The League’s Typelog is a place where people and ideas come together. We collect different ideas and type projects, not only to inspire people, but to spark collaborations among type-enthusiasts everywhere.
If you’d like to contribute to The League and the open-source type movement, feel free to join us and share your ideas, type-related projects, and typefaces, by submitting a post to this collaborative type blog.
Subscribe to New Posts
xjillybeanx asked: Did you make your own layout? I like it(: Simple and classy.
Why yes we did!
By night we founded The League of Moveable Type; by day we run a small design firm called A Good Company. We actually do all manner of cool stuff, from awesome client gigs, to thegoodsideof.us, to A Good Portfolio. You should check out our stuff & say hello!
So you’ve made a typeface, and you want to make it available for anyone to use and modify for free, but you have some concerns. Here are our best and honest answers to some of the common concerns type designers have when making their fonts open-source.
1. I want to give out my font for free, so they can use it for commercial or non-commercial things, and I don’t mind having people studying and modifying my font. But I don’t want someone to modify my font, and then re-publish it on their own website. What if someone makes some crappy changes, then people will think that I make crappy fonts. Wouldn’t that compromise the integrity of my original font?
The OFL specifically prevents people from redistributing a modified typeface under the same name as the original typeface, unless you, the creator of the original font, give your permission of course. So if someone decide to make changes to your original font that you don’t approve, they would have to call it something else, making it a totally different font than your original one.
2. If I’m giving my font away for free, will I get credited whenever it’s used?
Well, no. Acknowledgement of the font creator is not required by the OFL. You can say this is the ‘open’ part of the OFL. Not requiring people to give credit everytime the font is used/reproduce/printed makes it easier for people to actually use your font, with less headache and legal mumbo jumbo, you know? But in our experience, most people are more than happy to give credit to the font designers even when it’s not required, I guess that’s just their way of saying ‘thanks’.
3. Why OFL, what’s wrong with Creative Commons?
There’s nothing wrong with CC. Creative Commons is great for choosing what kind of restrictions you want to put when people are using your intellectual properties (attribution, attribution share-alike, etc), but since we’re talking strictly about open source fonts here, it’s simpler to go with a license that’s applies specifically to fonts and strictly open-source.
There’s only one OFL you can choose from, which basically allows people to use and modify the original font for free, and any modified versions of the font, must be released under the same OFL license.
4. I made this typeface, and I want anyone to be able to download it, use it freely anywhere, and even modify it, but I don’t want to restrict my own future work with this font to have to be open sourced. If I release the original font under the OFL, wouldn’t I be restricting any derivations of the font, whether it’s my own or someone else’s, to remain open source?
No. Since you’re the original creator and the copyright holder of your font, you will retain all the rights to your creation. You are only releasing a portion of your font for use in a specific way. For example, you may choose to release a ‘basic’ version of the font under the OFL, but sell a restricted ‘enhanced’ version. Only you, the copyright holder, can do this.
5. Okay, I like what you’re saying, but I want to read this OFL for myself, where can I find the actual license text?
The official text of the OFL can be found here. To download the OFL.txt file to include it with your font, click here.
6. More questions?
If you have questions about using an OFL font and wondering what the restrictions are, there is a really helpful FAQ page that will likely answer most of your questions. If you can’t find the answer there, just shoot them an email, they’re super friendly and timely.
Every Tuesday, we’re showcasing five Tumblr blogs that you recommended for the Tumblr Directory. Add your favorite blog to the directory right here!
The League’s Typelog
The League of Moveable Type brings you the best free fonts, and their Tumblelog aims to collect ideas, provide inspiration, and spark collaborations.Doctors Without Borders
Doctors Without Borders is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.I Color the News
The author of this Tumblelog uses a noteworthy headline from the day’s news as inspiration for crayon drawings that my nonexistent children could have made.Celebrate With Cake
This is your virtual bake book, where you’ll find daily recipes blogged from trusted sources. Also, I mean, there are photos of delicious cake.F Yeah Lost
As the premiere of the final season of LOST is airing tonight, I’d be remiss not to mention it here. That, and well over 100 of you recommended this blog last week. Power to the people!Hit the Tumblr Directory for more awesome Tumblrs!
Oh, what a lovely surprise! Thanks everyone! Special thanks to the Tumblr staff, for making such an awesome blogging software. :-)
Hey y’all, a new and expanded Junction is here! Now with a Latin 1 Western character set, ligatures & lining figures. Spread the word around, okay?
If you have the old version, go get the new one here! So you can use Junction in languages other than English :-D
Anonymous asked: When will Raleway come out?
Soon! Matt is still polishing it, making sure it’s perfect and awesome!
Well that’s a nice surprise. We love 300&65 Ampersands and Jessica Hische. Not to mention fellow League Member Matt McInerney. Thanks, Tumblr!
P.S. We have since added in a description. Silly!
We’ve gotten a lot of tweets from people using League Gothic on their site. Here are a few of the awesome sites that features the font.
Do you have one you want to share too? Just let us know, we love seeing our fonts in action.
300&65 Ampersands, one for each day
This one is not ours, and it’s unclear what the EULA is, but it’s pretty awesome looking. Go check it out: Franchise Bold Font, available for free.
Type for you ~ ANTREPO4.COM OUTPUT REPORT
a beautiful font from Antrepo, Public Gothic. it’s too bad their licensing restricts them from being embedded. at least they say you can use it commercially, though their license is a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, that makes me more scared & confused than anything else.
in any case, it’s great work, & you should check ‘em out.
Ligature, Loop, & Stem. Beautiful type posters, by an even more beautiful online store.
This one is not so much about typography, but oh well. We all need advice from time to time. And the site design is not too bad either.
A mini interview from Humble Pied. A piece of advice at a time from designers and people in the creative field.
Steve Gordon’s advice: “Get a life. (In the nicest way possible.)” Watch the interview here.
Oh boy, oh boy, look how complete Junction is getting.
After so many requests to expand Junction to include more accented characters, I’ve been working on expanding it to a Latin 1 character set. Working on character spacing right now, hopefully will be ready to go in the next coming weeks.
