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‘Freeness’ as a Technical Component of Type Design

A short essay that formed the basis of an even
shorter presentation to the 2012 isType Conference, Istanbul, Turkey.
This is a work-in-progress and will be added to and re-shaped over
time.

‘Freeness’, vernacular English, meaning; being free and able
to act at will, being open or available to all.

Presenting the idea that ‘freeness’ is a technological aspect of a
font’s design, as equally important as ‘legibility’, ‘render quality’,
or ‘language support’, and that, free fonts can enable usage
that proprietary fonts are not designed for.

Type on the web is nothing like type on paper

The traditional relationship between font and reader, i.e. reading
type on paper, is based on reading the printed artifact of a font, not
the font itself. The internet has changed that relationship. Type has
moved from paper, to widespread use within digital documents that are
made to be moved and viewed across the internet. Type on the web is
nothing like type on paper. With web based text the font itself is
delivered directly to the reading medium.

In addition, the nature of ‘publishing’ has been changed by the
internet, giving new access to and new forms of mass communication.
More people can communicate their ideas and thoughts to more people,
more freely, than ever before. There has been a steady explosion of
textual content that is highly mobile, editable, searchable, can be
archived, copied, and shared. In short, a major aspect of this content
is its freeness. Text based content also means, potentially,
typographically rich content. Ideally and practically, these new means
of publishing and this new content need fonts that are as free as the
content and technologies themselves. Set with proprietary type, this
content would be less free; it could no longer necessarily be so
freely moved, shared, or copied.

Proprietary Licensing versus Free Content

Delivering real fonts to users devices creates an issue with
traditional font licensing. To render ‘active text’, with a served
font, in a browser, a ‘real font’ has to be served onto the web. Once
served, that font file becomes open to unlicensed use; users who have
not paid for and agreed licensing terms to use a font are potentially
able to access the font anyway. As the use of real fonts across the
web became a technical practicality this became an issue for those
producing, publishing and selling proprietary fonts. By 2009 there had
emerged a general consensus within the ‘type industry’ that allowing
real fonts on the web, with or without permission, was at best, a
technical issue that needed resolving in favour of font vendors, and
at worst, a technology that should not be adopted. As David Berlow of
Font Bureau stated in 2009;

“that the type industry cede its intellectual
property to the public without permission – is not going to happen.”

or, as Chester Jenkins of the Village group of type foundries
explained in 2010;

“We are 100% against @font-face, because it makes
specified OpenType fonts freely accessible by, and to all. It is one
thing to unknowlingly ‘share’ a Web-only font file, but quite
another to give away an OpenType font file which can be used for
anything.”

The main technical issue with allowing real font use onto the web was
simple, how can you protect real fonts on the web from unlicensed use?

Various proposals to protect fonts at browser level emerged from the
font industry but these were not greeted well by net developers and
net engineers. Firstly, the ‘policing’ of fonts on the web would have
likely been wholly ineffective, and naturally, many on the development
side of the web were not keen on building browser-level ‘Rights
Management’ to restrict the web’s textual content. What emerged is a
version of what Benkler describes as ‘a battle over the institutional
ecology of the digital environment’. On one side, proprietary font
foundries and vendors, on the other side, those who wish to see libre
software and open technology stay central at the heart of the web.

Putting up Hurdles

In the last few years more foundries have abandoned ideas of
browser-side restrictions and instead adopted a more pragmatic
approach to font usage across the web.  Instead of aiming
restriction at the end user, some commercial webfont services are
trying “putting up hurdles” at the font server end. For example,
Adobe’s Typekit and Extensis’s Webink create barriers of address
checking, concealment, and for example, the segmentation of font
files, with the aim of creating new revenue whilst protecting
intellectual property. This approach tolerates some potential for
unlicensed font use against an understanding that normal users will
not have the knowledge or inclination to climb or by-pass these
hurdles.

These ‘Pay-as-you-serve’ webfont services can be practical for some
web designers, for example, allowing the typesetting of exact
typefaces also used in printed material. But what about the makers of
the majority of the web’s textual content, who may need something
without specific restrictions imposed by proprietary licenses, or
simply need the ease of open services, or just want to use totally
free fonts?

Produsers and Users

“Open Source is powerful because it’s an
alternative to the status quo, another way to produce things or
solve problems. And in many cases, it’s a better way. Better because
current methods are not fast enough, not ambitious enough, or don’t
take advantage of our collective creative potential.” – Thomas
Goetz, ‘Open Source Everywhere’, Wired 11, 2003

There is a definite role for proprietary font licensing on the web
and there is no point undervaluing the qualities it can bring, but, in
the context of the technologies and new markets of the web,
proprietary licensing places restrictions that encumbers use. In fact,
proprietary licensing is specifically designed to encumber use. On the
other hand, fonts released under free or libre licenses allow and
encourage greater freedom for type across the web. Once freely
available, these fonts can become a viable example of what Thomas
Goetz describes as, a fast and ambitious alternative. Google’s
webfont directory is an example of Goetz’s notion in action, quickly
building an ambitious library of ‘libre’ webfonts to produce a
technology driven service in a way that proprietary foundries had
either not tried to do, or had been slow, or unwilling, to do.

On the back of such free and easy accessible webfonts, other
platforms and services, such as WordPress, were able, in turn, to
provide their users with free and easy webfonts. For example, blog and
CMS theme developers tend to need to be able to offer typographic
choice where extra licensing is non-existent, where there are no terms
or conditions agreements before fonts can be used, where there are no
restrictions or fees pegged to usage, and where there are no
restrictions on commercial use. Free fonts can deliver all of these
these simply and freely, whereas fonts covered by proprietary
licensing must compromise in one area or more in order to protect the
fonts from unlicensed use and to ensure revenue from font usage. In
the end, the sheer number of users of free webfonts highlights that
they are the most effective way to set type amongst the free and open
textual content of the modern web.

The Democratisation of Content

“Open Source is powerful because it’s an
alternative to the status quo, another way to produce things or
solve problems. And in many cases, it’s a better way. Better because
current methods are not fast enough, not ambitious enough, or don’t
take advantage of our collective creative potential.” – Thomas
Goetz, ‘Open Source Everywhere’, Wired 11, 2003

Type is highly relevant at times of societal change, because without
access to type, communicating, publishing and sharing unauthorised
ideas, as text, are difficult. The new utilisation of moveable type in
the sixteenth century enabled the growth of anti-authoritarian and
protestantism. Typewriters and photocopiers fueled the emerging
counter cultures of the 1960′s and ’70′s.

A web dominated by proprietary fonts would be a web where rich
typography would end up confined to certain sectors or districts of
the web. At a time when the free-ness of net based text comes
more and more into focus, it may be important that the typesetting of
text on the web becomes even more free.

Vernon Adams, June 2012