Where can I buy H&FJ fonts?
H&FJ typefaces are available exclusively through Hoefler & Frere-Jones. Font licenses can be purchased online here at www.typography.com, or through our New York sales office. The sales office can be reached at info@typography.com, or at +1 212 777 6640 ext. 201, weekdays between 10:00am and 6:00pm (Eastern Time.)
What are my payment options?
We accept Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Organizations that use purchase orders can contact our sales office to arrange payment either by check or by wire transfer, subject to our discretion.
Can I purchase a single style from within a font package?
Fonts being licensed for fewer than fifty computers must be purchased as entire packages. Clients arranging licenses for more than fifty computers can purchase font styles "a la carte," under our Enterprise Licensing program. For more information, write enterprise@typography.com.
Can I upgrade my font license to include additional users?
Font licenses can be upgraded at any time to accommodate more computers or additional business locations. For more information, please contact our sales office at info@typography.com . Please include your original order number if you have it, as well as the number of business locations and the total number of computers on which the fonts will be used.
Do you offer volume discounts?
We offer three kinds of volume discounts:
— Multi-user discounts. Font licenses are priced based on the number of computers on which they will be used. As the number of computers increases, the cost per user decreases dramatically.
— Bundle discounts. In addition, many of our larger font families are offered at a discount when purchased together. Look for the green "special offer" when choosing font packages — especially if arranging a license for more than one computer.
— Site licenses. Licenses for more than fifty computers are quoted individually, and always at a substantial discount. For more information, contact our Enterprise Licensing program at enterprise@typography.com. (Please include your company name and contact information, the names of the fonts in which you're interested, the number of business locations that will require the fonts, and the total number of computers on which the fonts will be used.)
Can I license the entire H&FJ library?
You sure can. For more information, contact our sales office at info@typography.com. Please include your company name and contact information, the number of business locations that will require the fonts, and the total number of computers on which the fonts will be used.
Do you offer educational discounts, or not-for-profit pricing?
We regularly help schools and charities make the most of their budgets, and help address institutional usage requirements that aren't always covered by a standard end-user font license. If you are an accredited school or a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit, and would like to license fonts for more than fifty users (or users at multiple locations), please write to info@typography.com from your organization's e-mail address. Please include your organization's name and contact information, the names of the fonts in which you're interested, the number of locations that will require the fonts, and the total number of computers on which the fonts will be used.
How can my tax-exempt organization order fonts?
Organizations in New York State claiming tax exemption under 501(c)(3) may purchase fonts from our sales office. For more information, please write to info@typography.com from your organization's e-mail address.
All other organizations located in the State of New York are required to pay sales tax at the time of purchase. Font licenses are non-transferrable, and are therefore ineligible for purchase with an ST-120 Resale Certificate.
Can distributors buy H&FJ fonts for resale?
Fonts may not be purchased for the purpose of resale, and H&FJ does not sell fonts through distributors, resellers, or other vendors. Font licenses are non-transferrable, legally binding contracts between H&FJ and the end-users of its font software.
Governmental agencies and others that use outside procurement may arrange payment through such third parties, but are asked to please contact our sales office in advance, at info@typography.com or +1 212 777 6640 ext. 201.
What's your return policy?
All sales of font software are final, so please review your order carefully prior to purchase.
Other sales questions
Feel free to contact our sales office at info@typography.com, with any additional questions about buying fonts. You'll also find more information about font licenses below.
Who buys fonts: me, my client, or both?
Fonts are software, so whoever is using the software needs to buy a license for it.
What's an "EULA?"
EULA stands for End-User License Agreement. When you "buy a font," what you're buying is a license to use font software in specific ways. These ways are described in your EULA, which is the legally binding contract between you and H&FJ.
On how many computers and printers can I use a font?
Like all software, fonts are licensed for a specific number of computers, and prices start at one computer. Not every computer on your network needs a font license: only machines on which the fonts are operational, and those on which they are stored, need a license. That is, if the font can be activated so that it appears in your menu, or the font files themselves are stored on your hard drive, your computer needs a license.
How can I buy a large font license?
Font licenses covering up to 50 computers at a single location can be purchased online. Larger licenses, as well as those covering multiple locations, are available through our Enterprise Licensing program. For more information, please contact our sales office at +1 212 777 6640 ext. 201, or write info@typography.com. Please include your company name and contact information, the names of the fonts in which you're interested, the number of business locations that will require the fonts, and the total number of computers on which the fonts will be used.
How do I license fonts for use with a font server?
When licensing fonts for a network with a font server, count the total number of computers on which the fonts will be operated — not the number of concurrent users — and add one for the server itself. (That is, a six-computer license doesn't cover the server plus "up to five users at once," it covers the server plus "the five computers able to activate the fonts.") Networked computers that can't operate the fonts over the network need not be included.
Can fonts be shared among multiple offices?
