Adelina Shaidullina: What do the CEOs of type shops actually do? You open your laptop in the morning and you…

Vadim Zuev: And you see purchase requests, questions from the accountant and customers, emails from banks and payment service providers; someone’s accounting team has lost documents and now struggles to find the paperwork needed to close the books…

Every month, you have to finalise the accounts and prepare reports. Then you have to check the tax calculations and file the returns. You also need to settle up with contractors — someone wrote an article, someone else delivered the images — everyone needs to get paid.

Matveij Malkin: I do the same thing. But since we have a smaller team, I also handle talking to the clients, writing the briefs, and acting a bit as an art director. I try to ensure a friendly environment for the guys who design typefaces.

AS: Well, I actually invited you to discuss licensing. Vadim, has our licensing policy changed over the ten years that type.today has been around?

VZ: Conceptually, nothing has changed. Our desktop/web/app model is the same as it was ten years ago.

AS: Wouldn’t you like to change anything?

VZ: We’ve been looking into it, but we’re not planning on making any major changes to our licensing policy. We’re concerned that if our shop suddenly switched to different licenses after ten years of operation, it might trigger a negative reaction. I know you’ve been dreaming of rewriting our licenses using simpler wording, but we have no such plans. After all, a license is not something that is easy for a designer to read — it’s something you can use to take to court.

We had an experiment with a separate package-based licensing model for our tomorrow storefront, but that experiment came to an end.

EULA, type.today

AS: Tell us why!

VZ: It’s quite difficult to manage two different licensing systems at the same time. It’s extremely inconvenient — even handling the files is more complicated, especially if it’s two different jurisdictions. Money-wise, this model didn’t prove its worth either. Some designers, though, did earn more than they likely ever would have under the type.today’s licensing policy, but these instances were rare.

The system itself is a good one, but I believe it should have been organised somewhat differently. I mean, a customer is only willing to pay for what they actually use. But when a package license covers a whole bunch of usage rights they don’t actually need, they start asking, ‘why are you giving me all this and charging me that much?’

Let me tell you how tomorrow’s license worked: if a customer’s web traffic was high, they had to purchase the top-tier package. Once they paid, they could use the typeface for everything — from TV channel branding and social media to packaging. Naturally, if a customer didn’t need all those options, they obviously wouldn’t want to pay extra for them.

tomorrow.type.today

AS: Matveij, why did you opt for a package-based licensing model?

MM: We spent quite a lot of time discussing how it should be in our case. At first, we were considering the desktop/web/app model, similar to the one type.today has in place. But I remember back when I was in university and only just learned that fonts could — and should — be purchased, the term ‘desktop’ was really unclear to me. I mean, a desktop implies something I have on my computer, which means I am allowed to create digital stuff under this kind of license. But if I use my computer to design something which I then print onto a T-shirt, that’s no longer a desktop, right?

Well, of course, most professionals are familiar with the terms Desktop, Web, and App. But I feel there’s also a segment of potential customers who don’t really understand how the conventional licensing model works. These people would have probably bought a small-size license, but they get intimidated by the options, struggle to figure out how all this works, and end up using Unbounded. Being free and open-source, the Cyrillic Unbounded got slightly overused at one point. In the Russian-speaking design community choosing Unbounded became synonymous with typographic laziness, or even bad taste

We were looking at how to simplify the system to make it convenient for both us and the customer. We felt that a tiered licensing approach based on company size, already used by various players in the industry, was the best option. ABC Dinamo uses a similar setup, as does Bureaubukv…

We spent a long time figuring out what metric to use for calculating the license tier. We decided that the most objective way to determine how much value the font will provide to the company is its size, as in the number of employees. Meaning, a large company that purchases a good typeface will benefit more than a small company purchasing the same good typeface. So it will cost less for a small company in our shop.

We believe that this approach simply makes the purchasing process much easier. This is even more so given that, typically, it’s in-house designers, art directors, and freelance contractors who buy fonts. These contractors make purchases on behalf of their clients and often have no idea in which scenarios the typeface might eventually be used. What if a customer decides to launch an app a few years down the line? Or their website traffic surges?

The traffic issue under a Web license is also unclear. After all, I can’t possibly know how much traffic a website that hasn’t even been launched yet will get. Of course, you can upgrade the license after, but it’s still an issue that you have to bring up with the customer — to discuss it with them. And a more conventionalist client might not understand — they’ve already paid the designer, paid for the font, and now they end up owing more money!

We hope that our license will take these issues off the table.

