On the heels of acquiring its first exclusive foundry (Jukebox), Veer puts its marketing weight behind a handpicked set of underexposed fonts under the new Umbrella Type label.
Highlights from Umbrella’s first batch include script delights from the Argentinan team of Alejandro Paul and Angel Koziupa. Stefan Hattenbach wisely rescued his grunge favorite New Global from the clutter of GarageFonts and handed it to Veer. Another Umbrella standout is featured in our latest nameplate: Corey Holms’ Brea. Veer promises more Umbrella fonts soon and is actively recruiting new designers — which leads me to ponder the following…
SOME THOUGHTS ON VENDOR GROWTH
Veer has seen heavy coverage in this journal, and for good reason. For me, the young reseller is one of the few outfits that instills faith in today’s font industry. They know and care about type. Their enthusiasm is apparent in their website and printed catalogs and the choices they make about what new fonts to carry. That passion yields results: designers who have fonts in their collection report that sales are more than satisfactory, sometimes startling.
Unfortunately, with the steady addition of new collections, the Veer library now seems in danger of what I call terminal capacity (nerdy typography pun intended), the point at which a collection is so large, that neither its font designers nor its customers benefit. Agfa Monotype is the most obvious victim of this syndrome with its careless acquire-and-bury policy, ingesting the established collections of Monotype, ITC, Image Club, and URW and excreting them into its online toilet and fecal newsletter. The size of their inflated collection means every font gets less play.
Smaller vendors may have fewer resources, but they often spend more time and money properly producing and marketing their wares. Each font can be given the press, the display, and the attention it needs to attract buyers. PsyOps, House Industries, and Font Bureau are examples of midsize foundries who invest in quality and they’re repaid with customer loyalty and a strong brand.
There is no cure for terminal capacity, but it can be treated. FontShop, MyFonts.com, T26, and Phil’s Fonts suffer from mild to serious cases, but they’ve managed to remain effective resellers by offering superior search services (MyFonts), redesigning their sites to ease browsing of their massive volume (T26, Phil’s, FontShop soon), producing excellent printed pieces (FontFont), or limiting their collection to a consistently high standard (FontFont).
It remains to be seen, but Veer’s track record indicates they will probably stave off the ill effects of growth. And the quality of their exclusive fonts and large volume print marketing is already giving them an edge over the large reseller competition.
See also: Veer Is Born : Veer Acquires Jukebox
I concur – Veer is great, but starting to get a little full.
Maybe a tactic for resellers could be to retire fonts that are doing them a disservice. For example, if a font has been available for 6 months and not sold a single copy, it could be culled to prevent polluting the catalog.
From what I’ve heard, Veer is selective about what they offer in the first place, and their offerings definitely reflect their commitment to quality.
One thing I missed in my analysis is that Veer has to get on the ball and provide better font specimens on their site. PDFs would be a nice addition, but show the full character set, at least. Come on!
Uhh, Steven?
Veer has Flont– it let’s you preview the font with any text you choose… though you do have to login to use it fully.
On Umbrella fonts — don’t forget Ferox, I would argue that it is the best contemporary blackletter I have ever seen. It is a blackletter constructed entirely out of sections of ellipses and vertical lines. Designer Miles Newlyn has incorporated forms from all four blackletter models: bastarda; textura; rotunda; and fraktur, and also include more modern, roman forms. Quite a gem.
Duncan – Flont is nice, but it doesn’t replace the convenience of a character chart.
Ferox is indeed superb, and mature: I remember Miles mentioning it at TypeCon ’98!
hhp
I’m trying to buy it, but it doesn’t make sense to me. You seem to have a predisposed vision of what size a font vendor should be, how they should choose their type, and how they should keep their libraries capped, all because of an imaginary industry syndrome you concocted from imaginary deficiencies of some other companies. Yet you don’t tell us what this vision of yours is. I don’t understand how you feel justified in thinking you have the right to imply that a company shouldn’t grow, expand its operations, or operate within its own vision. It seems to me that you just don’t understand how things work in the commercial world, and you just want everyone to be the shop around the corner. Being the shop around the corner is fine for an independent type designer, or a small collective of them. But for a company of Veer’s operational size and turnaround demands, it’s preposterous to pretend there is no overhead, no competition, and a long line of people waiting for the bread to finish baking at 5:15 in the morning.
Veer has done everything right so far. They’re the only company that prints hundreds of thousands of catalogs every month. They’re very effectively focused on the design market, and they market type the way it should be marketed. They have even developed their own font designer scouting process and actually carry exclusives. Who would want to carry exclusives only to bury them?
I think your post has a seriously flawed reasoning, and as such should carry a huge disclaimer regarding its nature, which is simply unsolicited outsider opinion. There is no such thing as terminal capacity. There are different methods employed by different companies. Agfa Monotype wants to be the Microsoft of fonts. Myfonts.com wants to be the Walmart of fonts. T26 is the Wiebetech of fonts. All these visions may very well be working for the companies that use them, unless you know something we don’t know, and you’re not telling us. Veer operates in a certain way because it has to meet its own certain vision, business goals, etcetera. I’ve heard nothing but praise from designers who distribute through Veer, and it’s simply wrong and irresponsible for anyone with no considerable industry experience to raise a flag about how they’re getting too big for the good of their designers, without any proof apart from citing some very irrelevant personal web browsing impressions as precedent.
But maybe small is beautiful?
hhp
Jan – It sounds like we’re very much in agreement about Veer. I’ve had nothing but praise for the company and their growth needn’t be poisonous as long as they learn the lessons of other large vendors. Repeating my conclusion: Veerďż˝s track record indicates they will probably stave off the ill effects of growth.
My opinion on the other vendors is based on years of observation and experiences from designers who have fonts in their collections. But I welcome comments from those who’ve observed something different.
I think Veer is less in danger of a glut of numbers than a compromise of its position as purveyor of one-of-a-kind material. Its imagery collections are strong, and its representation of other foundries is stellar, but at present, Veer’s private label type offerings don’t seem to say much that hasn’t been said as persuasively elsewhere.
Of course, if I were a retailer, I’d be unwilling to engage in a discussion of the relative merits of, say, New Global versus Traitor, but if I had to choose one to acquire and agressively promote, I’d probably seek out the one with the genuine grunge pedigree.
I suppose some representative of Veer should chime in at this point, and that would be me.
re: terminal capacity
I agree that this is a potential, and not always easily avoided, danger. I would very much like to be able to offer an Emigre or a House Industries calibre foundry to help mature and deepen the type category at Veer, but at what point is it all too much for customers to digest and our marketing vehicles to represent effectively? We’re kidding ourselves if we think we are doing the best job possible representing all of our current foundries right now. We’re not. We have a lot of room to improve in marketing and displaying typefaces, both online and in print. I admire the FontShop print pieces, and have a very large collection of them at home dating back to the early 90s. They’re immensely well done. You will see Veer doing more type-specific print marketing over the next year, not only because it’s important to sell type, but because it’s important to us. I think in the long run, we are going to be better off taking small, impactful steps through promotion of the hand-picked Umbrella collection and then featuring the brand new releases from the more established foundries like Device, Alias, Shinn, and most recently Virus.
re: better font specimens
Ah, the never-ended battle. The current crop of default, semi-automatically produced type specimens found on the web site are barely adequate. It’s unfortunate that these samples could not have been more individualized from the start, but it has always been a question of resources and manpower. It’s hard enough to build individualized type specimens for a small hundred-face collection, let alone tackling 5,500 weights. We do rely on Flont to provide some method of building customized samples for the typefaces, but again, it’s not necessarily the best or most convenient way to do it. That being said, we are not simply throwing our hands up in the air and shrugging off the issue. We are revising hundreds of web displays – consisting of the most popular and uniquely visual fonts that have been featured in our printed pieces – and replacing the generic specimen with ones that contain custom-written text in display- and text-appropriate sizes. This give a much better contextual sample of the face or family in use, and adds some much needed personality to the pages. It’s not a full character set as Stephen would like (and sites like MyFonts are able to provide dynamically), but it’s a start towards a more appropriate typographic aesthetic.