Font licenses purchased online cover a single location only, but our sales office can assist you with multi-location licensing (as well as upgrading any existing licenses.) For more information, please write to info@typography.com, and include your company name and contact information, the names of the fonts in which you're interested, the number of business locations that will require the fonts, and the total number of computers on which the fonts will be used.
How can I share the fonts with my outside contractors, or our agency?
Freelancers, outside contractors, advertising agencies, and other suppliers are independent entities, and each needs its own font license. Keep in mind that when it comes to licensing, fonts are no different than any other kind of software.
I've designed a logo for my client using one of your fonts. Now what?
The best thing to do is to supply your client with a logo that has been converted to outlines. This saves them from needing to license and install the fonts — and it also guarantees that the logo will always appear exactly the way you designed it.
What's involved in using fonts on websites?
HTML doesn't offer any way to force a web page to render itself in a typeface that the viewer doesn't have, but fonts can be used to create different kinds of images:
— Bitmap graphics (gif, jpg, png) There's no difference between using a font to create a printed page and using it to create a pixellated image. As long as the person creating the images has licensed the fonts, no additional license is needed.
— Vector art (swf) Because Flash files embed actual portions of a font's sourcecode within themselves, our font licenses require that designers observe some basic safety precautions when publishing Flash files. Text in Flash files must be static (not dynamic), the files must embed only a subset of the character set, and the "Protect from Import" option must be enabled when the files are generated.
— sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) sIFR is a great technology that brings rich typography to the web through a combination of Javascript, CSS and Flash. To use an H&FJ font with sIFR, purchase an additional single-computer font license for the webserver itself, and then configure sIFR's customize_me.as file in two ways to prevent unauthorized users from accessing the system: first, set the allowedDomains array to include only the domain of your website (instead of "*"), and then set allowlocal to "false" before publishing the .swf to the web.
The emerging @font-face tag within Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will hopefully lead to a secure technology that allows fonts to be used in web pages. But at this time, no such security measures exist, so the use of this tag with our fonts constitutes the illegal distribution of the font software. This type of use is therefore specifically prohibited under our End-User License Agreement.
If you are exploring other technologies that aren't covered here, please contact us at info@typography.com.
Can I use fonts to make PDFs?
Because PDFs embed a large portion of a font's sourcecode within themselves, their distribution poses a profound security risk for font developers. In order to balance these risks against the format's usefulness to designers, we distinguish between two kinds of PDFs:
— Workflow PDFs, which are those used to prepare artwork for reproduction. Workflow PDFs are transmitted individually, on a one-to-one basis, over closed networks. A layout that a designer e-mails to a printer is an example of a Workflow PDF.
— Public PDFs, which are those shared with the public. Public PDFs are broadcast widely, on a one-to-many basis, over open networks. A document posted to your website for general download is an example of Public PDF.
Our end-user font licenses allow only the production of Workflow PDFs, not Public PDFs. For organizations that need to circulate PDFs more widely, we offer an Embedding License as a supplemental product. For more information, please contact our sales office at info@typography.com.
Can I give fonts to my printer, or my service bureau?
Printers, service bureaus, and publications that carry advertising overwhelmingly require that jobs be transmitted as PDFs, PostScript job files, or EPS files flattened to outlines. This is not merely because these formats guarantee the accuracy of output, it's because fonts are software, and sharing software is illegal.
Can I customize or modify the fonts?
Once converted to outlines in a drawing program, you can alter the shapes of letterforms (for example, in producing a logo.) But you may not alter the data contained within the fonts themselves, or use this data to produce new fonts. Any adjustment to our font software constitutes a “derivative work” under the law, and requires prior written permission from H&FJ as the fonts’ copyright holder.
If you have a compelling need to have one of our fonts modified, expanded, remanufactured, reformatted, translated, decompiled, or otherwise used to produce a derivative work, please submit a request for consideration to info@typography.com. Please include:
How can I license your fonts for other purposes, like embedding them on a device or including them in a product for sale?
Our standard End-User License Agreement does not permit the inclusion of our fonts and related software in products for sale or for any other OEM applications. Licenses of this nature are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. For more information, please contact our director of licensing at oem@typography.com.
Other licensing questions
Feel free to contact our sales office at info@typography.com with any additional questions about licensing or usage.
OpenType fonts
OpenType, jointly developed by Adobe and Microsoft in 1997, is the successor to both the PostScript and TrueType formats. Addressing many of the shortcomings of both PostScript and TrueType, OpenType fonts offer 100% cross-platform compatibility, support for larger character sets and multiple languages, and easier access to advanced typographic features such as small caps and ligatures.
H&FJ manufactures OpenType fonts to the following specification:
| Platforms | Macintosh and Windows |
| Font Format | OpenType CFF (PostScript outlines) |
| Encoding | Unicode |
| Character Set | Latin-1 (0000-00FF) + Latin-X® (0100-02AF)1 |
| System Requirements | Mac OS X, Mac OS 8.62 or higher |
| Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, 2000, NT42, ME2, 982, or 952 |
1 Parts of the range 0100-02AF are omitted. Most fonts include additional characters: see Character Sets, above.
2 Requires Adobe Type Manager Light (bundled with most operating systems, otherwise a free download from Adobe)
For more information, including a list of fonts available in OpenType, see this Ask H&FJ column, "An Introduction to OpenType."
PostScript fonts
Until it was superseded by the OpenType format in 2005, Adobe's PostScript format was the industry standard for graphic design. Nearly all fonts designed or manufactured between 1984 and 2005 were PostScript fonts; if you're a designer who buys fonts, PostScript fonts probably make up the bulk of your library.
H&FJ fonts offered in the PostScript format are manufactured to the following specification:
| Platforms | Macintosh or Windows |
| Font Format | Adobe PostScript Type 1 |
| Encodings | Mac Roman (Macintosh) |
| Western Roman Default (Windows) | |
| Character Set | Latin-1 (0000-00FF)1 |
| System Requirements | Mac OS X, Mac OS 8.62 or higher |
| Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, 2000, NT42, ME2, 982, or 952 |
1 Most fonts include additional characters: see Character Sets, above.
2 Requires Adobe Type Manager Light (bundled with most operating systems, otherwise a free download from Adobe)
TrueType fonts
TrueType was a font standard developed by Apple and Microsoft in 1991. Because nearly every application that once required TrueType now works with higher quality OpenType fonts, H&FJ does not include TrueType fonts with any of its retail font packages that can be purchased online.
If it is a documented limitation of the program you are using that it cannot operate either OpenType or PostScript fonts, please contact our sales office before placing an order.
Companies who need TrueType for incorporation on either a physical product or a web server application should refer to our device license FAQ, and contact our sales office before placing an order.
What characters are included in a font?
All H&FJ fonts share the same core character set: Latin-1 for PostScript fonts, and the larger Latin-X™ character set for OpenType fonts. Most of our fonts additionally include extra or alternate glyphs, as suggested by the unique design of each typeface: some fonts have small caps, others have swashes, others have both lining- and old-style figures. When browsing fonts, you'll find a complete showing of each font's character set under the "characters" tab.
The Latin-1 character set covers the Unicode ranges "Controls and Basic Latin" (0000-007F) and "Controls and Latin-1 Supplement" (0080-00FF). Most fonts additionally contain the ligatures ff, ffi, and ffl, and the servicemark and publishing symbols, which in PostScript fonts are added in place of the default symbol set (omega, radical, micron, etc.)
The Latin-X™ character set, developed by H&FJ to offer maximum coverage for Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Africa, subsumes the Unicode range "Latin Extended A" (0100-017F), and includes selections from "Latin Extended B" (0180-024F) and "IPA Extensions" (0250-02AF). Not included are characters for synthetic languages or archaic orthographies (e.g. Esperanto, Greenlandic.)
What languages are supported by H&FJ fonts?
All H&FJ fonts include the Latin-1 character set, which accommodates Afaan Oromo, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arrernte, Asturian, Basque, Bislama, Blackfoot, Breton, Cebuano, Cimbrian, Corsican, Dalecarlian, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Gallegan, Genoese, German, Haitian Creole, Hmong Daw, Icelandic, Indonesian, Interlingua, Irish, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Kiribati, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgeois, Malagasy, Malay (Latinized), Manx, Micmac, Náhuatl, Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Papiamento, Pedi, Piedmontese, Portuguese, Romansch, Samoan, Sardinian, Scots Gaelic, Seychelles Creole, Sicilian, Somali, South Ndebele, Southern Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swati, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tswana, Tuvalu, Uyghur, Veps, Volapük, Votic, Walloon, Xhosa, Zhuang, and Zulu.
All H&FJ fonts offered in OpenType feature our Latin-X™ character set, which covers Catalan, Chamorro, Cheyenne, Croatian, Czech, Guarani, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Istro-Romanian, Japanese transliteration, Kashubian, Korean transliteration, Kurdish, Ladin (Gardena), Ladin (Valle di Badia), Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lower Sorbian, Macedo-Romanian, Maltese, Maori, Marshallese, Megleno-Romanian, Nyanja, Polish, Romanian, Saint Lucia Creole, Sami (Inari), Sami (Lule), Serbian (Latinized), Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian, Upper Sorbian, Turkish, Turkmen, and Welsh.
Fonts offered with H&FJ's Cyrillic-X™ character set support Abaza, Adyghe, Avar, Belarusan, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Buriat (Russian), Chechen, Crimean Turkish, Dargwa, Dungan, Erzya, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karachay-Balkar, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Komi, Komi-Permyak, Kumyk, Lak, Lezgi, Macedonian, Moksha, Mongolian, Muslim Tat, Nanai, Nenets, Nogai, Old Russian, Osetin, Russian, Rusyn, Rutul, Serbian, Tabassaran, Tatar, Cyrillized Turkmen, Tuvin, Cyrillized Ukrainian, Uyghur, and Uzbek.
H&FJ fonts featuring the Greek character set support modern (monotonic) Greek.
See also: Recommendations for Non-Latin fonts.
Cross-platform compatibility
Because they offer 100% cross-platform compatibility, OpenType fonts are the best choice for those working in a multi-platform environment. H&FJ's PostScript fonts are also cross-platform compatible to the greatest extent possible, but users should keep in mind that operating systems impose unique constraints upon typography, with the result that all fonts — regardless of their origin — have certain limitations.
— Character set differences. All fonts contain more characters than can be reached through the keyboard, and operating systems differ as to which characters they allow users to access. The fi and fl ligatures, for example, are available on the Macintosh but inaccessible under Windows; inversely, the fractions 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 are available under Windows but not always accessible on the Mac. Documents containing these characters may therefore behave unexpectedly when exchanged between platforms.
— Font family arrangements. Microsoft Windows requires that PostScript font families contain only the four styles regular, italic, bold, and bold italic. In order to offer Windows users access to all the styles that are available on the Mac, type foundries have traditionally engineered their Windows fonts so that each font style appears as its own family. This technique gives users on both platforms access to the same range of font styles, but it causes each operating system to address the same font by a slightly different name. Not all applications are able to recognize these semantic distinctions, and those that cannot may substitute "missing" fonts with a system default such as Arial.
For more information about cross-platform compatibility, language support, and other related issues, see this Ask H&FJ column, "An Introduction to OpenType."
Standards for Style Linking
"Style linking" is a technique that allows the italic and bold styles of a font family to be accessed from the keyboard: typically command-I (or control-I) for italics, and command-B (or control-B) for bold.
H&FJ font families in which each roman is paired with one matching italic are provided with style linking. But PostScript versions of families that contain a "swash" style are not style linked. (In these families, were it possible to italicise text using a key command, the subsequent choice of the Swash style would produce unattractive "italicized italics," in which the angled italic letterforms are artificially slanted even further.)
Similarly, style linking among weights works only when a single roman is associated with a single bold. Since H&FJ families customarily contain a range of weights (e.g. Light, Book, Medium, Semibold, Bold, Black), style linking by weight is turned off by default. (In these families, were it possible to embolden text using a key command, the subsequent choice of the Black weight would produce an unattractive "bold black," in which heavy letterforms are artificially darkened even further.)
Other technical questions
If you're having technical problems, please check out our Troubleshooting section below, which contains contact information for our support desk. For other kinds of non-support technical questions, please write to info@typography.com.
I’ve finished my order — now what?
Once you've completed your order and clicked "Download," follow these three steps to activate your fonts:
Opening the .zip file you've downloaded
Fonts that you download from typography.com are delivered as compressed ".zip" archives, for quick downloading. You'll need to expand these archive files before you can install the fonts.
— Macintosh
Mac OSX comes with built-in support for expanding .zip archives, so simply double-clicking the .zip archive should show the fonts it contains.
If you have StuffIt Expander installed on your computer, double-clicking the .zip archive will launch StuffIt instead, from which you can extract the fonts. Note that OSX users will need StuffIt version 8 or higher, and Mac OS 9 users will need StuffIt version 7. (Using earlier versions of StuffIt may cause the .zip archive to expand incorrectly; if your fonts appear to be "Zero KB" in size, you may be using an obsolete version of StuffIt.) StuffIt users can download the latest versions of the software here.
— Windows
If you're using Windows XP, you can double-click on the .zip archive and then drag the folder of font files it contains to another location on your computer. (Alternately, you can right-click on the archive and select "Extract all.") If you're using an older operating system, you'll need a free utility such as WinZip to expand the .zip archive.
Choosing a format: OpenType or Postscript
Many H&FJ fonts are provided in both OpenType and PostScript formats. You'll need to choose which of these formats to install — never install both at once!
If the fonts you've licensed include an OpenType version, and you work predominantly with up-to-date versions of applications such as InDesign or Quark, OpenType will almost certainly be the best format for you. If you're new to choosing font formats, or wondering whether your applications support OpenType, this Ask H&FJ column offers some useful guidance.
How to install fonts
— Macintosh OSX
To activate a font, drag the font files into the Fonts folder, located inside the Library folder inside your User folder. (To get there quickly from the Finder, choose "Go to folder" from the "Go" menu, and type ~/Library/Fonts).
Alternately, you can use Font Book, the font management utility included free with Mac OSX. Launch Font Book from your Applications folder, and simply drag the font files into the middle pane labelled "Font." More information about Font Book can be found here on the Apple website.
— Macintosh OS 9 or Classic
To activate a font in Mac OS9 — or to install fonts for use in the "Classic" environment — drag all the font files into the Fonts folder inside your System Folder. (Mac OSX users can get there from the Finder by choosing "Go to folder" from the "Go" menu, and typing System Folder/Fonts).
— Windows 2000, XP, or Vista
From the Start menu, select the Control Panel and double-click the Fonts folder. (If you can't see the Fonts folder, click the "Switch to Classic View" button on the left side of the Control Panel window.) Select "Install New Font" from the "File" menu in the "Fonts" window, and then choose the drive and folder containing the font files you've expanded from the downloaded .zip file. Once you've selected this folder, the fonts will appear in the "List of Fonts" area. Select the fonts you wish to install, making sure the "Copy Fonts to Fonts Folder" box is checked, and click "OK."
— Windows 95, 98, or ME
To install PostScript or OpenType fonts, you'll need a copy of Adobe Type Manager (ATM), which can be downloaded free from Adobe. Once installed, go to the Start menu and choose Programs/Adobe/Adobe Type Manager. From here you can use ATM's "Select Fonts" option to add the fonts you wish to use. More information about ATM can be found here on the Adobe website.
To install TrueType fonts under any version of Windows, simply drag the fonts directly into your Fonts folder, accessible through the Control Panel.
Common installation issues
— Macintosh
Fonts files that appear to be Zero KB in size have likely been extracted from the downloaded .zip archive using an obsolete version of StuffIt Expander. See "Opening the .zip file you've downloaded," above, for more information about selecting the right version of StuffIt.
PostScript fonts that are jagged or "bitmapped" on screen have only been partially installed: the "screen font" (with a suitcase icon) is being recognized by the system, but the "printer fonts" are absent. Make sure you've extracted all the files from the .zip archive, and then follow these instructions for installation.
— Windows
The message "Wait until Windows is finished using the font" may indicate that there is an administrator for your computer who has restricted users' ability to install fonts and software.
The message "The font may be invalid or damaged" sometimes appears when you install fonts manually, by dragging the font files directly into the Fonts folder. This message may indicate that you're copying more files into the Fonts folder than are actually needed. When installing PostScript fonts, copy only the .pfm files — those with a red "a" for their icons — into the Fonts folder.
Font management software
Third-party font management utilities, such as Font Reserve, Extensis Suitcase, and Master Juggler, are popular among those managing large font libraries. Their core ability to activate and deactivate fonts can be extremely valuable, but marginal competition among these applications has led each to develop its own exclusive features — some of which are of questionable value. Most dubious are "validation" processes that reject fonts as being corrupt, based on arbitrary criteria that are not part of any established industry standard.
If you're encountering trouble using one of our fonts with a piece of third-party font management software, try bypassing the software by installing the fonts directly into your operating system, as described above. If the problem is resolved, contact the software manufacturer for further assistance.
Common issues with Quark XPress
The error message that a font "may be corrupt and may be substituted by Courier [108]" is a known bug in Quark XPress. Quark acknowledges in this tech note that this message is generally a false alarm: "The alert can be triggered even if the font is not actually corrupt and is otherwise usable." As a solution, Quark offers the "FontAlertSilencer" XTension as a free download, which will prevent this message from appearing.
Common issues with Adobe applications
Most font problems within Adobe applications can be fixed by clearing Adobe's "font list" cache files. To remove these files, quit any Adobe applications that are currently open, and perform a search on your computer for files that begin with adobefnt. Delete any files that end in the extension .lst — there may be anywhere between two and twelve of them. Relaunching any Adobe application will cause these files to be rebuilt correctly.
Remember also that every Adobe application has its own "Fonts" folders in which fonts can be stored. If you're having trouble removing a font that persists in the menu, check out the "Fonts" folder stored within the application's own folder.
Fonts absent from the menu
— Missing italics
Many applications, such as Quark XPress and Microsoft Word, will not show a font's companion italic in the font menu if these fonts have been style linked. This is normal behavior: in these applications, use the key command for "italic" to access these styles.
— Styles missing in OpenType fonts
In OpenType fonts, peripheral styles such as Small Caps or Swashes do not appear in the font menu. This is normal behavior: instead, in applications that support OpenType's advanced features, these are accessed through the OpenType palette. In Adobe applications, OpenType features can be accessed through the OpenType pop-up menu in the Character palette; in Quark XPress 7, this pop-up menu appears in the Measurements palette. For more information about the differences between OpenType and other font formats, see this Ask H&FJ column.
— Fonts missing on Mac OS 9 or Classic after installation
After installing fonts, Mac OS 9 or Classic applications may need to be restarted in order to refresh their font menus.
Technical support
If your question isn't answered here, please contact our support desk at support@typography.com. Please include your original order number if you have it, and as much information as you can about the problem, starting with:
The names and version numbers of:
Please also include:
We promise to never ask you if your computer is plugged in. But restarting does cure a number of font management issues, so in all seriousness you might want to start there.
Where can I find more information about your company, and about Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones?
The "About Us" tab will take you to a company profile, information about H&FJ's principals, and a list of articles about us (many of which are online.)
How can I get samples of your fonts for reproduction in an article or a book?
Please write to Romeo Ruz at press@typography.com. Along with your contact information, please describe the nature of the piece (a profile, a summary, etc.), its publication date, and the nature of the illustration you'd like to include.
What's the correct way to refer to your company?
