Intellectual Property and Signs 101

[iSign]

I am, at this moment, 2 days into a 3 day router workshop, where I have spent over 40 hours (I arrived a day early) ...and so far I have captured over 20 hours of video, with audio, as well as several hundred still photos.

I received permission from the main host, who is a sign industry peer, and the co-host/sponsor who represents Enroute Software, made by SAI.

The fee for this workshop was $1500.
With travel expenses, and lost wages, this is a substantial investment for 3 days of looking over workshop slides, demos and samples, and listening to lectures and training presentations.

I am fortunate to have been granted the opportunity to capture a record of this information for my repeated use. I will only make this information available to others who attended the workshop though, simply because the way i see it, it is not mine to give.

While buffoons like bob are spouting their own less-than-pious bullshit... responsible individuals around the globe are using todays technology to enhance their lives, while simultaneously using yesterdays morals to influence their sense of right and wrong, and to respect and honor the intellectual property and the trust of those with whom they do business.

Today's opportunities & yesterdays ethics are not mutually exclusive. Neither, it would seem, are bob's right to be an asshole, and his propensity for exercising that right.

It is no more my responsibility to prevent my own murder, in order to assert my right to life, then it is any artists responsibility to prevent theft, in order to claim ownership of his work.

 

[rcook99]

It takes roughly 2000 individual sales to gross back the cost of a new font, designed from scratch and brought to market. It takes anywhere from 500 to 2000 individual sales to gross back the development costs of the average piece of digital art or clipart.

Fred, assuming your buying a font for $10. You are saying the cost to develop a font on the low end is $20,000.00 based on the numbers above. I have never made a font so my question is what makes the cost so extreme? I would have to guess its the hours put in to create each letter, the copyright and other licenses. Is that the case?:U Rock:

 

[bob]

...While buffoons like bob are spouting their own less-than-pious bullshit... responsible individuals around the globe are using todays technology to enhance their lives, while simultaneously using yesterdays morals to influence their sense of right and wrong, and to respect and honor the intellectual property and the trust of those with whom they do business...

Easy there monkey-spank. I never offered an opinion on the morality of this or that, only that the concept of intellectual property to which you so desperately cling is bankrupt in that it is not inherently enforceable. Worse, it's not enforceable at all.

Inherently enforceable merely means that something is constructed such that it can only behave as you intend for it to behave and not have to rely on the good will of others or the threat of punishment in order to function as designed.

 

[weaselboogie]

I have made two fonts myself and that number does seem extreme. I've spent probably 10-20 hours on each from hand drawing to scanning to clean up to exporting each element into it's specified character.

HOWEVER, I went no further with that. It all depends on how you want to market this. I never sold these fonts and they are not packaged with any software. So, that number is definitely not on the development side. Granted, my fonts are the first ones that I have done, I'm not a seasoned font designer like steve c. They are still on the rough end with design and at the time I wasn't too familiar with correct kerning or leading for placement. With that in mind, I'm sure a truly professional font would have 20-100 hours in development, add more time with your 'bold' face or italic. Thats a completely NEW set of letters, unless you skew or contour your original face. NOW, that still puts development on the low end 10% -20% if you do it yourself.


So, it looks like the majority of that number is marketing, website, and especially money spent on advertising (which could be on the cheap). Letterheads and signfonts have their own site, and besides an email blast I have never seen an ad in any magazine or web ad. I'm not saying that they don't do it, I just have never seen it done.


Monkey-spank? Bob, so out of character!

 

[iSign]

Whoa, didn't mean to rattle you there, old chap...

...however, your desperate claims to distance yourself from moral judgement, while valid, are entirely irrelevant, as there have been no claims to the contrary demanding this defense.

On the other hand, in your defensive posturing, your attempts to back pedal from your initial claims, into "only" this or that minor point, are falling short... when your grandiose claims were clearly more akin to choosing anarchy over democracy, while blaming any who would defend the latter for your choice to stoop to the former.

Now who's trying to turn back the clock?

Altruistic nonsense notwithstanding, regardless of motive, humanitarian or venal, the point is that the model functions only when the means of reproduction and distribution remain exclusively under the control of the producer. If that is not the case, the model doesn't work, the model cannot work. It's unfortunate that the industries involved spend their time and resources attempting to turn back the clock and spouting pious bullshit rather than creating a model that fits the reality of today.

 

[Replicator]

Monkey-spank? Bob, so out of character!

But NOT that much out . . . !