CT Folio. Collective Typeworks

AS: What bothers me more about our licensing model is that you need to pay for additional options — for instance, for the right to print the entire alphabet on a T-shirt.

VZ: That’s not entirely accurate. The typeface must be used as intended and may not be transferred or resold in any form. If a particular use implies that the typeface will effectively be used by third parties, you have to pay extra for that. Many foundries offer extra licensing options, which can vary from case to case. For instance, Production Type requires you to purchase a separate license to produce apartment door number plates for sale.

EULA, Production Type

AS: Matveij, will you be offering any additional options?

MM: We’ll be offering the option to email us if a customer feels that the license doesn’t cover their specific use scenario. But so far, we have no plans to offer any specific extra options. If we come to realise they’re needed, we will add them.

For example, yesterday we were making adjustments to the contract. The customer asked us to include ‘the right to change the font colour in a graphic editor’. It’s a bit ridiculous, but we added it — we don’t mind.

VZ: I am very scrupulous about those things. If someone says they want to change the text colour to red in a graphic editor, I respond that the license agreement permits this, so there’s no need to introduce any additional provisions to the license text. Because when making changes, you might accidentally overlook some terms, such as ‘modification’ or ‘conversion’, and inadvertently grant the customer the right to modify the font or legally authorise them to create a font based on yours.

Well, I can sometimes give ground and run the adjusted text by lawyers afterwards — if it’s a license worth a considerable amount of money.

Guidy. Matveij Malkin, Danilo Borovinić, Maxim Keshishev, Anna Kondrashova (Collective Typeworks)

AS: Matveij, have you ever compared how much a typical mid-sized business will pay for the same set of styles under your licensing model versus the traditional Desktop/Web/App model?

MM: We tried to figure out who our target audience is at the moment and what licensing options they’re most likely to purchase. We also compared our pricing to what it would cost to put together an equivalent offering from other foundries using different licensing policies. But I must say that it is a highly varied market — you have Letterhead offering typefaces for 1,000 rubles, and then there’s you, with type families priced at 500,000. Yet you both exist within the same reality.

Bramb by Letterhead

On average, if you opt for a Desktop/Web scenario (with app licenses seemingly being less popular — after all, there’s San Francisco), it will cost you slightly more than you pay for our offering, by only about 15%. We’re quite deliberately implementing this pricing policy as we need to get our name out there, to raise awareness. For that to happen, people actually have to use our fonts — but for them to use our fonts, people first need to know they exist. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle, and we’re trying to break out of it by keeping our prices slightly lower.

Fluxetype by Nikita Kanarev. Entire superfamily costs 551,928 rubles

AS: And to get people using our typefaces, you can share them with your friends before the actual release!

MM: Everyone at Collective Typeworks is a practicing designer, so we all have people we trust and are willing to share our fonts with for testing. For everyone else, we offer a designer license. It covers personal projects and allows you to design social media pages, and it will cost about the same as a cup of coffee.

In fact, we’re already seeing our typefaces being put in use: Aleksey Pushkarev and Victor Skvortsov are currently developing a visual identity for a private school using a customised version of our first release.

Visual identity for the Sinaya Ptitsa (‘Blue Bird’) school. Art director: Aleksey Pushkarev. Customisation of the Guidy typeface. Type designers: Vitya Skvortsov and Diana-Rada Shuvalova

I also believe that now, with a huge number of services and AI tools, it’s really important to integrate into all kinds of generative platforms. For instance, I spoke with a person who developed a service in which you can upload a company’s brand guidelines and then generate layouts that follow these guidelines.

As for us, we want to integrate into the kinds of generative tools that help people — those who haven’t yet chosen type for their brands — develop those guidelines.

AS: Matveij, you were also planning to distribute typefaces created by other designers, I believe?

MM: We were. We’ve already received several requests for that, which is both flattering and interesting. Our site will feature two separate showcases: typefaces designed by Collective Typeworks and typefaces by our friends and partners. This setup makes sense for us — it prevents unnecessary competition within a single platform.

Nytra Mono. Rodion Ilyukhin (Collective Typeworks)

AS: Are you willing to adjust your license agreements at the request of type designers?

VZ: My answer would be no rather than yes. We are willing to negotiate the base price for a typeface, but nothing else. We have our own established workflow and pricing structure. If one type designer’s setup is out of tune, we’ll have to spend extra time dealing with it, which is just an extra headache.

MM: That’s a tough question. Clearly, type.today is somehow privileged — where else would designers who create Cyrillic type go, if not to type.today? We’re in a different situation, but I don’t think we’d be willing to overhaul the agreement for the sake of one designer either. Obviously, prices can be different, but introducing substantive changes to the contract would eventually require modifying the license, too — and that would be inconvenient for customers.

