Your favourite font choices

[Marcel Birgelen]

I know a case that AFAIK never went to court as it was eventually settled, but evolved in a lengthy legal battle. While it was quite some time ago (in the late 90s), it involved a customer for a company I did some part-time jobs for back in the day. That customer was a somewhat hotshot marketing agency and they employed this guy who also gave lessons about font design. He had designed quite a few typefaces for himself and also used them in some of his work.

The relationship between that agency and him was not meant to last, so their ways parted. I don't know any of the particular details, but he ended up suing or at least threatening his former employer, because they were using some of his typefaces in their clients work. This also included at least one company logo and a few product logos. He apparently also threatened the end-users of those logos with legal action. He claimed they owed him royalties for the use of his typefaces.

Again, this all played out more than 20 years ago, so I'm missing a lot of detail. While this is a pretty specific case, it is clearly a case revolving around copyrights on typefaces, which aren't a real thing in the U.S., but seemingly aren't explicitly excluded from copyright over here. Since no judge ever came to a verdict, this case, unfortunately, didn't really amount to any useful precedent.

Regarding your conversion of type objects to outlines: Like I said, there really are some debates about this. While stuff like spacing/kerning is practically gone (you can only derive it from what is there to see), if you have sufficient text in your outlines, you may cover a majority of useful glyphs in the font. Those outlines aren't much more than the bezier splines of the font being converted to bezier splines in your design software.

[Bobby Henderson]

There are plenty of entities actively scanning the Internet in order to find so called "copyrighted material", stuff like photos, music and clip-art that has been used for some image or YouTube video on-line. Many of them immediately send-out settlement notices for whatever random sum. Much of it is being automated, just like that YouTube algorithm that mutes your sound once it detects some music playing in the background that's in their fingerprint database.

Copyright and trademark infringement is a widespread problem. Unauthorized use of movie clips, music and company logos are often easy cases to prove. The use of corporate logos also carries a double-whammy of sorts in that many people don't bother reading the company's branding guidelines, so even if they're using a company brand legitimately they can still be ordered to remove the product for violating the guidelines. I've seen retail stores ordered to remove signs that violated standards.

Clip art and royalty free stock photography/video is a different matter. But the material is still copyrighted. If it is being used in a manner that violates usage terms then the user can wind up in trouble. The most common violation is people trying to re-sell that material.

While I've not yet heard about disputes about typefaces for something like a single poster or a single printed work in any form, there have been legal issues around typefaces around here regarding stuff like logos. Typefaces are, in most European countries being considered an original work. Since a lot of stuff nowadays is international and especially if you target European countries, I think you should check the license agreement of your fonts as what your rights are when you do use it in an original work, like a logo.

There are not many legal cases involving copyright infringement of typefaces. The cases I've seen pursued are ones where a company is trying to illegally re-sell digital typefaces made by another company. I can't remember the name of the outfit, but in the 1990's one software company sold an affordable fonts package that was really Adobe's Font Folio type library, but with all the font files re-named. It was pretty easy for Adobe to prove the font files were really their own IP. The other widespread problem is font piracy, where people illegally distribute commercial fonts online. I can't recall ever seeing a type foundry go after end users who had ill-gotten font files, but they have gone after people who post the fonts online for others to download.

Type foundries exist all over the world and sites like MyFonts, FontShop and Fonts.com sell such fonts. The Heading Now super-family I recently purchased is from a company based in Florence, Italy. I haven't seen any cases of type foundries going after legit users for working their fonts into something like a logo. If anything the type foundries greatly encourage such use. It gives their fonts more exposure and more sales.

That's also where the risk of subscription based licenses is. What happens with that right of using those fonts in original works once you quit your subscription license? And is it even possible to grant such rights on a "per subscription" base? I'm not a lawyer, but I do think it's an interesting question for everybody who works with fonts as part of their job.

