I Spent 574 Australian Dollars On A Font For This Website, Was It Worth It?

publié sur 2022-05-19 5 min de lecture

Signifier is a Brutalist response to 17th century typefaces. Designed by Kris Sowersby, Signifier’s digital immateriality draws on a deeply material past. Acknowledging the processes and tools of digital form-making, Sowersby worked consciously with the computer to recast the lead, antimony, and tin of the 17th century Fell Types into ones and zeros. Signifier emerged from this alchemy with Bézier curves and sharp vectors determined by machine logic and a Brutalist ethos.

Kilm Type Foundry

This is an interesting paragraph. I know what these words mean individually, but when they're put together like this, I have no idea what is going on.

So then why did reading this cause me to buy a bunch of letters for $574?

Good question, that's what we'll be exploring today on this site.

I've been using the Signifier font family on this blog since it has gone through its' fourth redesign. I didn't buy it specifically for this blog, but I actually haven't found any other uses for it. Which is good, because putting it on another website would go against the license agreement. Let's talk about that for a sec.

You can buy a license for the font for a variety of purposes like: installing it on your computer, using it in film, TV shows, posters etc. Since this is a website, I bought the web font license.

A web font license only covers one domain name and any related subdomains. It is also limited by the page views or users your website has. I bought the cheapest option for page views (since I don't have any "users") which gets me 20,000 views per month.

To be clear, not all font licences are this restrictive. Most licenses will license the font to the set of licensed users who can then use the font in anyway they please, in any capacity they want.

Most font licenses also don't cost over $500.

I have no idea what goes into a font to make it apparently worth more than the 1440p monitor I view it on. It should be obvious by now but buying a font like this isn't really for your average person and if I was so adamant that I needed a professional font for this blog, I probably would have been better of buying a cheaper and less restrictive one for $20-50.

But where's the fun in that? If I bought a font for only $50 then this blog would only be using a $50 font and not a $574 font.

Isn't this blog so much better now that you know the letters you're reading right now cost FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FOUR AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS?

Don't you understand? Five hundred and seventy four big ones.⁽¹⁾⁽¹⁾ AUD isn't actually worth much, so "big ones" probably isn't a good description. Just for this blog. Now every time you type justin.duch.me (which I know you do often) into your web browser:

⁽¹⁾ AUD isn't actually worth much, so "big ones" probably isn't a good description.

Your browser sends a DNS lookup for this domain.
It opens a socket on port 443 to the IP address attached to the DNS record.
It starts a TLS handshake with the server.
It sends a GET request to the server.
It parses the HTML, CSS, and JS returned from the server.
It constructs the DOM tree.
It constructs the CSSOM tree.
It creates the render tree.
It paints.
The pixels on your display change colour; A symphony of words in #e1e1e1 splattered on a canvas of #191919.
The light of the display reaches your retinas.
You see a $574 font.
You cry. For you have never seen such beauty before.

No matter how hard it gets. No matter how many times you question yourself. You can always think this to yourself.

At least I didn't spend $574 on a font.

You, probably

And you'll know everything will be okay, for you know that there are much dumber cunts on the Internet.

Decades of computer science, centuries of mathematics, millennia of human progress.

All leading to this.

Why would the Internet have been created if not for this?

What is life if not the ability to witness a $574 font wasted on a website that gets, at most, 10 page views a month?

What of the irony of this lust for the most expensive, most extravagant, most unnecessary item; Peak bourgeois bullshit, perpetuated by someone who once said and still says anarcho-communism seems like a good idea and maybe we should try it one day.

Cinq cent soixante-quatorze dollars australiens.

Now that we understand why this blog needs a $574 font, does the opening paragraph to this article make any more sense? Let's read it again.

Signifier is a Brutalist response to 17th century typefaces. Designed by Kris Sowersby, Signifier’s digital immateriality draws on a deeply material past. Acknowledging the processes and tools of digital form-making, Sowersby worked consciously with the computer to recast the lead, antimony, and tin of the 17th century Fell Types into ones and zeros. Signifier emerged from this alchemy with Bézier curves and sharp vectors determined by machine logic and a Brutalist ethos.

Uhh… nope. Still don't get it. It must just be that words cannot do justice to these high-level ideas and concepts.

But they're going to have to if I want my money's worth with this fucking font.