Affordable Typefaces

After reading Professional Web Typography, a reader wrote:

Hi,

I contributed to your web book. Thank you for making the web a better place. I have been working on the web (semi-professionally) since around 2004. It’s amazing to me how much things have changed, yet how much they have remained the same. I’m intrigued with webfonts, but am frustrated that professional typefaces are largely cost prohibitive for someone like me that would seek to use them on a small personal website that would generate only dozens of pageviews in a very good month. I would support professional type designers if there were more affordable options.

In any case, thanks again for your web book and for your thoughts on Visualgui.com. I couldn’t stop until I went through all 19 pages in the design category.

Please keep sharing.

Regards,
MF

Here’s my response:

Dear MF,

Thank you for reading my web book. I feel your frustration on the cost for professional typefaces, but I also understand the amount of work goes into creating a professional typeface. For my personal use, I search for typefaces that I can afford.

For example, I am a member of the Font of the Month Club runs by David Jonathan Ross. For $6 a month, I have access to fun, experimental typefaces I can use for my personal projects. I also made a few investments in Future Fonts. I invested early; therefore, the cost was around $15 to $50. As the designers update their fonts, I get the latest releases for free.

If there’s a typeface I wanted but the price is high, I purchase only the fonts I needed. For example, I wanted to use Exchange, by Frere-Jones, for body text; therefore, I only bought two fonts (a regular and an italic) for $75. With just two styles, I know I cannot have bold and bold italic text, but I can turn them off easily with a few lines of CSS—that’s one of the beauties of the web.

If none of those above services work, you can always find a handful of decent typefaces on Google Fonts.

I wish you all the best with your typographic journey.

Thanks once again for contributing to my book.

Regards,

Donny Truong
donnytruong.com