Hi
A foundry has offered me a future bug-fixing option on a typeface they are creating for me which I would have to pay for as part of the licensing agreement – I haven’t heard of such a thing before and wondered what others thought.
In my experience, once the font is tested and considered robust and has been used without problems I haven’t had to fix anything - this applies to a vast library of fonts I’ve been using for many years.
Your thoughts…
Custom type clients are not always experts at making type (quite often the opposite), and it tends to happen in larger client organisations that other stakeholders weren’t involved in the process. It is therefore not too unusual that they would come back and want certain changes changed after delivery.
That said, even though you’re moderately likely to benefit from it at least, it feels strange to have to pay upfront for the possibility of your oversight.
Thanks Toshi for your reply
We, as the clients, are fairly expert in most things type-related including licensing and haven’t come across a situation (to my knowledge) where a bug was present in a font file we’ve purchased.
I’m going to suggest that this is an unnecessary contract clause and can be declined.
Oh, you’d be surprised. Some of the most used font families have serious mistakes that haven’t ever been fixed, not mentioning custom type which seldom has the same amount of quality assurance as a big commercial/system font.
In those cases, I’m less sympathetic to the foundry. Why would the client have to pay for the foundry’s incompetence?
Oh, I absolutely agree. Fixes for real mistakes (not questions of taste) shouldn’t be charged extra, if they occur.
Foundries: Invest in extensive QA and proper engineering, it’s worth it!
I appreciate your thoughts – I admit I’m referring to Monotype and Linotype etc when I say that we haven’t experienced bugs. I’m guessing that nowadays with it being easier to make type there will be more problems, potentially.