 

[THATgirl]

LOL I don't like name calling but but that was funny. At least the posters didn't delete what they said. Say what ya mean, mean what ya say.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Fred, assuming your buying a font for $10. You are saying the cost to develop a font on the low end is $20,000.00 based on the numbers above. I have never made a font so my question is what makes the cost so extreme? I would have to guess its the hours put in to create each letter, the copyright and other licenses. Is that the case?:U Rock:

The numbers upon which I made my assertion were put forth at an aTypi conference I attended 14 years ago. What was being discussed was what it cost a full fledged professional firm to develop and bring to market a new typeface family ... generally regarded as four faces: Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. Included in this cost were:

• Creation of drawings for a full character set for each version by a trained designer. A full character set is typically in the neighborhood of 160 individual characters per version.
• Hand vectorizing of each character using a high resolution tablet system.
• Assembly of the characters into a font generation program.
• Creation of a kerning and spacing scheme for each version typically including 500 kerning pairs.
• Generation of the fonts in Type 1, TrueType and other formats.
• Testing and review of the fonts.
• Acquisition of appropriate intellectual property registration and protection.
• Advertising, press releases, and preparation of marketing materials.

That cost was, at the time, $100,000. It was for the creation of a new font design from scratch using no shortcuts by a major player such as Adobe, Linotype, Agfa etc.

Can it be done for less? Of course ... by taking shortcuts.

• Use an existing design as a model.
• Autotrace the characters instead of hand tracing them.
• Supply less characters.
• Embolden and slant characters instead of creating separate designs for bold, italic and bold italic.
• Import a spacing and kerning scheme from another font or do without one altogether.
• Open someone else's font, change the name, change or delete the copyright notice, and regenerate the font.

Of all the costs mentioned, an educated guess is the largest cost is the marketing. In the 14 years that have passed, the type industry has largely abandoned its dealer programs, cut back on print advertising and adopted a direct sales over the internet or superseller (such as MyFonts.com) marketing strategy.

The major players have also spent huge sums in court against pirates like KeyFonts Pro and SSI as well as all the "free" font sites that were redistributing their work.

 

[rcook99]

The numbers upon which I made my assertion were put forth at an aTypi conference I attended 14 years ago. What was being discussed was what it cost a full fledged professional firm to develop and bring to market a new typeface family ... generally regarded as four faces: Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. Included in this cost were:

Creation of drawings for a full character set for each version by a trained designer. A full character set is typically in the neighborhood of 160 individual characters per version.
Hand vectorizing of each character using a high resolution tablet system.
Assembly of the characters into a font generation program.
Creation of a kerning and spacing scheme for each version typically including 500 kerning pairs.
Generation of the fonts in Type 1, TrueType and other formats.
Testing and review of the fonts.
Acquisition of appropriate intellectual property registration and protection.
Advertising, press releases, and preparation of marketing materials.
That cost was, at the time, $100,000. It was for the creation of a new font design from scratch using no shortcuts by a major player such as Adobe, Linotype, Agfa etc.

Can it be done for less? Of course ... by taking shortcuts.

Use an existing design as a model.
Autotrace the characters instead of hand tracing them.
Supply less characters.
Embolden and slant characters instead of creating separate designs.
Import a spacing and kerning scheme from another font or do without one altogether.
Open someone else's font, change the name, change or delete the copyright notice, and regenerate the font.
Of all the costs mentioned, an educated guess is the largest cost is the marketing. In the 14 years that have passed, the type industry has largely abandoned its dealer programs, cut back on print advertising and adopted a direct sales over the internet or superseller (such as MyFonts.com) marketing strategy.

The major players have also spent huge sums in court against pirates like KeyFonts Pro and SSI as well as all the "free" font sites that were redistributing their work.

Fred thank you for the explanation I appreciate you taking your time to put all that information together.

Bob

 

[Service Sign Co]

Quite a heated debate,I would really like to learn how to digitize my casual,it sounds more complicated than web design.

 

[binki]

I remember buying fonts for Word Perfect and other 'word processing' types of programs. Now so much of this stuff comes with our software there is hardley a need to pay for fonts.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Quite a heated debate,I would really like to learn how to digitize my casual,it sounds more complicated than web design.

There is a requirement for a phenomenal attention to detail in creating the original design and executing the vectorization. You can create a beautiful character but if it doesn't match up well to the next character and the next then it's a poor font. Any lapse of attention to detail along the way will result in a botched final product and there are thousands of opportunities for such a lapse during the total process.

 

[Doyle]

how can anyone question intellectual property rights place in modern law?????? How could a creative mind make use of their resources without it??? I agree that the attempts at enforcing these laws are sometimes pitiful at best, but I think that they are crucial.
From what Bob says, one should make all of their money from their creation at it's conception or materialization. Needless to say, this is impossible.

Otherwise, I also believe that Signs101 members as a whole have integrity, and do an excellent job of controlling these issues before they even become issues. What would happen to a thread labeled "Looking for copy of Harley bar and shields logo"?? It would be shot down in seconds, before Fred ever even steps into the picture.

Open source stuff is okay, but intellectual property rights are never in compromise at Signs101. I love the divise group that we have here and hope it never changes