Again, if you convert the type objects in a design into outlines there is no font data remaining. If I use a typeface from Adobe Fonts in a sign design and that typeface gets removed from the service it is not going to affect my artwork at all. I just won't be able to create new things using that typeface, unless I buy it the conventional way.

Adobe negotiates with other type foundries for hosting typefaces on the Adobe Fonts service. If the foundry doesn't like the terms Adobe offers they don't make a deal. It's rare, but some foundries have pulled fonts from the service, such as Font Bureau for example. If you're a CC subscriber there is no legal risk in using the fonts. I think Adobe Fonts is a fantastic service to use in things like custom sign projects. But any company that needs to make frequent use of a certain typeface would have to acknowledge the risk in using one or more typefaces from the Adobe Fonts service for such purposes. It would be better to purchase the fonts outright and in a license that allowed a sufficient number of users. The default is 1 or 1-5 users. Obviously you have to pay more for a license that allows dozens or even hundreds of installations.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I guess it must have been in the early 90s when I've last done something like manual font rendering, but in that case it was for an industrial application and the platform was an IBM PC in VGA mode 12h... Most of the program was in Pascal (which was THE thing then), but I ended up writing those routines in assembly, because that was the only thing fast enough to do so. But thank god for bit-blit operations on those platforms...

As for SPI interfaces and displays... Until now, I've only worked with simple, character driven embedded displays. As for pixel mapped displays via SPI, I've only looked at them, but I know from some friends that they're always "fun". None of those Chinese manufacturers seems to be doing a good job ad documenting them and there doesn't seem to be a universal standard as how to drive them. The same seems to apply to other interfaces like LVDS too. Apparently, there is something new, called MIPI, which has been developed among mobile phone and "IoT" manufacturers for the more high-end embedded displays, which adheres to standards and for which there seem to be "drivers"...

In the 1980s, I built a wire wrapped prototype satellite dish steering system for television stations that was written in Borland Turbo Pascal for the Z80. Turbo Pascal compiled for CP/M, but we just did no OS or BIOS calls and ran it without an OS. Just put the executable in EPROM and ran it there.

Later we did a broadcast transmitter control system using Turbo Pascal for the PC. This ran under DOS on a 286. I still have a couple of those machines...

I did a VERY LITTLE bit of work with LVDS driven displays. It was basically I saw the schematic and saw it work. The hardware and software were done by others on the project. One thing I was able to get adopted was a unified user interface. A single HTML UI served both the front panel and remote users.

Anyway, I think Unifont is very clever. I'm glad we discovered it when working on the JSD-100. I then used it in several more products. Most of my more recent projects have no local UI, just a web UI.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess it must have been in the early 90s when I've last done something like manual font rendering, but in that case it was for an industrial application and the platform was an IBM PC in VGA mode 12h... Most of the program was in Pascal (which was THE thing then), but I ended up writing those routines in assembly, because that was the only thing fast enough to do so. But thank god for bit-blit operations on those platforms...

As for SPI interfaces and displays... Until now, I've only worked with simple, character driven embedded displays. As for pixel mapped displays via SPI, I've only looked at them, but I know from some friends that they're always "fun". None of those Chinese manufacturers seems to be doing a good job ad documenting them and there doesn't seem to be a universal standard as how to drive them. The same seems to apply to other interfaces like LVDS too. Apparently, there is something new, called MIPI, which has been developed among mobile phone and "IoT" manufacturers for the more high-end embedded displays, which adheres to standards and for which there seem to be "drivers"...

For lettering in graphical items like logos the situation is that simple. Once the letters are converted to outlines the actual font data is erased. The letters are just raw shapes.

A logo design can be copyrighted and even trademarked. But the guy who designed the typeface can't simply go waltzing up to the graphic artist with his hand out demanding another pay day. With as many typeface knock-offs that exist the typeface designer would have a tough time proving his font file and not that of someone else was used to create the logo. Hell, I've hand drawn lettering that looked like a typeface I didn't own, scanned it and vectorized it. There would be hell to pay if I had to pay a certain type designer a penalty fee when I didn't use his font files at all.

