In the old days if you where good enough you just copied other peoples typeface, if you liked franklin gothic, you cut it out and used it..

this whole ‘pay for font’ thing is complete bullshit.

if you have the right font dosent mean youll have the right design.

its hard enough without the right fonts to be a good designer…

i just really hate this idea you should hide away developments in type, that happened almost half a century ago, what about copyright.!!!!! for god sake it only lasts 50 years in my country ..that includes typefaces.

look at a typeface like franklin gothic… my font will make you pay for that..

or even grotesque sans family..those fonts where developed before the turn of the century!!!!!! when people thought sans was grotesque..and they charge people for that!!!

to me that is just WRONG….. theres nobody even alive left when that typeface was invented… but people still charge you for it..

However, I do mean to imply that some people are too quick to “want” to see their products being used by others. Sometimes, it might be better to not give away your first font. Or maybe even your tenth. Your later ones will be better. Really. There is a learning curve.

I know that this realization can hurt. But just because we make things, it doesn’t mean that they are intrinsically good! I’m flattered, Forrest, that you find my proto-typeface ideas worth mentioning. Ignaz Textura will not be coming out into the world anytime soon, though. Not unless I throw it all away and start over first! (I based the work on a gravestone from 1519… after about a year or so of tweaking, I set the same lines of text that were on my inspirational source. Let’s just say that, sadly, the “original” looked way better. sigh… such is life!) I have already started on more promising, perhaps easier projects. There will be other blackletters, though.

There’s a nugget of truth in his argument I’d like to expand upon. I have enough experience in the arts to know that, perverse as it may sound, it’s awfully hard to get people to take you seriously if you give away your products or services for free. Even charging a nominal fee makes what you’re doing seem more “real” or “professional”. The converse of this is that you should never sell something in bad conscience; slapping a price tag on any old random crap you feel like disgorging unto the world isn’t going to do your self-esteem, your reputation, or your bank account any favors. This is why I said I wouldn’t release a font for free unless I was willing to charge money for it first. Otherwise, Dan is right: your poor little misbegotten bastards will forever be wandering around, getting themselves into trouble and sullying your good name, all because you didn’t take the time to raise them right. (It sounds kind of icky and reactionary when I put it that way, though.)

That said, however, the point about “bastards” is well taken. I wonder if Frutiger was ever bummed when he came across Initiales Phoebus…

Otherwise, I have been enjoying this conversation, both here and in its iterations on Typophile. Like Forrest, I am a novice type designer. I have had several people ask me for copies of my fonts. I have only given them to other designers who I know personally.

I would never post one of my fonts online for free, unrestricted download. Many designers who are just starting out do this, because (like Jay pointed out) they don’t think that there fonts are very good. The problem is, once you put a font out there on the market, you’ll never know what happens to the font. Your name will be “attached” to the font forever. If/when you do later sell commercial fonts, your previous “bastard” children will still be out and about, and the quality of your work will be judged by both of them.

FREE
1.) Crummy quality/limited character sets
2.) Scanned from old type samples without significant reworking/new character generation
3.) Lousy kerning/metrics

UNFREE
1.) A completely original face or family with some merit/value (I’ll make that call when the day comes, I suppose)
2.) A significant amount of reworking and original characters added to an existing alphabet. (like if I started a new take on a face, not a straight duplicate with extra characters)

I guess a single weight of a family given away is a good thing… I recently needed 2 more weights of district and bought the package, so it seems Phil is doing something right.

I doubt I would offer an archive, though. It seems the foundries that “rotate” free faces might encourage more visits.

http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/downloads/fonts

The reason its free is simple. Its my first and only font, and as such isn’t professionally kerned and bit thrown together!