Adobe CC Fonts

ah … and suddenly it’s quiet. Interesting!

Hi together,
logging in here into the forum might be a big hurdle for some people.

Now on topic:

Mathew Rechs of Adobe spoke about open source fonts provided by Adobe:

“Finally: The selection of high-quality open source typefaces has expanded dramatically in recent years. Adobe’s own open source type can be gotten here – no subscription, no Adobe ID required: https://github.com/adobe-fonts”

That’s more than ok, that’s fantastic.
I’m using the “Source Code Pro” and “Source Serif Pro” families a lot in my documentation for large scripting projects.

Uwe

Not to forget “Source Sans Pro” of course.

All other provided fonts, as far as I can see, are not user-ready and must be “compiled” to user-friendly font files.
And “that” could be a big hurdle for some folks. You need the right tools and the courage to use them with some command line editing skills. User-friendliness is a different thing, I think.

Uwe

Here is my concern about eliminating the majority of the built-in fonts. I use the Creative Cloud version of CC on a Windows computer. I work in the construction industry, for a company that offers a few specialized services to larger firms who design or build projects. As such, usually we are a subconsultant to a larger firm. The majority of my work product consists of individual documents (resumes, project description pages, etc) that will be incorporated into a master document by the larger firm.

A surprising number of these firms have not upgraded to the Creative Cloud versions of InDesign–when I am sending files, I routinely package the document with “Include IDML” selected. This allows people with an older version of InDesign to open my file, and has the added benefit of ensuring that my document looks the way I want it to and remains brand-compliant, particularly useful if the person I am sending to is using a Mac and doesn’t have access to the Windows-bundled fonts.

I am concerned that if I can no longer package fonts to send to my end clients who do not have access to Typekit, it is really going to impact my ability to control the quality and appearance of the end document–and if I wasn’t interested in having control over quality and appearance, I might as well just be using Microsoft Word (oh…please don’t make me go down that road!!!)

I faced this exact scenario about a year ago, with a brochure design. The printer that I was required to use would only accept editable indd files for production. I had used a Typekit font in my design, and they did not have access to Typekit. I couldn’t package the font, and outlining the fonts didn’t work either. I eventually had to completely redesign our brochure using fonts from the list of fonts that they had available (they actually sent me a list of what they had).

So, I may never run into this problem with any of our clients–but after going through this experience with printing our brochure, I purposely do not use Typekit fonts for any of my work. So, this change really has me worried–especially as I am scheduled to get a new computer in about a month, and it will require a clean install of the Creative Suite…I am going to go back-up my current font files to an external drive immediately!

I was pleased to see that Matthew Rechs contributed to the conversation, but I have to say that I don’t find his argument particularly compelling.

First of all, most of the fonts we’re talking about are, I believe, created and owned by Adobe, so they can do what they like with them.

Second, we’re not saying how they should install them; we’re just saying they should be installed without additional work.

@magerber: Thanks for sharing these thoughts.

The packaging workflow is an issue we’re very much aware of. It might surprise you to learn that the workflow you’re describing — where you package a document with fonts and sent it to a printer — has never been permitted by our font license, or by most other commercial font licenses. Technically the printer requires their own license.

This isn’t ideal. We realize that it’s not always realistic to expect the printer to purchase font licenses, and that not all printers want to work with PDFs. Whether or not we enforce this aspect of the license, we’ve been sending the wrong message to our customers and to the type industry by making it too easy for customers to unknowingly violate their license.

I have heard from many customers who are printers and are using Typekit to get fonts that are missing from documents that their clients send them. And we have some other plans in the works that I think will also help alleviate this problem. I thank you again for sharing your thoughts.

@david: I tried to explain in my blog comment why we made the decision to stop bundling the fonts, but of course I understand that not everybody will agree with our choices.

I would like to point out that just because we can do anything we want with the fonts we own, that doesn’t mean that we should.

Many type designers have told us that when Adobe gives our own type away, we’re sending the message that type isn’t valuable, and that’s obviously bad for the type industry.

While I mostly agree with this point of view, I think that there is a role for free type in making it easier for people to discover high-quality type and begin practicing typography, and that over time that’s important in growing the market of people who are willing to pay for licensed type. The “freemium” model has worked very well for us at Typekit, in that virtually every one of our tens of thousands of paying subscribers started out with a free account.

However, we at Typekit are much more concerned with getting you access to all of the great high-quality type being made in the world than we are in selling you our own fonts. We can’t succeed at that if we’re not a good citizen of the type design community, and this was a very important aspect of our decision to stop bundling fonts with CC.

I hope this information is helpful. Please let me know if you have any other questions, here or on twitter at https://twitter.com/mrechs

–Matthew