From a business standpoint it would be flagrantly stupid for a typeface designer to go around suing graphics people for more money after they already paid for the freaking font files. That would create some bad word of mouth that would negatively affect the type designer's font sales.

Just from a third party standpoint legal turmoil can have a chilling effect on a foundry's sales. Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler had a fairly public falling out and legal battle with Hoefler ending up looking like quite a bad guy as the HFJ type foundry was split up. It's another reason why I don't use Gotham very much anymore in my design work. It was Tobias Frere-Jones' creation yet Hoefler is getting all the money for it. So why give that typeface any more exposure when Frere-Jones wasn't getting any benefit from it?

The use cases where people have to be careful with font rights is when they want to embed a particular typeface's font data into something that is mass produced, such as a magazine, book or anything else where many thousands or even millions of copies of the product are sold. On those platforms typeface designers are occasionally commissioned to develop custom typefaces for a mass publication. The Gotham typeface started out as an in-house set of fonts for GQ Magazine.

People and as a direct result also corporations are greedy bastards... or at least, there are a sufficient number out there who most definitely are. They don't often do what's best for them in the long run, they just care about the dollars... or euros. There are plenty of entities actively scanning the Internet in order to find so called "copyrighted material", stuff like photos, music and clip-art that has been used for some image or YouTube video on-line. Many of them immediately send-out settlement notices for whatever random sum. Much of it is being automated, just like that YouTube algorithm that mutes your sound once it detects some music playing in the background that's in their fingerprint database.

While I've not yet heard about disputes about typefaces for something like a single poster or a single printed work in any form, there have been legal issues around typefaces around here regarding stuff like logos. Typefaces are, in most European countries being considered an original work. Since a lot of stuff nowadays is international and especially if you target European countries, I think you should check the license agreement of your fonts as what your rights are when you do use it in an original work, like a logo.

That's also where the risk of subscription based licenses is. What happens with that right of using those fonts in original works once you quit your subscription license? And is it even possible to grant such rights on a "per subscription" base? I'm not a lawyer, but I do think it's an interesting question for everybody who works with fonts as part of their job. And while the issue isn't as pressing in the U.S., where the law clearly states that typefaces aren't, in itself, protected by copyright, there are plenty of jurisdictions around the world, that do accept typefaces as being protected by copyright. The Berne Convention doesn't explicitly state typefaces, so it's up to the individual countries in that agreement to implement their own view on it.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Did you use a display controller that could load that font or did you have a display that exposed itself as bitmap buffer and did you need to render the glyphs yourself?

I wrote a perl program that converts the Unifont hex to Intel hex to drive an EPROM programmer, then programmed a 2 MB SPI flash chip. I wrote microcontroller code to draw the characters on the display, pixel by pixel. I wrote code to take a UTF-8 string, break it into 16 bit Unicode code points, then pull the bitmaps from the external flash and draw the them on the display. As mentioned before, the characters can be either 8 or 16 pixels wide. The code keeps track of where the next character goes, deals with CR and LF, etc. There is also integer scaling (like for the fader level or format name on the JSD-60 and JSD-100, which is large text).

Most of the code was in C. But in the case of the JSD-60, CCR-100, and CCH-100, the microcontroller driving the display was pretty low speed (Microchip PIC18), so the code that drove the display SPI interface was in assembly to speed it up. The display documentation seems to always be terrible, so a lot of experimenting was required to get it running. In general, you set a cursor position, then start sending RGB levels for the pixels in a row. Then move to another position, and send more pixel values. Most of the display controllers I used took care of display refresh. I just had to set pixels over SPI. If I did not send anything for a while, the display stayed the same. The CCH-100, however, has a pretty complex video input. For that, I set up a RAM video buffer in the PIC18 chip. The rendering code wrote to that buffer. An interrupt service routine read from that buffer and sent the pixels out continuously over SPI. GPIO pins drove the horizontal and vertical sync pins.

Lots of fun!

