On 30 March, which was last Friday, I started a new thread in the Product Suggestions section of the forum at the Serif webspace. I named the thread as "CD of Hobbyist Fonts with Professional Licences".
http://www.serif.com/forum/ViewThread.asp?Thread=28984
Here is a transcript of my post.
quote
I currently produce, essentially as a hobbyist, a number of fonts. They are available for free download on the web.
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/fonts.htm
The fonts are what they are. They work with PagePlus and other Serif packages, yet they do not have hinting or kerning. If their artistic design is assessed who knows what that assessment might be.
Yet the big problem as regards the possibility of them being liked and used by a design studio is that they do not have a professional-quality end user licence.
Design studios are careful, rightly so, only to use professionally licenced fonts, so no matter whether my fonts are liked they are not going to get used.
If Serif put out a Call for Participation to hobbyist and aspirant professional font designers to send in fonts for consideration for a CD and included on the CD all that passed certain tests of quality and of usability with PagePlus and DrawPlus and Serif also included on the CD a professional quality end user licence for the fonts from Serif, then that would allow the fonts to potentially become used by professional design studios.
Could readers please comment on this idea please?
If you make fonts, would you be interested in having your fonts on such a Serif CD?
If you do not make fonts, would the fact that the fonts had a professional-quality end user licence make a difference as to whether you would consider them?
For users of PagePlus, where do you obtain the fonts which you use? For example, do you use the fonts on the PagePlus discs, or the fonts which came bundled with the PC, or fonts which came with other packages, or fonts from specialist font companies or what?
William Overington
30 March 2007
end quote
There have, as yet, been no responses to that thread.
I am posting it here as well in the hope of finding out whether other font designers like the idea, in particular would other font designers be interested in sending in one or more fonts if Serif issued such a Call for Participation?
I suppose that I am wondering what is the motivation for people using FontCreator to make fonts and what they would like to achieve if they can.
William Overington
2 April 2007
An idea for the marketing of some fonts.
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I have this morning added some more notes to the above-mentioned thread in the Serif forum.
Thus far there have been no replies to either that thread or to this thread.
Am I missing something here? Is what I am trying to achieve regarding fontmaking different from what everyone else is trying to achieve regarding fontmaking? That is perhaps quite possible as people have various situations and various ambitions and something which appeals to one person may quite possibly not appeal to another person.
William Overington
11 April 2007
Thus far there have been no replies to either that thread or to this thread.
Am I missing something here? Is what I am trying to achieve regarding fontmaking different from what everyone else is trying to achieve regarding fontmaking? That is perhaps quite possible as people have various situations and various ambitions and something which appeals to one person may quite possibly not appeal to another person.
William Overington
11 April 2007
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I know several customers run a successful business, selling fonts created with FontCreator. There are also a lot of people who have designed fonts with FontCreator that are available on the Internet. I guess people who design fonts and make the available through their web pages, want to see how many people visit their web pages and want to keep track of download statistics. And maybe the group of people that might be interested, is too busy with making new fonts, so they don't read your posts...