Are You a Font Groupie?

CreativePro Staff

The font meisters at Extensis have released a fascinating global font usage report and a nifty related infographic. More than 2250 designers were surveyed regarding their font usage and the results show that some folks are definitely going to be on Santa’s naughty list for violating their font licenses. See how you compare to the survey respondents. 

Some of the findings include:

• More than 50% of designers have dabbled in font piracy—59% of designers have traded fonts with others and 50% of designers have brought outside fonts into the office
• One third of designers “locate” copies of fonts online without the appropriate licensing
• More than 80% of designers don’t regularly read font licenses, and 78% of designers who do read find them confusing
• More than 60% of designers don’t have a clear understanding of what they can do with the fonts they license
• 57% of designers are not clear on their organization’s font licensing policies

Extensis’ report also outlines what businesses can do to solve these problems, including efficient ways to inventory licensed fonts and using a font management solution like their own Universal Type Server.  

The survey also revealed interesting bits of font trivia: more than 60 million fonts are activated daily worldwide, and the average designer’s font collection includes 4500 fonts, with nearly 700 fonts active at any given time. That’s a lot of glyphs!