I’m thrilled to announce that my fonts are available on the brand new Fontstand. What is Fontstand? First, let me describe some scenarios that my customers face…
Many designers want to be able to test typefaces before they buy them. That’s completely understandable. Typefaces aren’t expensive when you think about the value that they contribute to a piece of design, but that doesn’t mean that they are cheap. Sometimes designers have font budgets that allow them to buy fonts based on potential use on unknown projects in the future. That’s great, but at other times designers need fonts for a specific project right now. In these cases, the project budgets don’t always allow for speculatively buying typefaces just to see if they work for the project at hand. (Ugh, so ridiculous. Every project should have a big font budget. Accounting departments!?!?!?!?) I get lots of requests from designers facing this situation. In an attempt to help designers, I’ve experimented with sending trial versions of fonts upon request along with some usage restrictions. To be perfectly honest, for whatever reason, 99% of the time the customers never come back to actually license the fonts. That sucks for me. Even worse, the process is cumbersome: the designer has to get in touch, we exchange a few emails and then I send the fonts. It’s a slow process. That sucks for designers. This is not good for anyone. So, my policy of late has been, “Sorry, but I don’t offer trial fonts. I’m trying to figure something out.”
Another thing that designers face are small, quick projects. In these cases, a nice, new font can be a big help to get the project done quickly and make it look great. But, the budget doesn’t allow for buying that nice, new font that is only needed for this one project. So, the designer has to dust off that old workhorse typeface that they have been using for everything for the past five years. (Sigh, geometric sans again, right designers!?!?!?!?) I’ve been thinking about this since I was a student a long, long time ago. I’ve always wanted to find a way to give designers a reduced price when the font is only going to have limited use.
These are problems that I want to solve for designers. But, I haven’t been able to come up with a solution that I can pull off within the logistical and financial limitations of my small company. (I’m the only person here. I’m the designer, the engineer, the tech support agent, the customer service representative and the break room vending machine repairman*.)
Anyway, that brings me to Fontstand. Fontstand elegantly solves these problems. It is a simple standalone application for Mac OS X that allows designers to try fonts from many great designers and foundries for free and/or rent them for a limited period of time. Want to try Balto to see if it works in that annual report you are designing? Fontstand will let you take it for a spin in InDesign. Want to use Marigny on that poster for that non-profit fundraising gala? Fontstand is here to help.
For all the details, head on over to Fontstand. It’s great.
*I don’t have a break room. Or a vending machine. Or breaks.