Starting today, you can license our whole library of fonts by the style. For the last four years, we've limited the licensing of our fonts to the complete family. This limitation existed to simplify the process of updating what is largely a catalog of in progress fonts. With the switch to Fontdue, style by style licensing and updating is more convenient than ever. This switch gave me a moment to revisit the license agreement and make some long overdue updates to clarify some common questions and revisions recommended by all of you.
Pricing by style
Fonts, most fonts, are created in relationship to the other styles. But most people don't want all styles of a font for a project, and the company size licensing model makes even less sense at that scale. This gap between how I see the fonts, and how the fonts are used, makes it hard to set a price on a style by style license. I want designers to have access to the full range of expression within a family, and it feels silly to bill the licensee with a higher price for using styles which are suited for that specific use.
With that in mind, I set style prices to be competitive with the industry, $35 or $40 (depending on the scope of the design), but kept family styles extremely competitive, averaging around $9 per style when divide the total by the amount of styles. I hope this strikes the right balance, but I will revisit it as needed and with your feedback.
More fonts available on the site
I consider our whole catalog of fonts as work in progress. This is a working style that has given me a better dialog with font enjoyers, and kept the perfectionism demons at bay. This is what was so attractive about Future Fonts as a distribution method, and continues to be the motivator for creating new designs on that platform. Our main source of engagement, new licenses, and support is and will be on Future Fonts. I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
I'm no longer limiting the licensing of fonts only to Future Fonts, for the simple reason that many of you were requesting style licensing on fonts that hadn't formerly graduated from future fonts. I'm not sure there's a unified industry definition on graduation—so I'm not going to make that distinction any longer. But Future Fonts is where you should buy licenses first, and it's where new designs will first appear.
Update to the license agreement
A few times a month I'll get an inquiry about how our company size license model works. I don't blame anyone for that. The standard licensing model, by seat or usage, has been and still is the default licensing style. One day I'll get it together and make a write up as good as Mass Driver's. But in the meantime, I hope the new v1.3 licensing agreement, is easier to understand.
If you licensed some fonts from us in the past, the terms of that font license remain valid. Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns.