Pitfalls using paid fonts in mobile applications

For one of my applications there was a need to use paid fonts, for which it would seem simple enough to purchase it, but as it turned out, everything is not so simple. Under the cut - the result of a small study on the topic.

The first thing you need to figure out is the license.

Most font services offer the following types of fonts:

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• Standard End User - for use by a single user, embedding into anything other than non-commercial electronic documents and static images is prohibited.
  
  
• Web - use on the web site through the tools of the service that provides the font.
  
  

* Embedding here - any embedding of the font file in the application, which is exactly what is required in our case.



Under the terms of the standard license, it turns out that by purchasing a font, you cannot use it in your application except as rasterized graphics.

Ok, what other options are there?

Of the services I have found, only fontshop.com provides a license for use in mobile applications, but the list of fonts there is very small; the rest I propose to contact them for a discussion of the custom license arrangement , which, as we know, does not lead to anything good.



I myself did not write them, but I managed to find out from the experience of other people:

• Type-together.com want € 900 / year for the font.
• MyFonts.com - 25x / year for a font, or 75x for an unlimited right to use it, that is, at a price of $ 30, this is $ 750 and $ 2,250, respectively.

In my case it was a little expensive, so I had to give up the original idea and use simple images instead of embedding the font.



PS This is my first post, I hope this information will be useful to someone and will save time and effort.

Related Links:

• The Law on Fonts and Typefaces: Frequently Asked Questions
• Fonts.com Licensing Options
• How much does it cost
• Licensing fonts for use in apps