To prove if a font is good for your project, you must buy it first

[Cristobal Henestrosa]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

A question comes to my mind over and over: in many cases, actually you must buy the font and prove it by yourself to be sure if the font is really what you need. And it is very frustrating when not. IMHO, text samples in PDF are poor substitutes of “the real thing”.

What are the type designer/vendor options? To offer a demo/free font, with some (important) glyphs missing? Some kind of devolution policy?

And what are the user options? To buy a single weight, prove it, and only buy the complete family if it works fine? To check if some friend already has the font, go to his/her computer and prove it there?

Any thoughts welcome.

[Ricardo Cordoba]

Most online foundries and sellers let you set a few lines of text on their sites. That usually works for me if I am trying to decide on a headline face.

Back in the old days, you only had a printed catalog to go on, and had to mark up typewritten text to send it off to the typesetter. Then you had to wait until the proofs came back, and mark up corrections -- or, if the text was too long, have an editor mark up enough lines to shorten the text -- and send it back to the typesetter for another round...

My point is that we designers have it pretty easy these days, and we have several ways of testing a face before we hit the "Buy" button.

[victor ivanov]

it always helps to do some research and look at the existing designs that utilize the typeface in question. Many foundries have examples of their type in use.

I can foresee many problems should a foundry allow people do download either 1 weight or a limited glyph set.

[Si_Daniels]

A question comes to my mind over and over: in many cases, actually you must buy the pint of beer and prove it by yourself to be sure if the beer is really what you need. And it is very frustrating when not.

[bowerbird]

sii-

stick with beer you already know. you waste less money that way.
and that newfangled beer won't get you any more drunk anyway...

-bowerbird

[ncaleffi]

"actually you must buy the pint of beer and prove it by yourself to be sure if the beer is really what you need."

Yep, but since a good foundry font costs much more than a beer Cristobal's question doesn't sound so out of place. A couple of foundry who offers font fot trial, in different ways:

Underware. You can buy for 10 euro the Dolly specimen book, which comes with a cd with the font, fully working. Then if you decide to use the font professionally, you have to buy the full license.
http://www.underware.nl/site2/index.php?id1=dolly&id2=overview

B&P Type Foundry. You can download their fonts for free, but with limited glyphs - just to test them in layouts.
http://www.bpfoundry.com/fonts/fonts.htm

That said, there are some independent type designers who are very friendly and can help the buyer in deciding if the their font is suitable for him, even setting a test-layout, then sending the pdf to him.

Also, a way to see the fonts in use, though only on screen, is using the search function in Google Books (with the font name in the search field or a search phrase like "set in [typeface name])".

[nina]

I've gotten test licences from Typotheque. It involves signing a form saying you understand you may only test the font, and will pay for it when you actually end up using it for any public work.

FWIW, as a not-yet-so-very-experienced designer, I appreciate such offers a lot.
Whereas display/headline stuff is nicely covered by the type testers of this world, with text fonts I often find it very hard (if not impossible) to tell if they'll work, and what kind of color and mood they'll bring to my layout.

[kentlew]

> Back in the old days, you only had a printed catalog to go on,

It is certainly true that as far as the hoops we had to jump through to get type set (what Ricardo summarized), things are much more convenient now for designers.

But with regards to evaluating a typeface before investing in it, there were some resources of the old days that have slipped away, not adequately replaced by most current methods.

Where text types are concerned, an old printed catalog might have page after page of a given typeface set in a variety of sizes and leadings and even measures, in adequate paragraphs to truly judge the overall color and fit. Some large composing houses produced entire books of text showings -- cf. Kingsport, in three volumes. And, most importantly, they were *printed.*

It seems that in this digital age, there are plenty of opportunities for designers to see how typefaces look, but perhaps not quite as many opportunities to judge how they perform.

[_Palatine_]

Or you can just print out a sample .pdf or request one if none is available.

[Dunwich Type]

When you can convince a hooker to let you try her product before you pay, then come back again and tell me why you should be get access to fonts before you pay.

[Cristobal Henestrosa]

Thank you so much for all your answers. I see I’m not the only guy thinking like this.

I know it’s not an easy question, and I am not asking only from the typographer side: I do type design as well (custom fonts, mostly; first commercial family by the end of the year).

Since fonts are being compared here to beers and paid-sex, I suppose I am allowed to do more “apples to oranges” comparisons:

—When you want to buy a new car, they let you drive it first. Full functionality, limited time.
—Demos in software are very common. Full functionality, but limited time. Or limited functionality, unlimited time.
—If I go to the bookstore, most of the times I like to read some paragraphs or even a few pages of the book I am interested in. I don’t see anything bad on this. Full functionality, limited time.

My point is: a good typeface family is not cheap. As a typographer, I would like to know better if I am doing a good decision by choosing this or that. I am not trying to get everything by free. On the other hand, as a type designer, I want that people who will (hopefully) buy my fonts, is happy and not angry because they bought something that don’t fit their needs. But I don’t want give my work for free, either.

That’s why this question comes to my mind over and over. I’m just trying to get the best for everyone. That’s it. And, thanks to your answers, I see there are more options out there.

