Something like a typeface

Hwæt…

A new website, it turns out, is something like a typeface: a thing that rapidly expands beyond the initial idea, ends up being more complicated than anticipated, and takes a lot longer than hoped. It is also, like a typeface, a thing that is never finished or complete. Websites and typefaces can always be extended with new features and functionality, and making one public is as much an act of surrender as of accomplishment. There comes a point at which the thing does most of what one wants it to do, and so we present the new Tiro Typeworks website (and also some new typefaces).

The internal codename for the website development was ​‘Tiro 3.0’ and, as that suggests, this is also a moment of a significant change in what we do as a company. Our business for most of the past thirty years has focused on custom font development, mostly for publishers and software companies. That remains the core of our day-to-day work, but over the years we have created fonts to which we either have retained rights or for which our original clients have expressed an interest in having us manage rights. So the big change in Tiro 3.0 is new avenues for commercial, retail licensing of usage rights. We are pleased to present the Tiro Typeworks online store, where you can find not only these commercial licensing products, but also those fonts that we make available under a libre license at no cost.

We encourage you to explore the site, and to subscribe for announcements of new content and fresh font releases when they happen. What you can find here:

• Fonts obviously. The dropdown fonts list and dynamic fonts page show all the families currently available for either commercial licensing or free download. Take a look through the individual family pages for illustrations of fonts in use, style and feature descriptions, character sets, and purchasing or download options. See also the footer of such pages for additional PDF specimen and glyph set downloads, and links to related content.
• Articles. We have a number of articles in preparation for publication, including revised versions of some older papers on technical and design subjects, as well as new content in development. Expect future case studies about specific projects, in-depth explorations of text encoding and display technologies, and some profiles of the people who make the fonts or with whom we have collaborated over the years.
• A guide to commissioning custom fonts.
• Information about the company and an introduction to our team and collaborators.
• Our detailed but plain language font license agreement.

Commercially licensed fonts.

Standard commercial font licenses can be purchased for use based on four use types, priced in tiers defined by quantity limitations:

• Device Use, i.e. installed on computers, tablets, networked workstations, or similar devices. Tiers defined by the number of users.
• Web Use, i.e. self-hosted webfonts in appropriate formats. Tiers defined by monthly web page views.
• E‑book Use, i.e. embedded in electronic books or journals. Tiers defined by individual titles or volumes.
• App Use. i.e. embedded in mobile apps. Tiers defined by annual app downloads.

Licenses for additional use types or exceeding tier limits, such as OEM bundling and distribution, can be obtained by contacting us to discuss your needs.

In recent years, some type companies have experimented with a variety of licensing and pricing models, e.g. pricing according to the size of the purchasing entity reckoned in terms of the number of employees or annual revenue, or selling monthly subscriptions to whole libraries of fonts, or requiring annual payments for some kinds of licenses. At Tiro Typeworks, we proceed from the understanding that our fonts are primarily professional tools that add value to the work done and things made by publishers, typographers, graphic designers, branding agencies, etc.: that the value of our fonts resides in how they are used. This is why we continue to employ the usage rights licensing model, as it most directly reflects that value and enables customers to select the pricing tier that directly corresponds to their needs. Usage rights licensing evolved from the commercial use of photography and illustration in the 20th Century, and is a proven mechanism for balancing the value of creative works to the people who use them with the livelihood of the people who make them.

Tiro Typeworks standard licenses are perpetual and transferable. We do not charge subscription fees or require any annual renewal payments. We also use an innovative inclusive pricing model that ensures you get the maximum benefit of all tiers included in the price you pay. Even if you only currently need one use type, or only some of the available use types, your license will include all use types and quantity limitations for the calculated tier. This means that if you decide you need additional use types, e.g. to install on devices as well as deploying webfonts, these uses may well be covered by your existing license.

During the purchase process, you will be presented with an interactive panel in which you can select the use types and limitation quantities you need. The highest priced selection is considered your primary use, and the panel is automatically updated to show the included use types and limitations, including any free upgrades to your selected use type limitations.

Pay-what-you-want indigenous language fonts.

Tiro Typeworks has long maintained a commitment to supporting minority and indigenous language use whenever possible. We are located in one of the most linguistically dense regions of the world, where dozens of Canadian First Nations and US Native American languages have been spoken by communities up and down the Pacific Northwest Coast and adjacent inland areas. Most of these languages are severely endangered, some with only a tiny number of surviving speakers, but also undergoing efforts to record vocabulary, stories and songs within these communities, and a broader, late recognition of what is lost when a language dies.

To support the efforts of indigenous communities to preserve their languages, we are pleased to offer some of our fonts under a pay-what-you-want model. The same range of usage rights are available, but you set the price you want to pay for them, which can be as little as nothing at all. At the time of the new website launch, this option is available for the new Laconia Cherokee fonts, and the refreshed and extended Euphemia UCAS fonts.

Libre fonts.

We believe a diverse font ecosystem—in which the people who make fonts have a multitude of ways to make a living—is healthier than any monoculture. This ecosystem includes libre fonts alongside those that are commercially licensed.

Over the years, we have released a number of fonts under the Open Font License.¹ These are available at no cost, and may be freely redistributed, modified, etc. according to the terms of that license. All of these fonts began life as part of custom font projects, so their initial development was funded by those clients. Their release under OFL terms has been separately funded, ensuring that the people who designed the typefaces received appropriate remuneration for the libre usage rights granted.

Sources and build tools for all our libre font projects are available via GitHub, but the latest release versions of the fonts are alse available for direct download from our new website.

Most of our fonts are available in both TrueType (.ttf) and CFF (.otf) flavours of OpenType. These are functionally equivalent in terms of character coverage, glyph sets, and OpenType Layout features and complex script support, but have different outline formats and rendering pros and cons in different environments. We believe the choice of which flavour to use should be made at the time of use, and may differ depending on software environments or target output media. So both formats are always included in your purchase delivery, when available.²

Webfont files are also provided for each OpenType flavour in compressed WOFF2 and WOFF format. These may be used directly for self-hosted webfont deployment under the license terms and limitations, but you may also generate your own webfont files if, for example, you want to deploy subsetted fonts to reduce file size.³

Variable fonts.

Some of our font families are available in OpenType variable font format, and it is expected that this will increasingly be the case for new releases. Variable font technology enables multiple stylistic variants of a typeface design to be packaged in a single font file, and provides access to interpolated variation between named instances such as intermediate weights, narrower or wider widths, and optical size designs, as well as design-specific variable axes.⁴ This provides benefits in terms of file size—a variable font is smaller than the combined size of the family of individual static fonts it encompasses—, deployment—a single file is easier to manage than a collection of multiple files—, and flexibility—access to intermediate instances in the variable design space enables fine tuning for precisely controlled or dynamically responsive typography.

Since variable fonts were first announced in 2016, there has been widespread and unresolved uncertainty about how they should be packaged and priced. As a contributor to the working group that developed the technology, Tiro Typeworks has always understood variable fonts as providing new kinds of value, in terms of the benefits identified above, and not just as an optional packaging format. At the same time, we recognise that not every customer needs or even wants variable capabilities, and is going to be perfectly happy with traditional, individual static fonts for discrete styles, weights, sizes, etc. For this reason, our variable fonts are always presented as separate products, and priced to reflect the additional value of their variable capabilties. Our expectation is that only customers who need or want those capabilities will opt to purchase the variable fonts, and they are priced to reflect the total value of the collection of static fonts encompassed by the variable design space, plus a charge for each variable design axis implemented in the font.

The launch of the new website coincides with the release of some new typefaces and fresh versions of some older ones.

• Laconia Cherokee is a brand new design, initiated by Ross Mills and Anna Štepanovská, and completed by Paul Hanslow. It is available under our pay-what-you-want model for indigenous language fonts.
• Brill 5.00 is the latest version of the modern book type we created for the Dutch academic publisher Brill. The new version has been extended to support all the Cyrillic characters in Unicode, as well as some additional Latin and symbol characters. It is now available as a variable font for the first time.
• Ross Mills’ Euphemia typeface has undergone a thorough refresh and extension, and is now available as a variable font. The UCAS subset fonts for Canadian indigenous syllabic writing systems are available under our pay-what-you-want model.

Other new releases are nearing release, and will be announced soon.

Over the years, members of our team have written numerous articles and spoken at many conferences. We are editing many of those articles and presentations for collected publication on the new website, taking the time to update information and ensure they remain relevant to developments in technology and the font business. We expect these to gradually trickle onto the site as they become ready. At the same time, we are preparing new articles on a range of topics, including design case studies and in-depth technical tutorials.

Please enter your email address and subscribe to communications at the bottom of this page if you would like to receive notification of new typeface releases and articles.

Because of the kinds of work Tiro Typeworks does, working with many different scripts and writing systems, the new website required a complex back-end to ensure each typeface was appropriately presented: like good typography, this is work that succeeds in being unnoticed. The site was built by Kenneth Ormandy, with much of the design specified by Paul Hanslow. I am hugely grateful for their efforts, and also for their patience as I came up with yet more new feature requests and occasionally changed my mind about things. Additional thanks is due to Bill Martin, who project managed the initial development, and Patrick Altair McDonald, who worked on some of the early coding.

I also want to thank Stephen Coles for prodding us to start work on a new website, and who contributed some ideas for what that might look like. I am pleased that it did not, quite, take the ten years that he joked it would.

John Hudson
Feast of the Epiphany, 2025