Harold

[Bobby Henderson]

For lettering in graphical items like logos the situation is that simple. Once the letters are converted to outlines the actual font data is erased. The letters are just raw shapes.

A logo design can be copyrighted and even trademarked. But the guy who designed the typeface can't simply go waltzing up to the graphic artist with his hand out demanding another pay day. With as many typeface knock-offs that exist the typeface designer would have a tough time proving his font file and not that of someone else was used to create the logo. Hell, I've hand drawn lettering that looked like a typeface I didn't own, scanned it and vectorized it. There would be hell to pay if I had to pay a certain type designer a penalty fee when I didn't use his font files at all.

From a business standpoint it would be flagrantly stupid for a typeface designer to go around suing graphics people for more money after they already paid for the freaking font files. That would create some bad word of mouth that would negatively affect the type designer's font sales.

Just from a third party standpoint legal turmoil can have a chilling effect on a foundry's sales. Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler had a fairly public falling out and legal battle with Hoefler ending up looking like quite a bad guy as the HFJ type foundry was split up. It's another reason why I don't use Gotham very much anymore in my design work. It was Tobias Frere-Jones' creation yet Hoefler is getting all the money for it. So why give that typeface any more exposure when Frere-Jones wasn't getting any benefit from it?

The use cases where people have to be careful with font rights is when they want to embed a particular typeface's font data into something that is mass produced, such as a magazine, book or anything else where many thousands or even millions of copies of the product are sold. On those platforms typeface designers are occasionally commissioned to develop custom typefaces for a mass publication. The Gotham typeface started out as an in-house set of fonts for GQ Magazine.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Generally speaking, once you convert a typographical object based on a font file into raw vector outlines, such as the lettering in a logo, there is no more legal obligation. You can't copyright the shape of a letter. For decades type designers could only copyright and trademark the name of the typeface, not the glyph designs. That is what provided the opening for various clones of typefaces such as Helvetica.

With digital fonts, the actual font data can be copyrighted. But if you convert a type object to outlines it is no longer editable lettering. It's just geometric vector shapes that look like letters. No font files are required to be installed to open the design in a graphics application like Illustrator.

Well, it ain't all that simple... after all, it's copyright and everything that copyright touches makes it inherently complex...

While in the US, a typeface in itself, can't be copyrighted, this isn't true in Europe, where most countries do actually honor copyright on typeface designs. A computer font can be considered a sort of program (in the end, it tells the computer, printer or digital printing press what to do) and as such, there is no dispute about copyright being applicable here. While it's clear, in the U.S., that a bitmap rendering of a typeface doesn't fall under copyright, there seem to be different interpretations for vector representations of those typefaces, as those vectors do retain a substantial part of the original font and such a substantial part of an original work that falls under copyright...

[Kenneth Wuepper]

I really learned to like CopperPlate Gothic. This font is legible in the very tiniest of point sizes. Designed for use in charting and columnar forms, this font stays pretty clearly readable.

[Frank Cox]

I used to use Print Shop and Print Master to make signs using a dot matrix printer, first with my Commodore 64 and then with my DOS computer. In fact, I still have and use one of those signs -- I have one that says "I'm in the projection room -- Be right back!" mounted on a cardboard stand that I made out of a chocolate bar box years ago. I still use it occasionally if I have to go somewhere for a moment while the show is on and nobody is around.

One of my I'll get around it someday projects is to write a translator for MPS-801 graphic output to a "modern" graphic format so graphic programs like these can be useful once again. The Commdore 64 emulator called Vice can output a "print.dump" file and someone wrote a postscript converter for the text output (https://www.pdbuchan.com/commodore/vicetops.html) but it doesn't do graphics. It shouldn't be too hard to read print.dump and populate a pixel grid. Someday...

[Bobby Henderson]

For me, the font really represented "the Mac" and I don't really get the 80s vibe like with many other bitmap fonts from the time, even though the font uses a lot of double-pixel straight lines, to increase readability on early CRT screens. They later revived it for the iPod, which had high-contrast LCD displays, later models even had RGB screens.

