[OpenFontLibrary] [GFD] Eye Magazine on the Ubuntu libre fonts

[vernon adams]

On Sep 4, 2012, at 10:07 AM, Thomas Phinney <tphinney at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> I think of all proprietary font development, you may very well be right.

i am right ;)

> Yet, I believe (and hope I am correct) that a majority of type design *for hire* is reasonably well paid. Most proprietary type design is done by people who will own the fruits of their labors afterwards. They can hope that some of their stuff will be super-popular and make them a comfortable living. It's risky, but they are also making a long-term investment in a library of fonts, and the more they have, the more long-term income they may get.

Sure. And it's great when that happens. But the reality behind the stage where those individuals reach 'comfortable living' is a huge amount of hard work and often not living comfortably. Average all that out, and you get something unextraordinary, in return for a lot of work. It's still good, but nothing to be in awe of.

> 
> But of those type designers who have a full-time employer who owns their work, most of them make a passable living at it, even by first-world standards. That seems like a reasonable hope.

A lot of mid to large foundries / studios seem to rely on a lot of 'intern work', and low to 'ok' wages. E.g. anyone with a family to support, living in a  European city, could probably not afford to work for those wages. Certainly not in the UK. The proprietors probably live well though.

> To my mind, open source type design ought to have a similar reward structure as work-for-hire, insofar as the type designer won't own the fruits of their labor and needs to be compensated accordingly.

I dont think 'open source type design' is a generalised model that you can pin down like that. It's diverse and generally anarchic; pin one bit down and another bit will simply pop up where you don't want it to. 

> 
> Of course, it may be that in the era of globalization and interconnectedness, much type design is simply going to move to places where the cost of living is lower. We've seen it happen with a variety of kinds of tech jobs. Quite possibly it will happen with type design as well.

I agree, but i don't think you should think solely geographical. I think these things will move into allsorts of new areas of practice, economy and publishing.

> 
> Of course, that raises the question of training. Almost all the degrees and certificate programs in type design are in the first world, with the exception of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. One hopes this will change. (This is not to say that great type designers can't be self-taught, or apprentice on the job. But I have been impressed with the quality of training from some of these programs. I think their overall impact in the past decade, on type design as a career, has been very large.)
> 

Type design programs will probably have to adapt to the new realities much quicker than they have done, so far.  The gap gets bigger every academic year.


-v


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