Font Bureau Fonts Being Retired—Awesome!

I'm not sure how this old discussion thread got bumped, but it is still an interesting topic. I think many Adobe CC subscribers may assume all the typefaces hosted at the Adobe Fonts website are owned by Adobe when that is clearly not the case.

I remember being disappointed when the collection of Font Bureau typefaces was pulled from Adobe Fonts. However, I didn't question why the type collection was removed. I figured it had to be some sort of contractual dispute. Nothing I could do about it. Venting about the issue online wouldn’t make any difference.

From the outset I understood Adobe Fonts (formerly known as Typekit) was a Netflix-style typeface service. New type families can arrive in the service and others may disappear. It would be foolish for anyone to count on any type families at Adobe Fonts staying permanently -or even counting on the Adobe Fonts service to continue running many years into the future. If someone is using a certain type family as a fundamental part of their company branding or some other critical purpose they need to buy a copy of that type family or switch to something legally available for free.

Not every type company posts type families at Adobe Fonts in the same manner. Some companies may offer a limited selection of fonts from a type family rather than offer the complete family of fonts. Helvetica Neue is an example recently discussed in another thread here.

It seemed a bit confusing, but also a pleasant surprise to me, that some type families previously offered at Adobe Fonts under the Font Bureau banner returned later via their own designers or other type companies who bought rights to certain typefaces -such as Agency FB.

As an ordinary graphics person, I have more bad feelings toward Monotype. It looks like they're doing a whole lot more to create a monopoly over the digital type industry than what Adobe has been managing to do. Monotype has been gobbling up other type foundries for more than 20 years. They became even more aggressive with acquisitions over the past decade. A private equity company took over Monotype in 2019. Monotype bought out the most popular online type stores (MyFonts.com. Fonts.com, FontShop, etc.). The deep introductory discounts on new type families disappeared. Prices on many existing families rose considerably. I also noticed certain type companies pulled their fonts from those stores.

Prior to Monotype buying MyFonts.com I would buy one or more type families a month there, sometimes even more. Since then my buying activity there has dropped off to almost nothing. That makes me more reliant on services like Adobe Fonts or what's available at Google Fonts. I can still occasionally find some decent deals on digital type, but I have to search harder for it at smaller individual type company web sites rather than going to fonts stores like MyFonts.

I can't help but think Monotype's moves have also stifled new type development. I bought copies of Helvetica Now and Helvetica Now Variable when they were first released (and priced a lot lower than what they are now). I've all but given up hope on another version of Helvetica Now that offers a normal to extended width variable version that would expand upon the Neue styles from the 1980's.

From my limited perspective the situation does not look great for typeface designers or type customers.

Freight will get you in the neighborhood.

https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/freight

Just for the record, Font Bureau gave Adobe the required 30 day notice to remove our fonts, and they took 90 days. So any failure to notify users was Adobe trying to strong-arm Font Bureau out of its decision. 

That decision was reached after Adobe failed in a promise to introduce multi-user licensing, and then unilaterally cut Font Bureau’s royalties by 90%. They thus proved they do not serve anyone but the share holders.

I’m not a share holder, and neither are most users. 

Thanks for the candid response, Dov. Not long after my initial post, I learned that the foundries decided to pull their faces from Adobe Fonts for the reasons you outlined here. I get it. It sucks, but I get it.

Adobe dropped the ball on two fronts:

First, the initial messaging about the dropped libraries was vague and sugar-coated. Not that it should have engaged in finger-pointing/sh*t-flinging, but a more transparent explanation of the foundries’ rationale for pulling their libraries would have prevented a lot of the initial fuss. A joint statement from both Font Bureau and Adobe Fonts would have gone a long way.

Secondly, and more fundamentally, is the unsteady ground upon which Adobe Fonts is built. Services carry the expectation of reliability. If there’s no guarantee that typeface you use today will be there tomorrow, I sure as hell wouldn’t describe the service as “reliable.”

Adobe Fonts is marketed as “quality fonts at your fingertips” and not as a “tryout medium.” If AF can’t negotiate fair deals with foundries to ensure their perpetual availability, then the messaging absolutely needs to reflect that.

Thanks for listening.