Fonts. Whats the deal.

[idea]

I don't get it. I work at a print shop and we recently upgraded to digital printing, networking a few PCs to all of our digital copy machines. I've learned a lot about computers over the past few weeks. I've also learned that fonts are EXPENSIVE. A customer asked me to match a type face, that type face being "Gill Sans Light." I searched for it on Google and it costs $21 ! Is this going to happen to me every time I need to match a type face? It's not like it's a wacky designer font.. this is a regular letterhead type font. Isn't there some discounted package I could buy that includes all the popular ones or something?

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

just the game. cash is king.

 

[dullard]

I don't know about discounted fonts. But ~17 years ago, before fonts were available, I tried making one my own (my sloppy cursive handwriting that I wanted to look sloppy). Damn that took a lot of time and effort. Hundreds of hours to get it to look good. And you want it free. Why not pay someone for the time and effort it took?

Of course, I eventually lost interest and the work was lost in a floppy drive crash (which took out multiple floppy disks with all my backups of the work).

 

[Calin]

You can use some free fonts. There are vectorial fonts that come for free with some programs (like Windows). If you are unable to find a font that looks the way you want, then you are out of luck. You certainly can create your own fonts, but it is not at all easy.
I don't think 21$ for a well designed font is so much - but you can use any other regular letterhead type font that comes with Windows (by example)

 

[Looney]

Try making your own fonts, and see how hard it is. Does $20 justify the cost for fonts? Not for me it doesn't... but if the font took a lot of time, and it's demand is low, the creator has to make money some how, so they charge more for it.

 

[SouthPaW1227]

1001freefonts.com

tell them to find one there that they like, there's tons of them. *have pop-up blocker ON!*

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Originally posted by: SouthPaW1227
1001freefonts.com

tell them to find one there that they like, there's tons of them. *have pop-up blocker ON!*

Yeah, and just *wait* for them to come back and yell at you that their computer is all screwed up because they installed 200 fonts and now Windows is insanely unstable.

 

[kranky]

The difference between fonts you pay for and free fonts is quality. Many free fonts lack special characters, do not kern correctly, do not print correctly at certain sizes, etc.

If I was running a printing business, I would be prepared to pay for fonts if I needed to do a quality job. Try the free ones, but in some cases they aren't going to do the job. You'll quickly find how hard it is to find a free font that's an "equivalent" to a certain name. They are out there, but it takes forever since they can't use the same name. Even the sites that claim to help you find equivalent fonts aren't all that effective.

For example, I'll recognize Microgramma Bold Extended when I see it, but how many thousands of free fonts do I want to look through to find a free equivalent? And then to find out it doesn't print right at the size I need?

Adobe sells (or used to sell) something called Font Folio that had a zillion Adobe-quality fonts but it was really expensive.

 

[idea]

I completely understand what you guys are saying. The problem is relaying it to my boss. I have to tell him that a font set costs $21 each. The old timers.. if they can't hold it in their hands, they don't understand why it costs so much, you know what I mean?

 

[MikeyIs4Dcats]

if the print shop you work at doesn't understand all that, it's time to find a new job.

 

[EGGO]

If the customer is going to pay for it, don't worry about it.

Till then, that's how design is. =0)

 

21 bucks ain't bad at all for a font
most of the time they're 25-35
and most of the time ya need the family, and the family is 100ish

They're considerably cheaper than what they used to be if i remember correctly.
WHen i was learning design (and i was a mactard) i'd take a few zip disks with me to kinkos and snag all the fonts they had (which was a LOT)

 

[rh71]

The customer should pay for it (or you should make this policy) if you don't already have it. This is typical for web design jobs too. Nowadays if you search for the fonts you want, it all links back to fonts.com ecommerce.