python, Ruby, ASP, C, Java) script could access the file and we don’t need to rely on third party apps to help along.

By: Richard Fink

Richard Fink — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:15:25 +0000

Apropos of TypeKit. There is a new and serious proposal on the table for a web-specific font file format. The Proposal New Web Fonts Proposal Discussion On Typophile In-Depth Analysis: Apple and Microsoft In Talks On Web Font Protections

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:35:43 +0000

I think I came up with even better solution than typekit. How about instead of converting font files to some different encrypted format with javascript magic we convert them to files that are easily can be read even when javascript is disabled with all modern browsers on more than 95% of all machines. And you don’t have to host those files separate from you site. And you can use all the fonts you paid already for without any additional fees. I think that’s one step above typekit, right? Oh. Wait that’s SIFR. I thought that typekit was supposed to replace SIFR. Huh?

I know FLash is not open, and so on. But the point is we are walking in circles here.

By: Stephen Olmstead

Stephen Olmstead — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:28:28 +0000

Great thoughts here- I’m in agreement. I think a more realistic solution to this would be for font designers and typography crafters to release their fonts under an extended license that grants the purchaser rights to use their fonts on the web. This license would cost considerably more, but would ensure that the creatives responsible for these fonts get their due payment.

Trying to control this is impossible- it just is. You will always have individuals who refuse to pay for the font just as you have individuals who rip stock art, music, videos, etc on the web. Is it right? Absolutely not, but at least by offering a license for those of us who value the creative time that goes into producing an element of design like typography we can legally throw in our support to that industry by dutifully purchasing an extended web license.

The extended license could even require you to submit a web address on which the font would be used, that way tracking the license purchase would be easier from a legal perspective. I don’t think ‘renting’ fonts is the answer. It’s costly and ultimately is limiting to the industry. Typographers must now be introduced to the world of legalities and protecting their work just as photographers and musicians have had to do on the web. It’s a tough battle, but it does come with its perks: the greatest of this being that typography is about to take a giant leap towards the spotlight in web design.

By: Kyle Meyer

Kyle Meyer — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:58:02 +0000

@Peter: I may have been a little off in my phrasing.

I’m not asking for DRM on my typefaces per se. But rather some form of encryption or other hurdle to prevent the typeface from simply being downloaded from my server. The typefaces we link to for @font-face have the single purpose of rending type in the browser, and don’t need to be wholly accessible for other purposes.

I couldn’t agree with you more concerning DRM in general, as I said in my post.

By: Peter Fransen

Peter Fransen — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:51:33 +0000

I re-read your article, just to be sure that you are actually *asking* for DRM’ed fonts.
Although I agree that TypeKit can only be a temporary solution (one of several) and clearly has its limitations and hurdles, the solution you suggest will stand even less chance to survive. What good has DRM ever brought us? I can’t even remember how many times I had to re-install my perfectly legal copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite because of problems with it’s mysterious DRM. All while *some* people I know never ever had these problems with their ‘free’ versions. DRM just adds a layer of complexity for the people who use it, while people who ignore it have all the fun.
How can we ask for DRM on our type when DRM on music is clearly on it’s way out and DRM on movies is clearly not stopping anyone from illegally downloading them.
DRM is only there to give producers and distributors a false sense of safety. And that’s why it will never last.