Fonts for commercial use, a publishers nightmare...

[Cergorach]

After checking out a couple of high quality Fonts on various sites i saw some of the prices involved and thought to myself “expensive!”. A publisher needs to find a standard set of Fonts to publsh multiple projects, use of a lot of Fonts is not going to be cost effective. But after a hard process of choosing the best Fonts for both main text and headers i still have to cough up €200 for use of two Fonts (and the bold/italic/etc. versions). I wish that was all there was to it, but by chance i read the liscence agreements of the Fonts involved, they are extremely strict about embedding fonts in commercial products (read: pdfs).

One of the Fonts i choose gave me the ability to embed the font, but only under certain conditions (the pdf is not allowed to be changed (only viewed and printed). I can life with that, but the other doesn't even allow that. I mailed the owner of said fonts with the question if it was possible to use the fonts embedded in a commercial product, i fear the astronomical costs that will be quoted. I'm seriously considering paying someone to design a (couple) of font(s) for me or even doing it myself (it's been a while since i did some typographic design work). It might be more expesive (timewise if i do it myself), but it will save me a lot of headache with all the liscences.

So how do other publishers handle this? Especially those who release pdf products/addons.

 

[philreed]

I have a massive font library built over 8 years of working in graphic design. You just buy them a font at a time and, sometimes, buy collections. Also look for freeware and shareware fonts since you can often find some very good ones.

And you'll want a copy of Fontographer. Check eBay first.

 

[uv23]

Fonts cost money because they require work to produce. Just like stock photography. Its the price of doing business.

I'd recommend http://www.veer.com for all of your font needs. In addition to a wide range of fonts, they have a web app called "flont" that allows you to preview your own text rendered in an of the fonts that they sell.

 

[Cergorach]

I have absolutely no problem what so ever to pay for a couple of good fonts even €200, i would see it as an investment. The only problem i have is that that price doesn't allow me to embed the fonts in a pdf and sell it. I would assume that when you buy the Font your allowed to use it in a commercial product, as i don't see many people buying fonts for another reason...

Fontographer is indeed a most excellent Font creation product, i have worked with it before.

 

[GreenPiece]

Maybe this guy can help you out a bit:

http://www.steffmann.de/english/index.htm

The guy who runs this site, Dieter Steffmann, seems to be a nice guy. You may want to try to contact him if you find any fonts you like on his page (there are hundreds!).

I don't know his policy on commercial use of his fonts, but asking him shouldn't hurt...

Hope that helps!

GP

 

[V_Shane]

Have you checked out Blambot? He does alot of font work for the comic community, and has alot of cool fonts.

Blambott

 

[Cergorach]

Have you checked out Blambot? He does alot of font work for the comic community, and has alot of cool fonts.

Blambott

Oh! Some very nice fonts!

 

[smetzger]

I suppose you should also make sure that a strict reading of the OGL and your declaration of OGC doesn't include the fonts also. You'll probably have to read the license for the font carefully, just like us d20/OGL software producers need to read the licenses for our development tools carefully.