You Should Avoid Subscription Models for Fonts

One of the first block I usually address with new customers is about fonts availability. The reason why customers contact me is because they are dissatisfied with the standard DTP workflow — I can understand it because I have been for years the designer from the other side — and one of the first issues we face together is about fonts availability.

Fonts availability means the ability to transfer project's fonts outside your primary environment. For primary environment I intend your operative system and your DTP software. A font to be agnostic against your primary environment must satisfied necessarily point 1. and 2. or 3. depending by the license's model :

1. It must be a standard format like OpenType.

2. You must own the license of use.

3. It must use an open font license.

When you make your fonts available and agnostic you can use them on any platform and DTP software, and this is going to be a great benefit for you in the long term. Unfortunately in the recent years many DTP productivity suites have introduced fonts services based on subscription model. While at the beginning this looks nice and useful on the long run it becomes problematic.

Fonts available on subscription models are set to expire, they work the same way as the movies and the shows you watch on your favorite streaming platforms, they don't last forever as, for instance, the fonts you purchased or the ones released under the OFL license. Eventually it is another strategy to lock you down on a closed ecosystem, because the software house that sells your DTP don't want you use any other alternative.

I identified some common issues about fonts provided on subscription model:

1. They may expired within two or three years. I speak for personal experience, cause I fell in this trap as well. For a specific project we had been using some fonts available under subscription model for around two years, one day those fonts disappearing from the list, they expired. They were nice fonts useful for the design of the project; we couldn't find any suitable replacement from the OFL library therefore we ended-up redesign the entire project, evaluating also fonts availability.

2. You need to use these fonts on different software but you can't. Most likely I didn't read carefully the EULA when I accepted to use these fonts but you can't use theses fonts outside your primary environment; two are the cases I encountered: you try to find that font because you need to let it available to another software but you won't find it because it is encrypted somewhere on some temporary folder; you provided your working files (some DTP software call it "package") to a print shop, but it doesn't have the same primary environment as you and it is unable to download that font from the same source.

Fonts available on subscription models are surely useful for projects like brochures, short marketing campaigns, and anything else you believe you won't touch anymore, but for recurring jobs and brand identity you should carefully avoid them, and instead select fonts to purchase or fonts available through OFL, like the ones available on Google Fonts for instance.

The latter it is not simply a good collection of fonts available with a suitable opensource license, it is also a showcase of incredible fonts designers; if you have a conspicuous budget and you can afford it, you may evaluate to contract one of those designers (or foundries) to create a unique font for you brand and be the only one to retain the ownership; all the top brands have their own personal accent font.

Whether you decide to switch on automatic layout workflow using product like AGL, or to continue with your traditional workflow, I strongly recommend you to prepare a plan to move away from fonts available through subscription model and to change on fonts you will be able to use as much as you want.