The name of the company is "Hoefler & Frere-Jones", or "H&FJ." Hoefler is pronounced HEFF-lur; Frere-Jones is FRARE-Jones.
What does H&FJ do?
We design and publish fonts. Some fonts are created on a custom basis for editorial, institutional, and corporate clients (listed here); others are designed for immediate sale to the public, via this website.
Who buys fonts?
Two kinds of people. First are those who create graphic design: design studios, independent graphic designers, art directors of magazines, advertising agencies, and so on. Second are those who implement design programs: organizations that have adopted a specific font for their corporate identity, websites that use fonts for their graphics, or newspapers that use fonts for both text and headlines.
How many typefaces has H&FJ designed?
At last count, about twelve hundred. Some of these are for sale on this site, others are under exclusive license to our clients, and the rest are still under development.
Help me out with the nomenclature: Fonts, Typefaces, Type Designer, Typographer… What's the correct terminology?
In the days of metal type, a "typeface" was a particular design for an alphabet, and a "font" was the manifestation of that design as a single batch of printing types. A printer who wanted to use the Franklin Gothic typeface would order a set of fonts for each size in which they were needed: perhaps one font of 24 point Franklin Gothic, another font of 18 point, and three or four fonts of 12-point, just to make sure there was always an ample supply of letters. (Like the rubber stamp kit you had as a kid, fonts contained only a fixed number of each letter, which were provided in proportion to their frequency.)
Since alphabets are now recorded digitally, they can be resized at will, and never run out of letters. As a result, the words "typeface" and "font" have come to be used interchangeably. You can sometimes detect vestiges of the old practice, when people use "typeface" to mean a particular design, and "font" to refer to the digital file that embodies that design. One often speaks of "choosing a typeface," but "installing a font on your computer."
People who design typefaces are "type designers." A "typographer" is someone who works with typefaces, such as a book designer. Neither "font" nor "typeface" are collective nouns, by the way: one doesn't "design typeface," one "designs a typeface."
What's your favorite font?
A common question to which there's no good answer. It's like choosing your favorite from among your children. (Or, worse, if you're a parent, choosing your favorite from among someone else's children.) It's safe to say that we go through profound cycles of affection and indifference toward our own work: whatever is on the drawing board is the most endearing typeface of all times, until it lingers too long, when we become sick of it!
Do you have a favorite letter?
Both Tobias and Jonathan find themselves often drawing the letter R. Perhaps it's because the R synopsizes the rest of the alphabet in a single character: it's got a tall vertical stem, a round bowl, and a diagonal stroke, a sort of typographic sampler in one convenient character. The tail of the R is also one of the most evocative and distinguishing single gestures in an alphabet: it must be exactly as flamboyant, austere, stiff, extroverted, or recalcitrant as the rest of the alphabet.
Designers at H&FJ often have a lot of fun in the back acreage of a typeface. Ampersands, daggers, section marks, and pound signs often get a disproportionate amount attention, because their shapes can be so varied, and they're so much fun to draw. It's also a challenge to see if you can distill the essence of a typeface down to something that can be applied to a bracket, say, or a percent sign. Take a spin through some fonts' character sets, and you'll see.
How long does it take to design a font?
It depends upon the size of the family, the complexity of the project, and our other obligations at the time. Leviathan, a pair of fonts derived from our Ziggurat family, took four weeks. Mercury, a high-performance family of 69 fonts for newspaper body copy, took nine years.
How do you feel when you see your fonts used?
We've been fortunate that our fonts have always attracted the interest of designers who are equally intense about typography, so almost all of the surprises are good ones. It's always nice to see that a font has been selected because it contains some feature that suits it to a particular purpose — seeing real small caps in action, or tabular figures used for a table, is always satisfying. And it's equally pleasing when a designer recognizes some cultural association that recommends a font for a particular project. But most exhilarating is when someone uses a font in a completely unforseen way, to great effect — these are delightful surprises!
Other questions and interview requests
For other questions, please write to press@typography.com. Please include your contact information, a description of the nature of the piece (a profile, a summary, etc.), and its scheduled date of publication.
I'm in a fix. I've been assigned a project about H&FJ, but I can't afford to buy all your fonts, and obviously you can't give them away. What should I do?
The instructor who asks you to do a project about type design knows that you won't be able to get all the fonts you need. It's a trick assignment, but it's a good one: it's not really about working with fonts, it's about learning to manage the resources you have available. This is one of the most valuable skills a designer can develop.
Most design work involves dealing with people whose appetites exceed their budgets. We've all had the client who wants to reach 100,000 people with a glossy 64-page direct mail piece, but confesses to only having $5,000 to spend: this gives designers a chance to walk away, plead for more money, or dissect the challenge right before the client's eyes. This budget won't cover the fantasy mailer, but it might go towards revamping the website, placing a well-designed ad, or producing an exclusive but impeccably designed event. These are all genuine design projects, and they offer the chance to distinguish yourself as not merely a stylist, but an equal partner who can truly help shape ideas.