To me the Chicago typeface still falls into the 1980s sensibility of what "high tech" was. Even back then the look was slightly cheesy. There's a lot of old 1970's and 1980's future-tech inspired typefaces, such as Stop or Data 70. They have a certain charm to them. But I can't see anyone setting the titles for a 2020's science fiction movie in those typefaces.

Computers are no longer futuristic gadgets or appliances like they were 40 years ago. Today a personal computer, notebook, tablet or even a mobile phone is merely a contemporary electronic tool. Neutral looking typefaces go better with a clean user interface.

See, before this whole software subscription thing came along, the only way to license fonts that needed an extra license was to buy them from either the creator or a type foundry (individually or as part of a pack, that doesn't really matter). This would also secure the usage rights for the further distribution of the works that contain said fonts. So, what happens if I terminate my Adobe CC subscription? Do I still have the right to distribute the stuff that uses this font? While converting a font to outlines removes the dependency to the font itself, it doesn't remove any legal obligations.

Generally speaking, once you convert a typographical object based on a font file into raw vector outlines, such as the lettering in a logo, there is no more legal obligation. You can't copyright the shape of a letter. For decades type designers could only copyright and trademark the name of the typeface, not the glyph designs. That is what provided the opening for various clones of typefaces such as Helvetica.

With digital fonts, the actual font data can be copyrighted. But if you convert a type object to outlines it is no longer editable lettering. It's just geometric vector shapes that look like letters. No font files are required to be installed to open the design in a graphics application like Illustrator.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Did you use a display controller that could load that font or did you have a display that exposed itself as bitmap buffer and did you need to render the glyphs yourself?

The Chicago pixel typeface was identifiable with the original "classic" MacOS. There are multiple reasons why Apple moved past it. First, the look of the typeface is dated in 1980's low-rez video game chic. Chicago was designed for computers with low resolution monitors and limited color display. Lots of advances happened from the late 1980's thru the 1990's, including the ability to use anti-aliased type on screen via vector-based fonts. By the time OSX arrived it was no longer necessary to use crude looking pixel typefaces as system fonts.

For me, the font really represented "the Mac" and I don't really get the 80s vibe like with many other bitmap fonts from the time, even though the font uses a lot of double-pixel straight lines, to increase readability on early CRT screens. They later revived it for the iPod, which had high-contrast LCD displays, later models even had RGB screens.

If a user cancels his CC subscription any fonts used via Adobe Fonts will disappear. However, font data can be embedded into PDFs and stay there regardless of CC account status. Of course another practice I often use is converting type objects to outlines when I'm finished with a design.

Being a long-time Adobe CC subscriber myself, I'm aware that their fonts aren't installed like normal system fonts and will be rendered inaccessible after you remove or terminate the subscription. My question was more regarding the legal implications of terminating a subscription, which includes the usage rights for those fonts.

See, before this whole software subscription thing came along, the only way to license fonts that needed an extra license was to buy them from either the creator or a type foundry (individually or as part of a pack, that doesn't really matter). This would also secure the usage rights for the further distribution of the works that contain said fonts. So, what happens if I terminate my Adobe CC subscription? Do I still have the right to distribute the stuff that uses this font? While converting a font to outlines removes the dependency to the font itself, it doesn't remove any legal obligations.

The answer will probably be buried somewhere deep in Adobe's EULA, but I haven't really bothered to look yet. Still, the implications of this could be another potential "rats nest".

[Harold Hallikainen]

Speaking of bitmap fonts, I used UniFont ( http://unifoundry.com/index.html ) in several USL products such as the JSD-100, JSD-60, CCR-100, CCH-100. It allows the closed captioning system to display Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and other languages as long as the text is left to right. Characters are either 8 or 16 pixels wide and 16 pixels high.

Harold

[Bobby Henderson]

Chicago, as in the pixel-optimized MacOS version of it, is a pretty iconic font ant it just screams MacOS. I never understood why they needed to replace it with that generic "Charcoal" or"Lucida Grande" as has been used in most MacOS X releases up until recently, when they switched to Helvetica Neue.

The Chicago pixel typeface was identifiable with the original "classic" MacOS. There are multiple reasons why Apple moved past it. First, the look of the typeface is dated in 1980's low-rez video game chic. Chicago was designed for computers with low resolution monitors and limited color display. Lots of advances happened from the late 1980's thru the 1990's, including the ability to use anti-aliased type on screen via vector-based fonts. By the time OSX arrived it was no longer necessary to use crude looking pixel typefaces as system fonts.

By the way, even though a few weights of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue are bundled in OSX and iPad OS the actual system typeface for both is a different typeface: San Francisco. It looks a lot like Helvetica but there are noticeable differences.

I've never really checked the licenses of those cloud font libraries, but what happens with the license if you cancel your subscription? I guess it's clear that you're not allowed to use them for any substantial new creations anymore, but what actually happens with the stuff you used one of those fonts for?

The Adobe Fonts service requires an always-on Internet connection in order for a subscriber to use fonts activated to his account. The font files aren't resident on the hard disc in a way where the user can access or copy them. Fonts are easy to activate and deactivate thru either the CC user panel or the Adobe Fonts web site. Active fonts will show up on any computer signed into the account, plus they'll show up on a device such as an iPad.

If a user cancels his CC subscription any fonts used via Adobe Fonts will disappear. However, font data can be embedded into PDFs and stay there regardless of CC account status. Of course another practice I often use is converting type objects to outlines when I'm finished with a design.

Unless I'm dealing with paragraphs of body copy or large amounts of single line text strings I want to edit later I'm going to convert the font data into raw vector shapes. There are multiple reasons to do this. If you leave font data active in something like a logo design there is no telling how that file will open years later, perhaps on a different computer system. You have to use the exact same font files used to create the original artwork and depend on the host application to treat the font data exactly as it did back when the original file was created. It's just easier to convert the lettering to outlines. That way you don't have to go hunting for font files to install.

Another reason to convert type objects to outlines in regards to Adobe Fonts: sometimes type foundries pull fonts from the Adobe Fonts service. It doesn't happen very often, certainly not like Netflix removing lots of shows at the end of a month. But it does happen. The biggest removal came from Font Bureau when they pulled a couple or so dozen type families from the service. One funny upshot to the story: a number of type families Font Bureau pulled later returned to Adobe Fonts via the typeface designers. One example is the Interstate family by Tobias Frere-Jones (the same guy who designed Gotham).

[Marcel Birgelen]

Chicago, as in the pixel-optimized MacOS version of it, is a pretty iconic font ant it just screams MacOS. I never understood why they needed to replace it with that generic "Charcoal" or"Lucida Grande" as has been used in most MacOS X releases up until recently, when they switched to Helvetica Neue.

I'd say the IBM PC CP437 font set, the default 80x25 console font set for the original IBM PC was also a pretty iconic looking font set, forever tied to the classic DOS CRT-screen look.

Buying and/or licensing fonts can be its own rabbit hole too. We buy new type families on occasion to keep things "fresh." It's a hazard to rely on something like a font bundle in CorelDRAW. Even though that collection has around 1000 fonts it is rarely updated and it getting pretty stale. The Adobe Fonts service in Creative Cloud is nice since they periodically add newer type families from a wide variety of type foundries.

I've never really checked the licenses of those cloud font libraries, but what happens with the license if you cancel your subscription? I guess it's clear that you're not allowed to use them for any substantial new creations anymore, but what actually happens with the stuff you used one of those fonts for? I know that a lot of people had to retrospectively pull some YouTube videos, because they used a commercial music service for some background music and lice, but after cancelling the subscription, those licenses expired with it.

[Steve Guttag]

Maybe I'll go back and start using "Chicago" as my preferred font. I probably have it somewhere as a bitmap!