I’ll add that PDF samples are not out of the question either – again just a matter of resources and time. And we are going to be unveiling some enhanced Flont functionality over the next several months that may just address a few other requests. Stay tuned.
Veer’s private label type offerings don’t seem to say much that hasn’t been said as persuasively elsewhere…
Joshua, I’m not entirely clear if by private label you are referring the Umbrella collection (which is our take on compiling a group of interesting and unique typefaces) or the Jukebox collection (which is our wholly-owned house brand). It makes a bit of difference in replying to your concern, but regardless, I don’t think we are approaching the marketing of these typefaces to say it differently as much as we are trying to speak to a larger audience. Yes, many of the faces we have added to Umbrella (as an example) have been around for a while, even carried by other mid-sized vendors for years (New Global being a prime example), but for most of the Veer audience these are essentially brand-new faces to them. One of the mandates of Umbrella is to expose the underexposed, regardless of source, age or style.
Grant, wonderful outlook.
hhp
re: better font specimens
We have a lot of room to improve in marketing and displaying typefaces, both online and in print.
I just got my Modern Treatments for the Typographically Inclined in the mail. This is a step in the right direction. Very nice.
Thanks James. We�re very happy with how these are being received (although the paper could have been of a bit heavier stock). The two books in the Modern Treatments for the Typographically Inclined series of specimens (Scripts & New Type) are but the first in a series. We�re hoping to publish at least two of these a year. Perhaps more. If you�re not fortunate to have received these books in the mail yet, I should have PDF versions to download available later this week. I�ll post a link when they�re ready.
If you�re not fortunate to have received these books in the mail yet [..]
That would be great. And even better: shipping them catalogs + other promotional material outside the U.S.
;)
Grant, I’d love to see the PDF when it’s ready.
hhp
grant, i’ve been a fan of veer for some time and am growing fonder of it with every further move it makes!
i’m also very eager to see that pdf, especially since a couple of my fonts are also re-distributed through veer (via fountain). is there any way to get hold of the printed stuff here in the old world? i don’t know about rolf, but i would invest some money to get my hands on one or more catalogs.
keep up the great work!
simon
Dig in, kids. The PDFs are ready.
http://www.veer.com/ideas/catalogs/
is there any way to get hold of the
printed stuff here in the old world?
Since we are not currently sending any marketing materials outside of North America on a regular basis, I can see where this would be darn frustrating.
Simon, Rolf… contact me via e-mail and I’ll see that you get hooked up with some goodies.
Mobley appears to be Neil Bold from the bygone era of rub down lettering.
> Mobley appears to be Neil Bold from
> the bygone era of rub down lettering.
You’ve got a good eye there James. Although I don’t believe that Neil Bold was ever available as dry transfer type – only photofilm. Alejandro of the Sudtipos foundry passed along the following information pertaining to the inspiration for his Mobley family. The product information for Mobley on the Veer site will be updated to reflect this additional background information.
Mobley is based on ten letters found on the cover of a 1960s Blue Note jazz album. The ten source letters were designed for film setting by Wayne Stettler as part of a single typeface published by VGC under the name Neil Bold. Mobley Sans and its condensed and serifed counterparts constitute a brand new design molded around those source letters.
I don’t believe that Neil Bold was ever available as dry transfer type…
Actually, I stand corrected on this point. Thank you to John Downer for pointing out that Neil Bold was available as dry-transfer lettering from Chartpak sometime after its release through VGC.
Mecanorma had it in dry transfer, too.
What is a “grunge pedigree”?
I am happy to say I got my set of Veer type catalogs in the mail a couple of days ago, and I love them. Grant, let it be known far and wide: I think Veer is doing an amazing job and I look forward to getting Veer goodies in the mail each month.
For me, there has never been any other place where I would want to go to get images, buy type, or (hopefully eventually) submit my own type designs.
Keep up the great work.