18 ms·

Congrats to Mr Veen et al, but ... Ugh. Typekit was a great service. I have little faith that Adobe won't completely screw it up.

gigawatt 15y ago
I'm with you. Nothing under Adobe's tent remains as perfectly simple as Typekit. That said, there appears to be hope that Typekit will be the exception: https://twitter.com/#!/jasonsantamaria/status/120907947726483456 https://twitter.com/#!/jasonsantamaria/status/12090794772648...
timjahn 15y ago
My thoughts exactly. Sad to see innovation die for no reason.
- daeken 15y ago
  Innovation isn't dying "for no reason." If it dies, it's in pursuit of a payoff for what was most likely a whole lot of work by everyone involved. For a community largely made up of entrepreneurs, it sometimes baffles me how resistant people are to acquisitions of their favorite companies -- this is part of business (and a good one, at that!).
  - timjahn 15y ago
    You're assuming we're all in it for the money. Some are. Some aren't.
    - genieyclo 15y ago
      If you're not in it for the money, you're not an entrepreneur, you're a charity worker. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/#!/daeken/status/120926390685151232 https://twitter.com/#!/daeken/status/120926390685151232
      - te_chris 15y ago
        What a narrow minded and myopic view of the world. I could cite a tweet to counter that, probably from someone with far more authority than the person you cited, but then I'd be citing a tweet as some form of proof...
        genieyclo 15y ago
        The tweet is by Daeken, my grandparent, wrt to this thread.
tptacek 15y ago
Count me among the (presumably few) HN'ers that think this is going to be a win for web typography. The "cool kids" know who Typekit is, but the mainstream trusts Adobe (look how much crappy Flash there is out there solving problems that Typekit solves elegantly). And whatever you may think of Adobe- the- company, it seems to me they've been an impeccable steward of digital typography. They clearly care about it more than any other major software vendor.
- aaronblohowiak 15y ago
  I think Adobe has a better chance of getting the mainstream foundries aboard. If you think the music industry has been resisting modernisation, the type foundries are practically Amish.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I can't blame them even a little bit. High-quality typefaces are extraordinarily difficult to design, trivial to misappropriate (I've done it accidentally several times), virtually impossible to track, and depend totally on a business model that charges big companies huge amounts of money for para-exclusive access to those faces (in part to allow those companies to use them as signaling mechanisms for their brands). Nerds will never, ever get it through their heads that typefaces aren't cheap. They're expensive. That's a problem for nerds, because bits are very very cheap, and naturally anything that can be represented in bits and put on a web page should be cheap-as-free. It also doesn't help that most nerds can't appreciate the difference between what's on Google Fonts and what's in Typekit's portfolio, which only reinforces the notion that fonts should be cheap... after all, good fonts appear to be free! Silly designers! But! But! But! I anticipate the multi-paragraph responses from HN's vast army of copyfighters and respond only with "well that's why we get to choose between Adobe's service and the crappy fonts on Google Fonts, and Trebuchet and Arial". Thanks, copyfighters!
    - ceejayoz 15y ago
      I'm willing to pay for them, but I have a hard time understanding why I need a separate (more expensive) license to use them as webfonts when I already have the license to use them in the same capacity (but with much more difficulty) by CSS spriting everything. Feels like gouging.

gigawatt 15y ago

I'm with you. Nothing under Adobe's tent remains as perfectly simple as Typekit. That said, there appears to be hope that Typekit will be the exception: https://twitter.com/#!/jasonsantamaria/status/120907947726483456 https://twitter.com/#!/jasonsantamaria/status/12090794772648...

timjahn 15y ago

My thoughts exactly. Sad to see innovation die for no reason.

daeken 15y ago
Innovation isn't dying "for no reason." If it dies, it's in pursuit of a payoff for what was most likely a whole lot of work by everyone involved. For a community largely made up of entrepreneurs, it sometimes baffles me how resistant people are to acquisitions of their favorite companies -- this is part of business (and a good one, at that!).
- timjahn 15y ago
  You're assuming we're all in it for the money. Some are. Some aren't.
  - genieyclo 15y ago
    If you're not in it for the money, you're not an entrepreneur, you're a charity worker. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/#!/daeken/status/120926390685151232 https://twitter.com/#!/daeken/status/120926390685151232
    - te_chris 15y ago
      What a narrow minded and myopic view of the world. I could cite a tweet to counter that, probably from someone with far more authority than the person you cited, but then I'd be citing a tweet as some form of proof...
      - genieyclo 15y ago
        The tweet is by Daeken, my grandparent, wrt to this thread.

tptacek 15y ago

Count me among the (presumably few) HN'ers that think this is going to be a win for web typography. The "cool kids" know who Typekit is, but the mainstream trusts Adobe (look how much crappy Flash there is out there solving problems that Typekit solves elegantly). And whatever you may think of Adobe- the- company, it seems to me they've been an impeccable steward of digital typography. They clearly care about it more than any other major software vendor.

aaronblohowiak 15y ago
I think Adobe has a better chance of getting the mainstream foundries aboard. If you think the music industry has been resisting modernisation, the type foundries are practically Amish.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I can't blame them even a little bit. High-quality typefaces are extraordinarily difficult to design, trivial to misappropriate (I've done it accidentally several times), virtually impossible to track, and depend totally on a business model that charges big companies huge amounts of money for para-exclusive access to those faces (in part to allow those companies to use them as signaling mechanisms for their brands). Nerds will never, ever get it through their heads that typefaces aren't cheap. They're expensive. That's a problem for nerds, because bits are very very cheap, and naturally anything that can be represented in bits and put on a web page should be cheap-as-free. It also doesn't help that most nerds can't appreciate the difference between what's on Google Fonts and what's in Typekit's portfolio, which only reinforces the notion that fonts should be cheap... after all, good fonts appear to be free! Silly designers! But! But! But! I anticipate the multi-paragraph responses from HN's vast army of copyfighters and respond only with "well that's why we get to choose between Adobe's service and the crappy fonts on Google Fonts, and Trebuchet and Arial". Thanks, copyfighters!
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    I'm willing to pay for them, but I have a hard time understanding why I need a separate (more expensive) license to use them as webfonts when I already have the license to use them in the same capacity (but with much more difficulty) by CSS spriting everything. Feels like gouging.