Lesson Learned : Font Licensing

Hey guys. It’s been a little while since we’ve talked freelance around here, so I thought I’d share my most recent hiccup. I was recently designing something at the advertising agency I work at, and the piece I was designing used a font I had downloaded off the internet. To be exact, I downloaded the font from Font Squirrel specifically because it said that all their fonts were 100% FREE for commercial use. Since there was a chance the piece I was designing was going to be used for commercial purposes, I thought it was a perfect choice (and the piece would have a unique font).

This is when I learned my lesson. Not all things that say they are FREE are actually FREE. Whaaa??? (Then don’t tell me they are 100% free!). Apparently the larger agencies out there choose to buy FREE fonts just to cover their butt legally. I was blown away by this idea and had never heard of this happening. Free means free, right? Nope! So my seemingly free, really awesome font actually cost my project $200 dollars in the end. Fortunately it was no big deal for the client, but it got me thinking about font licensing and what “Free” actually means.

I’m curious what all of you designers/freelancers out there do when the font licensing issue comes along. Do you have your go-to font sites? Please do share :)

photo

10 Comments

Lindsay – Shrimp Salad Circus

commented on July 31st 2012 at 12:29 PM ()

Wow – I absolutely thought anything on Font Squirrel was up for grabs for any use. I’m going to have to really read font licenses from now on. I don’t do any freelance work, but I do try to be aware of such things for use in my own blog. Thanks for sharing!

(reply)

veda

replied on July 31st, 2012 at 2:31 PM

Thanks for stopping by Lindsay! I love the name of your blog BTW. :)

Whitney

commented on July 31st 2012 at 7:31 PM ()

Ugh, font licenses are the bane of my existence. I don’t have any go-to sites, but I’m partial to certain foundries with lower priced (yet still impecable) typefaces.

(reply)

Linh

commented on August 1st 2012 at 8:34 AM ()

I use myfonts.com because I can buy a single font and not the whole family. Also have found tendollarfonts.com and losttype.com to be useful and affordable. I try not to use free fonts for my clients whenever possible.

(reply)

veda

replied on August 1st, 2012 at 3:37 PM

Thanks for stopping by Linh. I love the two font sites you’ve suggested and agree with you when you say that you try to avoid free fonts for clients. :)

Becky | life.style.flash.

commented on August 4th 2012 at 2:39 PM ()

That’s so cheeky of them!

I would have changed to a different font out of principle – even if I had to pay for that one too!

I only download fonts for personal use (and I’m sure you’ll have heard of this site) but I use dafont.com.

(reply)

Dennise

commented on August 15th 2012 at 8:33 PM ()

since I design for the web and have to also cover my butt, I use google fonts and typekit, I should probably look into font licensing more carefully though. thanks for this post. xo

(reply)

veda

replied on August 16th, 2012 at 4:31 PM

Thanks for stopping by Dennise. Using fonts for web is a whole other side. Google fonts and typekit are safe spots to go. Thanks!

twiggs

commented on August 18th 2012 at 10:30 AM ()

i design posters for my shop to sell and also do some graphic and web-design work, and i read the licensing all the time. i haven’t been buying fonts lately, because i’ve been exploring a lot of some free, but really cool fonts. nevertheless such issue never happened to me, but all the sites covered here are the ones i use as well!

(reply)

veda

replied on August 19th, 2012 at 12:21 PM

You should be good to go. The company I work for is massive in size and I’m sure they just take some extra precautions to cover themselves just in case.