After 3 years in the making, I’m thrilled to launch Font Proofer: a tool for typeface designers to test their work-in-progress fonts.
For too many years (decades?) the process of making, editing, and reusing proof documents has been tedious, error prone, and reliant on an unwieldy assortment of tools and scripts. Integrating seamlessly with Glyphs, it’s pretty magical to be able to make a change to a glyph, click one button, and have an updated proof PDF ready for you.
Font Proofer has already been used by a small group of designers and foundries for the past year, and it’s rapidly improving (see the public roadmap). There are tutorials and learning resources available, and I’ll be hosting some upcoming webinars.
One of my main goals is for Font Proofer to become a sustainable, community-supported project. I’ve self-funded its development so far, inspired by the overwhelming enthusiasm in response to my demos at TypeLab and ATypI Tech Talks—while aware that sustainability is rare in our small industry. Too many font production tools end up abandoned. I want to ensure that Font Proofer can exist for many years to come—not scraping by as a side project, but as a well-maintained, constantly-improving tool that you can depend on.
I would not be so quick to dismiss a tool like this purely based on it’s subscription model. You can cancel anytime and thus just pay for a month or two. And if you derive value for longer than that, then subscribing provides long-term value to both you and @nowell.
Thanks, George and Florian! In general I don’t love subscriptions either, but after years of reflection I believe it’s the best fit for a rapidly-evolving community-supported project like Font Proofer.
I spoke to many font tool makers and was shocked to hear that none of them found their projects to be sustainable. Some of the stories were horrifying. The result is fewer updates and often complete abandonment. I believe we need to find a way, together, for projects that serve our small industry to be sustainable.
Florian’s reply caused me to look at it differently. Anytime someone says “subscription” I automatically think of the one year lock-in model. I had not read the FAQ earlier but after reading it, I can work with the monthly subscription model for this product. I will give it a tryout in the next few weeks.
For anyone curious to learn more about Font Proofer, I’ll be hosting some free webinars starting tomorrow! I’ll go over the essentials, workflow tips, and answer your questions. You can sign up here: