Frequent
Questions

Sure, I get it. First, you should read the EULA. Seriously, it’s not very long and was written in plain English. You can also email me you to ask, just give me details about your project and your organization. Double checking is always a good idea, and I actually like talking to customers.

Most customers just need a license for “Desktop Use”, which is basically the old-school way to “install the damn font on my computer”. For that, you just need count how many people in your organization will install or use the fonts and select the option the covers that number.

“Webfonts Use” is more specialized, enabling you to use the fonts on a website to render live text using CSS @font-face. If you’re going to use the fonts on a website, you need one. Pick a “pageviews per month” number that covers your site’s monthly traffic.

There are other custom license options like Digital Document Embedding, Encapsulating fonts in Apps, software, and OEM devices, and installing fonts on on-the-fly content generation systems. If you think you might need to use the fonts in one of these ways, email me with your project details and we can figure out a good solution.

Yes, you can use Okay Type fonts in logos. You just need to purchase a Desktop License for any users in your organization who will need to install the font files.

I should probably add: you can’t modify the actual font files or bundle, package, or distribute them with the logo. But for a logo you should be converting to outlines anyway.

Maybe? I offer a discount to non-profits, businesses, and other organizations who want to use Okay Type fonts for a specific project for good. The “for good” part is annoyingly subjective so I handle things on a case-by-case basis. So, yea, umm, maybe. Email me with the details.

Not at the moment. Students can either use Okay Type trial fonts or get a super cheap monthly license from Fontstand. I also offer discounted site licenses for educational institutions, if you can talk your school into that...

Of course. I used to offer this through the website but “App Use” has gotten a little too complicated to handle with a turn key license. Just email me and we can discuss your project details.

If your PDF is a commercial product (or part of a commercial product) you will need a special license. Contact me with your project details for a quote. Otherwise, the Desktop Use Addendum allows you to use the fonts in PDFs for internal use, production use, non-commercial documents, and direct-to-client presentations.

I like to keep things simple. I believe in one-time fees. I hate subscriptions. My license terms are straight forward and fair, the only way you’ll need to ever pay more is if you decide to buy more fonts or if your business grows beyond the number of Desktop users or Webfont pageviews covered by your license.

Everything? Really? That’s a lot. Every license is going to have some boundaries. But no one wants to constantly worry about their font licenses. Let’s start by talking about what’s really important for your organization. We can work to come up with a good solution that meets your needs and is easy to manage.

No. Separate organizations each need their own license.

Yes, I even built my cart to accommodate this. But there a few things you need to do first. 1) You need to give the client a copy of the EULA. 2) You need to get permission from them to agree to the terms of the EULA on their behalf. 3) On the checkout page, you need to select “I am purchasing this for: Someone else” and provide some basic information for your client. I don’t want to mess with your client relationships so you will remain the primary contact person. If I ever have to reach out about the license, I will contact you first.

No. The EULA is clear, you cannot resell or transfer the fonts without written permission from Okay Type. This applies double to font resellers, software vendors, art buyers, and other middlemen purporting to sell Okay Type fonts.

As a starting point, à la carte font styles have a base price of $50. The license options multiply these base prices by a factor determined by the number of users for desktop use and the number of monthly pageviews for web use. Full families have a large discount (usually 50–75%) off those individual font prices.

For individual styles, Italic fonts are half off when you purchase them along with their Roman counterpart. For large families, like Alright v2, there is an additional discount when you purchase multiple subfamilies. Finally, if for some reason you only want a certain set of styles from a family, the cart is set up so that the price never exceeds the full family’s discounted price.

Everything is in US Dollars. Currency conversions are handled by the payment processor, Stripe. You’ll have to bug them if you need more details about exchange rates.

Yes, of course. There’s no reason you should pay twice. Email me with the details about your existing license and what you want to upgrade to and I’ll setup a discount code.

As a company stuck in the US of A, I can’t do anything with your VAT number. Some customers really like having it on their invoice though, so if you really want a pdf with a VAT number on it, just email me and I’ll make something up.

Maybe. Can you email me what language you need to support? I have prebuilt a few versions of the trial fonts with support for languages like German and Vietnamese. I can build others when I get the time.

I get it, sometimes you really need to see how things will look before committing to a new font. If you have a specific project in mind and really need to test the full fonts, email me the details and we’ll figure something out.

The easiest way to test the full fonts is to use Fontstand. They offer free trials and super cheap month-to-month licenses. They also have an amazing catalog of other typefaces. Seriously, the stuff there is like the best of the best.

Every Okay Type font has old-style numbers (0123456789) as the default. I think they look better in most text. Every font also has a set of lining numbers (0123456789) accessible using OpenType features. I think lining numbers look dopey in body text, but they are necessary if you want to set something in all-caps.

Some customers, however, only want the lining numbers. I blame desktop publishing and all of those bad early digital fonts. But who am I to judge?

To make life simpler for everyone, every font purchase automatically includes and alternate version of the fonts with default lining numerals. The alternates are labeled with an “LP” for Proportional-width Lining numbers. I strongly recommend that you only install the alternate versions if you really need them.

Tabular figures are when the numbers are all the same width. They are primarily used for data where a bunch of numerical information can be read normally, but also can be compared vertically. Think of a spreadsheet or a chart.

Euchre, Alright, and Harriet have tabular-width figures available in through their OpenType features. They have both lining height and old-style height* tabular figures. If that’s not enough, I have pre-built versions of the fonts with tabular-width lining figures ready to go, just email me your license info.

*In case you’re wondering, I’ve seen tabular-width old-style figures used once. In an annual report no less. They looked great.

Microsoft Office is notoriously bad at supporting third-party fonts. I’ve put extra work into to making sure the Desktop Use fonts work as well as possible in Office applications. The four core styles (RIBBI: Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) are style-linked. So the ⌘-I and ⌘-B shortcuts work correctly. Every other weight is style-linked between the upright and Italic styles.

There are still a few dumb issue that come up occasionally. Sometimes one or two of the style-linked fonts won’t appear in the font menu. They are usable, but you have to select the Regular or upright version and use ⌘-I to switch to the italic. Ugh.

Another fun issue is that the sort-order is usually jumbled. Instead of listing fonts from lightest to heaviest, they will list the weights in seemingly random order. I think Apple tries to apply some kind of logic (RIBBI first, then :insert shrug emoji:), but it’s still a mess.

With the non-core style weights, sometimes selecting the non-existing bold with ⌘-B will make a faux bold. Sometimes it won’t change the weight at all. And sometimes it will switch to the proper "Bold" font, but lose its association with the original weight so pretting ⌘-B again will give you "Regular" instead of what you started with. Confused? Welcome to the club.

If any of these issues are too large of a problem, the next solution is to build you a custom Office font. I can do that, just ask.

See the FAQ about cap-height or lining numbers.

Go up the menu. Click a font. Scroll down to Language Support. Read the list of languages. Click on them for alphabet samples and other information.

Determining which languages a font supports is complicated. My list of supported languages comes from Apple’s Font Book, which I chose for it’s ubiquitous rather than comprehensiveness. The character information for each language comes from Unicode’s Common Locale Data Repository. Additional data comes from a variety of sources which are included under “References” in the individual language sections.

Some of the language previews use OpenType combining accents, may not be fully supported in every browser (looking at you, Safari). The uppercase characters are generated using Javascript’s toLocaleUpperCase() method, which isn’t foolproof either.

Some Okay Type fonts are listed as supporting a language but may not include all of the Auxiliary Characters (e.g.: the Ɑ and ɑ in Galician). Reach out if these are something you really need.

Fair warning: My data is not comprehensive and is likely not 100% accurate (I also wouldn’t trust any source that claimed it was). I welcome any corrections, additions, or questions.

Yes. Usually this involves a good sized license and/or a small fee. Let’s talk about it.

Cool. What kind of changes do you want? Let’s talk about it.

Yes. Please. Let’s talk about it.

Desktop Use is another name for the traditional license where you install the fonts on your computer and type things with them. Most customers start with a Desktop Use license and add Webfonts when they need it.

Yes, of course. Email me your license information and I’ll set it up.

Webfont Use allows you to use the fonts on a website using the CSS @font-face method. This is the only way you may render live, selectable text on a website using the fonts.

The webfonts are provided as .woff2 files that you host on your own server along with the rest of your website assets. The license is a one-time fee, but is only good for one domain and is capped at a certain number of pageviews per month.

From the Webfont Use Addendum of the EULA: “If you exceed your licensed number of pageviews by 20% in any three consecutive months or any six months over the course of a year, you must upgrade your license to cover the increased number of pageviews.” I think that’s clear and fair, with enough leeway for unexpected traffic spikes.

Maybe. What’s the platform? How big is your website? Let’s talk about it.

Currently, CSS @font-face support is pretty excellent. Much simpler than it used to be, and way more powerful. I recommend this format @font-face imports:

# import the fonts
@font-face {
	font-family: 'Euchre';
	src: url('euchre-regular-latin1.woff2') format('woff2');
	font-weight: normal;
	font-style: normal;
}

# apply the fonts
body {
	font-family: 'Euchre';
	font-weight: normal;
	font-style: normal;
}

Adding multiple weights, widths, and italics is only a little more complicated. There are plenty of resources online to help you.

Things really start getting exciting when you get to OpenType features and variable fonts. If you’re interested, I highly recommend learning CSS variables too, they’re invaluable for working with advanced features. I have a Codepen demo.

Webfont downloads include .woff2 files. This is the current standard and provides enough support for almost all users. If you need a legacy format, like old-school .woff or .eot, just let me know.

I also provide alternate versions of every webfont. One version has the full character set and OpenType features. They’re a little heavy for webfont use. The other version is subset to the Latin-1 character set, my go-to standard for a minimum western character set.

Oh, and every webfont also includes the alternate “LP” version discussed earlier.

Yes, but until I manage to build an online webfont subsetter you’ll have to do it yourself and at your own risk. I would only recommend using the subsetter in fonttools.

Crap. Have you tried clearing your font caches? 99% of font problems seem to come from messy old font caches. If this doesn’t help, email me with a description of your problem. Please be as specific as possible, I’ll need to know what operating system and software you’re using (include version numbers and other technical stuff, please) and a detailed description of what exactly is going wrong. Screenshots are usually very helpful.

Well shit. I don’t know. Email me. It would be helpful to know as much as possible. What operating system are you on? What app are you using? (I need version numbers and other technical stuff). What exactly are you trying to do and what exactly is going wrong?

Maybe. Why? Talking in public stresses me out, so you’ll probably need to sweet talk me. Who are you and what do you want me to talk about? Eek!

Yes! Just give me some warning so I can clean up. Let me know if you’re looking for something specific too, I might be able to pull things or let you know if I have anything relevant.

Maybe. It’s hard to fit groups in my house. And it depends on what’s going on in the office.

Nope. Sorry. Okay Type is just a one person operation. But I’m more than happy to talk to young designers. Don’t be afraid to reach out, I love meeting other type nerds. Pro-tip: My name is Jackson. If you don’t make the absolute minimum effort to address an email to my human name I probably won’t reply.

Nah. Sorry. Okay Type is just a one person operation. It’s hard enough to feed myself these days.

Usually no. But I like meeting type people. Chances are we’ll eventually run into each other on the internet or in person. Say hi.