Because if a platform sells fifty typefaces under one license and offers a different kind of license for the fifty-first typeface, it discourages the customer.

VZ: Speaking of which, we had this issue with licenses for tomorrow’s collection. A customer selected two typefaces — one from today’s showcase and one from tomorrow — and ended up with two different license agreements with different sets of granted rights, even though the use scenarios were identical. The customer was confused as to how and what they need to keep track of, and why we are making things so complicated.

By the way, Matveij, have you already decided on how you’re going to work with designers whose typefaces you’re going to sell?

MM: I checked with others involved in font distribution, and it turns out they all operate under an agency agreement. So there’s no need for us to reinvent the wheel.

However, we will most likely implement a fairly flexible system of how we split the sales revenue with the author. I mean, a designer can come to us with only a Latin glyph set and ask to design the Cyrillic extension, but in that case they will get a smaller percentage of the sales.

Chovek. Maxim Keshishev (Collective Typeworks)

AS: Let’s talk about the risks. Who and how could end up in a tough spot because of a poorly drafted license?

ММ: For us, this is the most difficult and scary part. When you never studied law or economics, and you start drafting your first license, you’re terrified of making a mistake. You already have to deal with so many new kinds of workload — tax reporting, registering as a sole entrepreneur, an authorised electronic signature, classification codes for types of business activity, and all kinds of other intimidating acronyms that just horrify you. You constantly feel that if you get something wrong, you’ll immediately end up in prison.

At some point, I took a breath and just decided to check how meticulously people in the industry approach the drafting of licenses. As it turned out, many work under licenses which could be interpreted in many ways — up to the extent that in some cases the license is just a webpage saying ‘You can do that, you cannot do this. If you have questions, contact us at this email’. And I’m not talking about a foundry managed by just one person; I’m talking about big guys who have been in the market for a long time. Yet none of them are in prison.

VZ: Those aren’t based in Russia, right?

AS: And we won’t be giving names so they keep walking free, right?

ММ: I can give a name. For instance, I recently requested a license for the fonts from Art. Lebedev Studio. And, frankly — regardless of how I view the personality of its founder Artemy Lebedev was one of Russia’s first web designers, and his studio was once considered a trendsetter. These days, however, he is known primarily for spreading Russian government propaganda — I would describe this license as overly loose. It simply states, ‘You are allowed to reproduce the font on a computer’, without going into much detail. And I thought: if that’s how people do things, perhaps I can cut myself some slack, too.

Clearly, as a shop, I do face certain risks. For example, someone could use my typeface in a way I wouldn’t want them to, or in a way I hadn’t even had provision for. For the customer, however, there are hardly any risks. Perhaps Vadim will correct me if I’m wrong.

EULA, Art. Lebedev Studio

VZ: If the license doesn’t explicitly state that something is permitted, then it is prohibited. We proceed from this assumption. Therefore, if a customer chooses to interpret things loosely and go beyond the scope of the license, that’s their risk, not yours. After all, it’s the customer who’s violating the terms of the license agreement.

In your example, the general phrasing used is ‘reproducing typeface characters’. It means that you are authorised to make as many copies of these characters as you like. It’s not how I see it — it’s what the Civil Code stipulates. Our EULA is also composed of language used in the Civil Code — it’s easier for any lawyer to work with these terms. On top of what is already stipulated in the Civil Code, you can then layer on your additional, specific limitations.

AS: So the EULA is tied to the Civil Code, right? Does it mean that in countries with a more liberal law framework, licenses might be simpler and shorter?

VZ: Generally, yes. European and American licenses are typically written in a less formal style, free from ‘legalese’. Though I wouldn’t say English-speaking people are necessarily discouraged by legalese. I’ve read the English-language license of Brownfox, and it’s essentially just the translation of standard Russian phrasing. There’s nothing wrong about that. Our English-language license is written the same way.

AS: Tell me why is that nobody likes font subscriptions?

VZ: People probably don’t like them because they make a payment, but then keep getting charged afterwards. They’d rather just buy something once and not have to think about it again.

AS: But we’re already used to subscriptions for things like music, graphic editor software…

MM: I think we’ve gotten used to subscriptions in the consumer market, while fonts are somewhere in between consumer and B2B.

Speaking of which, we all know one Russian company that has introduced a subscription model. I was told it’s beneficial for the customer when a project is time-limited — for instance, a landing page for a special project hosted for only six months. In this case, it doesn’t make financial sense for the company to buy a lifetime license.