[Don McCahill]

The problem is that it is hard to test drive a font. Let's make a demo font without the e glyph. But what if the e is the character that you need for a logo? Makes it difficult. And to have different demo versions would put a lot of hassles on the vendors shoulders, and might make it so the wrong sort could build a cracked version.

I'm not a programmer, but I don't know of any way to time-release a font, and even if it happened, your customers would screw you up by asking for a modification in the sample you sent out five weeks ago (and now the demo has died). Unlimited time release demos are self defeating again.

[thranduil]

How about a text composer (limited words, or characters), but with full functionality, i.e. the user gets to pick the size, leading, paper size (letter, legal, A4), etc, and is able to export it to a xxx dpi bitmap PDF (pretty much like the Collis specimen) which he or she can print.

[Florian Hardwig]

Josef, Typotheque offers such a PDF tester:
http://www.typotheque.com/PDF_font_tester

[Don McCahill]

If I'm not mistaken, some licenses do not allow use of the font in a PDF.

[bowerbird]

james said:
> When you can convince a hooker to let you
> try her product before you pay, then come back again
> and tell me why you should be get access to fonts
> before you pay.

for some reason, i'm reminded of the old saying:
> "i don't pay her to have sex with me,
> i pay her to leave when we're done..."

-bowerbird

[Dunwich Type]

Full functionality, limited time.

So how do we make that work without some kind of DRM system that builds expiration dates into fonts the same way the same way programmers handle demo software?

for some reason, i’m reminded of the old saying:

Yeah, but good luck even getting started without flashing a few benjamins.

[DrDoc]

A question comes to my mind over and over: in many cases, actually you must buy the pint of beer and prove it by yourself to be sure if the beer is really what you need. And it is very frustrating when not.

Actually, sii, one of the bars I frequent lets you try a small amount of beer before you buy anything. It's kind of like how in an ice cream shop they'll give you a taster spoon.

I'm not sure that this is the best model for fonts, though. Most retailers have great ways to test out headline faces, since you can use the "Test Drive" feature on MyFonts, H&FJ, vllg, Veer, FontShop, etc., take a screen shot, and place it in your document. But the tools for testing extended text types are limited, as Kent was saying. Perhaps foundries could have a tool where you specify line length, point size, leading, and a variety of other parameters, and it spits out a page of lorem ipsum in PDF format for you to print. It's not a perfect tool, but it would certainly help.

Of course, this is all on the retailers. Retailers that want to market their fonts well have been introducing increasingly complex and useful tools for sampling fonts before you buy them. I think that it's only a matter of a few years before MyFonts or FontShop or someone else releases something like this.

[Nick Shinn]

I don't think you ever know if a font is "good for your project" till you see the finished work in print or online.
Even then, you would probably refine your specs next time you use it.

[Cristobal Henestrosa]

Thanks again for all your comments. So far, I think the easiest solution is the limited-glyph font, since it doesn’t require any web programming, or expiration dates, &c.

Ah, so much talking about beers made me think it is the right time for one... ;-)

[Ricardo Cordoba]

the limited-glyph font

...also known as "cripple-ware" :-)

[paragraph]

It i• very u•eful for vi•uali•ing the font• in a de•ign.

[guifa]

The glyphs you'd limit would depend on the font. For a body text you could leave out a few letters and simply replace them with a no-width space, or even a similar letter. E.g. kill the w for a v and the m for an n. Makes it useless for a text font but visually testing it it won't change much. Or caps especially, since they are what? 1% of the letters we use, but won't interrupt the flow of a sentence for testing. For a display font, you could even mark up a few glyphs with a small slash cut. Yeah, someone could just edit the splines, but if they're going to go to that much work they're also just going to trace an image sample or edit splines on a PDF sample.

«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)

[russellm]

Fonts are tools.

A carpenter can't hammer a nail without buying a decent hammer either.

As a professional, one has to invest in fonts & other tools, and build up a collection over time.

Remember the ol' days when it was printers and type setters who owned type instead of designers? Designers used skill & imagination and then they specified the type they wanted the type setter to set. And it was up hill to the print shop - both ways!

Sorry if that sounds cranky. It's been a long week. :o)

-=®=-

[Cristobal Henestrosa]

I actually was thinking in something like the B&P Type Foundry way:

—Upper and lowercase complete (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz)
—In the letters with diacritics, the letter without the accent.
—Punctuation: only period, comma, hyphen, space.
—No figures, no kerning.

For text fonts, that would be enough to give a good idea of its performance (how much pages will my text need to fit?, for example), and, on the other hand, this way the font lacks of some important glyphs needed to set real texts (figures, for example).

I know there’s no perfect solution, either: what if you need precisely to test the figures? Anyway, I think this would work most of the times for the majority of users (and that is a good deal for me). Of course, some people would dislike to have this crippled font, but I suppose some people would be upset for the DRM solution as well, or the expiration date solution, or the PDF-online solution...

The main advantage of the limited font would be that the user has at least some part of “the real thing” installed so it is easier to test it.