So the short answer is no, we can't lend you the fonts. But you're welcome to use all the other resources on our website: there's tons of writing here, hundreds of interactive font TestDrivers where you can set your own type, and thousands of illustrations of our work. You're welcome to use all of these for school projects, subject to our terms of use. Figure out what you can do, and push your work to the very limit. It will be unexpected and amazing.
Or, you can just buy the fonts. Even a well-rounded type family costs less than your iPod, and fonts are things you can use for the rest of your life. An H&FJ font is a pretty good way of setting your work apart from that of your classmates — that, after all, is why designers buy them too.
I'm a student doing a project about H&FJ. Can I e-mail you with questions?
You can if your question hasn't already been answered here. If you're looking for more information about H&FJ — its history, practices, and philosophy — check out the FAQ we've written for the press. For questions specifically about design, you should spend some time reading the Ask H&FJ column, where we've answered some questions sent to us by designers. You'll also find lots of articles about us both in the media and the design press, a list of which appears here.
After that, if you still have more questions, feel free to write. Please keep in mind that we get a lot of e-mails from students, and have a lot of other obligations generally, so we can't promise you a response. You'll improve the odds by writing a letter that's concise, interesting, and relevant to what we do.
Can you recommend any good books on typography?
Every designer's library should have a good collection of books about typography: historical overviews, monographs offering different philosophical perspectives, and a few well-illustrated anthologies. Here are some of our favorites.
— Using type, thinking about typography
Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style is the finest book ever written about typography. Bringhurst is a thoughtful writer with an acutely organized mind, who examines the complete range of typographic perspectives (from letterforms to pages) with warmth and sensitivity. The book is simultaneously an excellent primer for newcomers and an invaluable desk reference for practicing designers, covering topics both philosophical and practical (how italic letterforms evolved in the seventeenth century; when to correctly use parentheses, brackets, or braces.) The book's first six chapters are as relevant to writing Cascading Style Sheets as they are to designing magazines; its seventh chapter, which offers a novel but demonstrably superior system for classifying typefaces (just one of many passages that brings real illumination to one of typography's murkier corners) is useful to anyone organizing a font library. Everyone who works with type has something to learn from Bringhurst.
— Why typefaces look the way they do
Seventy years after its original publication, Daniel Berkeley Updike's two-volume Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use remains a standard desk reference on typographic history. Updike chronicles the development of typefaces from incunabula through the early Industrial Revolution, though his scholarship is somewhat marred by personal prejudices. What the books lack in objectivity is at least made up for by the volume of their illustrations, which provide an excellent survey of the history of typography.
For a better perspective on type history that is both lively and engaging, we like Harry Carter's A View of Early Typography Up To About 1600, recently reissued by Hyphen Press. Carter uses a study of the first 150 years of typefounding as an opportunity to explore the relationship between type and technology, the diversity of typographic styles, and the interplay between type and language. All of these observations offer useful concepts for thinking about typography in general.
Two books that we grew up with are Walter Tracy's Letters of Credit and Alexander Lawson's Anatomy of a Typeface. Tracy is one of the few authors to discuss typeface design from the perspective of the drawing office, and his observations hold many practical lessons for both graphic designers and type designers. Lawson offers thirty profiles of famous typefaces (which read like first-hand interviews with the fonts themselves), collectively forming a solid foundation for understanding twentieth century type design.
Letterletter is a collection of essays by Gerrit Noordzij, one of the few practicing typographers who has taken the time to articulate his philosophy. Noordzij's ideas, which are informed by a nice mixture of praxis, theory, and observation, have found an audience among both radicals and traditionalists. One of Noordzij's countrymen is Fred Smeijers, whose Counterpunch: Making Type in the 16th Century, Designing Typefaces Now offers similarly provocative ideas about type design both past and present. Like Carter, Smeijers uses historical type-making as a springboard to discuss typography in more abstract terms, and like Tracy, he offers insights that could only come from an accomplished type designer.
— Atlases and overviews
For its sheer magnitude, Jaspert, Berry & Johnson's Encyclopedia of Typefaces is an essential field guide to typefaces both obscure and familiar. Inside, designers will find a look at nearly two thousand typefaces, many of them extremely rare for having been produced by defunct type foundries that had no successors in business. Amazingly, even some of the most obscure designs are illustrated by full character sets.
For a well-illustrated (if subjective) survey of historical letterforms, we often turn to Jan Tschichold's Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering. Tschichold integrates typographic artifacts with examples of calligraphic and inscriptional lettering, which collectively present a broader picture of the development of the alphabet. Also in this vein, but sadly out of print, is Nicolete Gray's A History of Lettering, one of many fine books by Mrs. Gray that are sorely overdue for reissue.
— Historical topics
Those looking for a more focussed study of specific historical periods will find no shortage of resources, though most of the best titles are out of print. The following books are recommended for being both well-researched and profusely illustrated: if your school library doesn't have these, ask the librarian if they're available through interlibrary loan.
