https://www.fastcompany.com/3036423/type-stars-jonathan-hoef...
It's quite fair to say that Hoefler would not be in the position he is today without Frere-Jones, and by many accounts, and even how Hoefler presented things in the press, they were a partnership. Even before they started officially working together, Hoefler was consulting Frere-Jones on ideas, such as on Knockout - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/arts/11iht-design11.html
It's not like Hoefler's foundry was a juggernaut when Frere-Jones began contributing to his work, or even when he joined the company. They had several success stories - but so did FJ prior to that - and both of their largest successes all came when they were working together.
See 37signals for another such example: design studio, but oh, software is where we shine, but I need this tech fellow as full partner.
And one of Frere-Jones' type designers had this to say about the whole thing:
https://twitter.com/ninastoessinger/status/14382710868446822...
There's some pretty spicy and entertaining comments in the various briefs and discussions. My own overall impression is that it looks extremely bad for Hoefler, and he probably settled because his best defense, after all of the emails and documents produced, was "I totally did defraud Frere-Jones, but the statute of limitations protects me", which is... a bad look and a bad reason to win.
Purportedly: 1. Hoefler started the company in 1989. 2. After 10 years, in 1999, Frere-Jones joined—as an employee. No way someone puts in 10 years and makes someone else 50/50 unless they put up capital. 3. After 13 years, in 2002, Hoefler's wife became CEO. Likely that Hoefler and her were the largest shareholders. 4. After 16 years, in 2005, rebranded to include Frere-Jones. Pretty generous! 5. After 9 years rebranded and 15 years working together, in 2014, Frere-Jones sues Hoefler for $20M, claiming the fonts were worth $3M each. They settle after nine months. Frere-Jones immediately starts his own company. 6. After 32 years, in 2021, Hoefler sells and decides he wants to do something different.
How can you say he made out like a bandit? I would understand saying that if he started the company with Frere-Jones, sold for hundreds of millions in four years, and managed to keep all of it for himself.
H massively screwed FJ. That's not debatable.
Frere-Jones DID put up capital… intellectual capital. He transferred the rights to famous typefaces he had designed, including Whitney, to the company with the understanding that he would be full partner.
Hoefler shafted F-J so hard it’s unbelievable. The foundry’s reputation was built on Gotham which F-J designed. There’s no other way to see it.
I just remember feeling bad for FJ because something felt off about the whole thing.
Yet when you peek under the hood, typography is a lot more than just typefaces, and often goes to the heart of readability and accessibility. A graphic designer might design the text for a logo, or even a typeface, but a professional typographer is so much more, and more nuanced.
It also seems like one of perhaps only a handful of trades that has been around centuries and yet did not have all of its fundamentals, in essence, changed by the shift to digital. It seems like all the digital world did was change it's implementation methods.
Agreed, I really only ever notice a font when it makes something hard to read.
It's something that still perplexes me to this day...
At the same time regular people in the industry get screwed over and are paid peanuts.
cloud.typography is affordable for personal/solo developer use ($99/year). The cheapest Monotype subscription plan is $7.5k/year. I worry that Monotype will eventually shut down cloud.typography, which will be a real shame if they don't provide some kind of affordable/non-enterprise alternative. These are some beautiful fonts. I would hate to see them end up behind a big paywall that only businesses can afford.
I'm really hoping they bring back some form of the Monotype Library Subscription.
