Post #137125 by joefla70 on Mon, Jan 24, 2005 3:01 PM

I wholeheartedly agree that fonts should not be free and that the font designers who spend their time and energy to designing them should be paid for their work.

I therefore have a question for the font designers. I often see fonts online which I wonder if they were actually "designed" by the person who put the font into a computer format. For example, I went to the House Industries website to check out their fonts and saw that in the "ED BENGUIAT FONT COLLECTION" there is a font called "ED INTERLOCK." This font looks just like the font used on the Enchanted Tiki Room sigh at Disney:

I did a little bit of background research online and saw that Mr. Benguiat designed fonts back int he 1920s. I therefore assume that Ed Benguiat was the person who originally designed the font that was used in the sign. And I assume that House Industries subsequently acquired the right to use the font (or that enough time had passed that the font was in the public domain).

My question then is, wouldn't the person who actually designed the font style (even if it was before the advent of computers) be the font creater.... not just the person who made it into a computer font? Because I see a lot of fonts online that look like they were taken from all aspects of life (movie poster, advertisment, etc.) and I wonder if the person who put that font into a computer format is unduly taking credit for designing the font, when really all they did was digitize it? Do the people who put the fonts into the digital (computer) format get the permission/rights from the person who created the font artwork to make the computer font? Does the original artist get a royalty? How does that work?