Why do fonts cost so much?

[jiwq]

So I was making a logo for my site and decided to search fonts.com. Then I noticed their pricing... anywhere from $25 to $100+ for a single font.
Granted that font making is a fairly time consuming process, the pricing of some of the fancier looking fonts can be remotely justified.

But what really gets me is that the $100 fonts are along the lines of Times New Roman and Arial! Do they honestly think people will buy this stuff? It's like selling ice to eskimos.

Even at that, if people pirate the fancy designer fonts, who's going to notice or come after you?

 

[drum]

My company uses bondoni-DTC
annoying and it looks like crap. but i don't make the decisions

 

[jiwq]

Originally posted by: drum
My company uses bondoni-DTC
annoying and it looks like crap. but i don't make the decisions

so they paid for it?

 

[cubby1223]

They cost so much because the only people who are going to buy them are people who absolutely must have them and are able to pay whatever it takes to get them.

 

[Baked]

I'm boring, I only use Arial.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: Baked
I'm boring, I only use Arial.

an interesting read on arial

 

[The Batt?sai]

Originally posted by: jiwq
So I was making a logo for my site and decided to search fonts.com. Then I noticed their pricing... anywhere from $25 to $100+ for a single font.
Granted that font making is a fairly time consuming process, the pricing of some of the fancier looking fonts can be remotely justified.

But what really gets me is that the $100 fonts are along the lines of Times New Roman and Arial! Do they honestly think people will buy this stuff? It's like selling ice to eskimos.

Even at that, if people pirate the fancy designer fonts, who's going to notice or come after you?

search on google. i found a free tempus sans itc font to download instead of payin $35 for it. and no it wasnt' a torrent site

 

[jiwq]

Originally posted by: quasarsky

Originally posted by: jiwq
So I was making a logo for my site and decided to search fonts.com. Then I noticed their pricing... anywhere from $25 to $100+ for a single font.
Granted that font making is a fairly time consuming process, the pricing of some of the fancier looking fonts can be remotely justified.

But what really gets me is that the $100 fonts are along the lines of Times New Roman and Arial! Do they honestly think people will buy this stuff? It's like selling ice to eskimos.

Even at that, if people pirate the fancy designer fonts, who's going to notice or come after you?

search on google. i found a free tempus sans itc font to download instead of payin $35 for it. and no it wasnt' a torrent site

well that's beside the point there's many ways of getting fonts at a price 'significantly' lower than retail.

 

[UlricT]

Just so you guys know, Adobe Font Folio is like $8999.00!

 

[Conky]

MS Comic Sans FTW! :laugh:

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: UlricT
Just so you guys know, Adobe Font Folio is like $8999.00!

You can get the Russian version for one ruble. :laugh:

 

[ThePresence]

Because font families are works of art made by highly skilled artists even if you think they're boring. There are subtle things in each font that allow them to express things differently.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Crazyfool
MS Comic Sans FTW! :laugh:

:thumbsup:

 

[jiwq]

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: Crazyfool
MS Comic Sans FTW! :laugh:

:thumbsup:

o no, $40 on fonts.com! i can't afford that....:evil:

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: jiwq

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: Crazyfool
MS Comic Sans FTW! :laugh:

:thumbsup:

o no, $40 on fonts.com! i can't afford that....:evil:

Dude, no one pays for fonts. Make your logo and move on.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: Baked
I'm boring, I only use Arial.

an interesting read on arial

But there was a problem. There were two kinds of PostScript fonts: Type 1 and Type 3.

That makes complete sense.

Still reading

 

[xSkyDrAx]

Selling ice to eskimos you say...hm..:Q

 

[ThePresence]

Originally posted by: Crazyfool

Originally posted by: jiwq

Originally posted by: Shawn

Originally posted by: Crazyfool
MS Comic Sans FTW! :laugh:

:thumbsup:

o no, $40 on fonts.com! i can't afford that....:evil:

Dude, no one pays for fonts. Make your logo and move on.

That is very untrue. I have paid hundreds if not thousands for fonts. Fonts are very important in design, and most times the freeware fonts just don't cut it.

 

[The Batt?sai]

Originally posted by: ThePresence
Because font families are works of art made by highly skilled artists even if you think they're boring. There are subtle things in each font that allow them to express things differently.

lol thats so true but its lame that thats really the reason

 

[dawks]

It can take a single person working several months, full time to design a font that looks good and also works properly. Things like truetype, printing issues, bold, italics, and how the font appears at different sizes all must be addressed. I've seen some fonts where most letters have been custom tweaked individually for bold, italics, and different sizes.

Microsoft has invested (at least what I've heard) over $25 million to develop 6 new fonts for Windows Vista. Of course these are highly tuned by several Ph.D linguists, and are some of the first fonts created specifically with ClearType in mind.

 

[Injury]

You really aren't paying for to download them, you are paying for the liscensing to USE THEM in whatever situation you want. You can probably find them in other places for free, but if you were to make some ground breaking logo with them, score all sorts of money, and then someone notices the you using their font, they could sue your ass.

 

[mugs]

There isn't a huge market for fonts. Professional designers - that's it. Average Joe is willing to use the fonts that came with Windows. Small market = expensive.

 

[notfred]

They're not marketing them to your average home user. Professional design firms doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in design work will pay for good fonts.

If they didn't no one would make any new fonts, which would be bad for the design industry.

Does anyone else get sick of "Why do high-end niche market products cost more than the stuff at walmart?" threads?

 

[Rastus]

I looked around on some font sites. There are a lot of people out there that make fonts for a hobby and they are very proud of their babies.

 

[ThePresence]

Originally posted by: notfred
Does anyone else get sick of "Why do high-end niche market products cost more than the stuff at walmart?" threads?