There’s also an option to subscribe to an entire library.

The very same company provides it to large design agencies, businesses with in-house design teams, and all sorts of banks. It makes sense for them to have access to the entire library, covering all their team’s typographic needs with a single subscription. Yes, there’s an annual charge, but you — with your multi-billion revenues — don’t even notice it.

VZ: We get that kind of request, too. It appears that people have that specific subscription in mind when asking about it — the one you’re talking about.

Lytkin. Danilo Borovinić, Antonina Samokhina (Collective Typeworks)

AS: Previously, a common practice was to offer one typeface from a collection for free and charge for the rest. But for some reason, we see that kind of setup less and less often, don’t we?

VZ: These days, almost everyone offers free trials!

AS: So people have started offering trial versions more often?

MM: Most certainly.

VZ: Yes, I’ve been getting more requests for those, too. Many type designers are guided by the consideration that if a person writes a personal email to the typeface’s author rather than downloading a font file somewhere, why not send them the file? It’s unlikely that someone like that is trying to steal from you.

AS: Let’s say I open a type shop tomorrow. How do I decide on a licensing policy? How do I draft the license?

VZ: The simplest approach is to copy someone else’s policy and license — if they make sense for you. If you’re up for going into detail and charging for additional options, that’s one type of licensing model; if you want to keep things as simple as possible and are willing to lower your price in exchange for that simplicity, that’s a different model. The second scenario has its benefits: you don’t have to spend time negotiating terms and dealing with administrative tasks — there’s less back-and-forth with the client.

AS: How do I choose whose license to copy? Should it be a foundry based in the same country where I am registering as a business?

VZ: If you want to copy their license in its entirety and avoid overcomplicating your life, then yes.

MM: Some foundries state that their license text is protected by copyright and cannot be copied. At the end of the license, there’s even a separate line that says ‘You may read it, but don’t Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V’.

VZ: Of course, the best approach is to go to a lawyer and say, ‘I like this particular licensing model, draft a license like that for me’ and pay some money for it.

MM: Does type.today state that you are not allowed to copy and use the text of its license agreement?

VZ: No, we don’t state that. Even if we did include such a statement, I don’t think it would actually protect us from anything or anyone — except perhaps from type designers who might not be aware of what this clause means. But it certainly wouldn’t protect you against lawyers representing another foundry. In fact, I’d go further: if everyone used the same standard set of terms — defining what is allowed, what is prohibited, and what you have to pay extra for — it would be much easier and more convenient for everyone to work with licenses from different foundries and marketplaces.

AS: What do you think will happen with licenses moving forward? What will change, what will be added, what will disappear?

MM: I am certain that licenses will start including a provision that permits the use of font files to train generative AI models. I believe someone already has this. And we’ll increasingly see the opposite kind of clause, too, with licenses explicitly stating: ‘A Desktop license does not, under any circumstances, grant you the right to use the font for AI training’.

Right now, the regulation of AI-related issues — ranging from legal technicalities to matters of authorship — is a global concern. It’s practically a whole new field now. I believe it will find its way into the type industry as well, though in a manner that reflects the specific nature of this domain.

EULA, ABC Dinamo

EULA, Commercial Type

AS: Do you plan on adding any AI-related clauses to your licenses?

MM: Ours already states that you cannot train AI models using our font files.

AS: But how will you check whether your fonts have been uploaded?

MM: We won’t. There’s no way to know exactly what data has been fed to an AI model. It’s largely symbolic, a somewhat reputational stance. Though, to be honest, I don’t know how long this provision will remain in our license — the world is changing much faster than license agreements are. Perhaps the players in the market will eventually start offering the option ‘Pay extra if you plan to use the typeface for AI training’.

VZ: Currently, our licenses contain no mention of AI. We do, of course, plan to add something at some point, but I can’t share any details just yet.

The idea of having a separate option for AI training use is a really interesting one. I’m certainly not a designer, and I don’t know how design teams on the client side operate, but AI models are already capable of generating things like packaging. And for AI to generate that packaging, you would need to upload the purchased font into it.

MM: Essentially, yes. But here’s the thing: you can upload a screenshot containing text set in that typeface rather than the font file itself. So what do you do about that? It’s unclear.

Perhaps in the future, the type design community will develop some kind of protection standard, something synth-id-like. But if you introduce an option for using fonts to train AI now, it would look really bad for the foundry. I feel like the type community is more opposed to AI than most other creatives. Most graphic designers have already embraced AI, while type designers seem far more protective when it comes to AI and type. But that’s probably a topic for another conversation.

Collective Typeworks

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