— A nice survey of renaissance calligraphy can be found in see Kathryn Atkins' Masters of the Italic Letter. See also Three Classics of Italian Calligraphy, edited by Oscar Ogg, which reproduces the manuals of the writing masters Arrighi, Tagliente, and Palatino.
— Typography's golden age is presented best by the researchers who rediscovered it in the 1950s. See H. D. L. Vervliet's Sixteenth Century Printing Types of the Low Countries, and the two-volume Type Specimen Facsilimes by H. D. L. Vervliet, Harry Carter, and John Dreyfus.
— The type of the Industrial Revolution is thoroughly explored in Nicolete Gray's Nineteenth Century Ornamented Typefaces. Its counterpart across the Atlantic is Rob Roy Kelly's American Wood Type, 1828-1900, which usefully contains full alphabets of more than a hundred fonts of wood type.
Does H&FJ offer internships?
We do, and we get a lot of applications. If you're serious, get yours in early: see the Careers page for our contact details. All internships at H&FJ are paid positions.
Advice:
If you've already dabbled in type design, see also: Submissions from designers.
Other Frequently Asked Questions
Do you make custom fonts?
We've specialized in making custom fonts since 1989. If you have a project you'd like to discuss, please contact Carleen Borsella at projects@typography.com, or +1 212 777 6640 ext. 205.
Can you modify a font for me?
We'd be happy to discuss modifying one of our fonts, but we don't modify fonts from other foundries. (As a matter of law, altering font software requires the permission of the author, so it's always best to contact the originating foundry.)
Are there other H&FJ fonts besides these? I'm fairly sure this font I'm using is one of yours...
Let us know. Many fonts have developmental names that are changed once the designs are published, so you may have an obsolete copy of one of our published designs. You might also have an advance copy of a work-in-progress. Please contact our sales office at info@typography.com, and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Can you make a font of my handwriting?
That's not really something we do, but there are plenty of other folks who do — try Googling "handwriting font" for a list of candidates. Keep in mind that developing a typeface — no matter what style — takes considerable effort; set your budget and your expectations accordingly.
Can you recommend a good font for a non-Latin language?
We're regularly asked to suggest analogues for our typefaces in other script systems — the "Japanese Gotham," or a Devanagari to accompany Hoefler Text. While pairing alphabets based on their formal qualities is important, it's not necessarily the first step: in all languages, different lettering styles have different associations, and designers who ignore typography's cultural dimensions do so at their own peril. Choosing between Arabic's Ruqaa and Nastaaliq styles is like deciding between Helvetica and Dom Casual. Proceed with care.
Our Latin alphabet's closest cousins are Greek and Cyrillic, but even when producing these designs we seek the input of our Greek and Russian colleagues. We similarly encourage designers working on international design programs to solicit the perspective of their counterparts abroad.
Are you interested in publishing my font?
If you've created an original typeface which you think fits with our philosophy, and you're committed to continuing to develop it in earnest, by all means let us know. We look for thoughtfulness, originality, a high level of technical finish, and "durability": the H&FJ client is one who buys a typeface that can last a lifetime.
Projects that we're not interested in considering include:
A PDF that shows your design to its best advantage should be sent to submissions@typography.com. Please allow us adequate time to respond.
Can you help me identify this font?
We don't offer this as a service, but we'll help you out if we can. If you'd like to e-mail an image to info@typography.com, we'll try to get back to you if it's one of ours. Alternately, you can try your luck at the Type ID board at Typophile.
I have a "Hoefler Text" on my Mac — is that yours?
With every Macintosh, Apple bundles a version of Hoefler Text in their proprietary ".dfont" format. Apple's version of the family appears in five styles: Regular, Italic, Black, Black Italic, and Ornaments.
H&FJ's version of Hoefler Text, first introduced in 1997, includes some 27 styles, and is produced in the PostScript format that has become an industry standard for graphic design. Notable differences are the addition of a Bold weight, and a second set of engraved capitals called Engraved No. 2; moreover, the newer fonts reflect a number of improvements made by designer Jonathan Hoefler over the course of six years.
Designers who license the H&FJ version of Hoefler Text should first remove the fonts that are included with the operating system, which can be identified by the extension ".dfont" in the file name. (Quick check: If your Hoefler Text has a style called "Ornaments," you're using Apple's version of the font. Ours has a style called "Fleurons," instead.)
Which fonts are used in the design of this site?
The sans serif used throughout this site is Gotham, and the serif used for headlines is Mercury Text Grade 2 Semibold Small Caps.
What font is used in the "H&FJ" logo?
The ornate "H&FJ" in the background of our logo isn't a typeface, it's a piece of lettering created by Jonathan Hoefler. The words "Hoefler & Frere-Jones" in the foreground are set in Tobias Frere-Jones' Gotham Bold typeface.
Is Tobias related to Sasha Frere-Jones?
Music critic Sasha Frere-Jones is Tobias' brother.
Other questions
Congratulations: you have stumped the FAQ! Please send your Infrequently Asked Question to info@typography.com.
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