SHOP TILL YOU STOP

Oh my God, there we go. I step into the shop. The floor is covered in big white tiles, the ceiling packed with bright TL-lights. The air reeks of cheap toilet refresher, or is the perfume of the customers?

I’m here for a dog toy. Doesn’t matter if it’s cheap or expensive__my dog has a system. Step one: locate the squeaker. Step two: destroy the squeaker. Last time, he clocked in at 3 minutes and 21 seconds. Ten euros for three minutes of joy? No thanks.

On my way to the pet section, I pass aisle after aisle: office supplies, cleaning products, garden stuff, vitamins, toys, food. This place has everything, and all of it looks slightly off. But I don’t need everything. I need one thing. It doesn’t have to be great. It just has to squeak.

I always try to escape this shop as fast as possible. Got the toy. Now straight to the cashier. Eyes forward, blocking out the surroundings. This place isn’t exactly humanity at its finest. Pay. Now run outside. I gulp down the fresh air like it’s my first breath in hours.

On the way home, picturing my dog’s ears perk up when he hears the toy, I pass this luxury warehouse. Spotlights highlight carefully curated objects behind spotless glass. The air smells like expensive perfume, the kind with a name you can’t quite pronounce. The people here touch things carefully, hesitantly, like they’re handling a newborn. They know they’ll pay a lot, so they want to make sure it’s worth it.

It’s the same with type foundries. Think of a type foundry as a shop, but instead of clothes or shoes, they sell typefaces. Just like boutiques with their unique styles or chains with the same collection across the globe, foundries offer a range of fonts—from one-of-a-kind, custom designs to more standard, widely used ones that you’ll find in every project, no matter where it’s created.

Just like these shops have their own identity, they also come with their own prices. The store I went to for my dog’s toy is a lot like the many type foundries that offer cheap or even free typefaces, like DaFont.

The internet is full of them, and people download them by the dozen, tossing them into their font library like cheap toys. Some are okay. Some are garbage. They come with baggage: uneven spacing, missing characters, weights that don’t quite match up. That’s the trade-off. You don’t pay with money; you pay with time and effort to make them work.

Then there are the high-end typefaces: the luxury brands of the typography world.

The priciest TYPEFACE is Lexicon from The Enschede Type Foundry, priced at €3,592 for the full family bundle. In exchange, you get 24 fonts. On the other hand, the most expensive FONT is Ruse by Gerrit Noordzij, costing €562 for a single font, but the full family bundle comes in at €3,255 for 22 fonts.

__“What is the difference between a typeface and a font?” I hear you think.

Well, for those who care: imagine a typeface is like a family, and each member of that family has different roles. The typeface is the overall family name—like Helvetica, Times New Roman, or Ruse. It’s the whole crew, the genetic blueprint.

Now, within that family, you have different fonts. These are the individual family members. The bold cousin, the skinny aunt, the tall uncle.

So, if a typeface is the whole gang, a font is just one member of that gang, showing up in a particular style or weight.

__To be even more precise: back in the day, a font was tied to a specific size, like Ruse Italic 12 point.

So now the question is: do you always get what you pay for?

Not necessarily. A badly used expensive font still makes bad typography. A well-used cheap font can still work. In the end, it’s about what you do with it.

The belief that expensive fonts automatically make good design is like thinking that buying an expensive knife makes you a good chef. Sure, it helps, but it won’t stop you from overcooking the pasta. A high-end typeface, mishandled, can still look amateurish. That €562 per weight means nothing if you throw it onto a page without care. If you size it badly or let it sit awkwardly in a composition, it won’t matter how many hours went into perfecting its curves.

On the flip side, a free font (if handled with skill) can do the job just fine. Not every project needs a sophisticated, historical, multi-weight, variable, OpenType wonder.

The problem is that people want the typeface to do the work for them. They assume that picking an expensive one means their job is done. That’s why you see high-end fonts butchered in bad branding, stretched, crammed, misused. And it’s why you see ugly free fonts slapped onto everything, because they simply are there.

Typography is a tool. Like any tool, it’s how you use it. You don’t need the most expensive tool, but you do need to know how to handle the one you choose. And if you’re working with cheap tools, you need to work smarter, making adjustments where needed, compensating for their weaknesses.

Let me show you the visual differences between free/cheap and expensive fonts.

I went on a mission to find the ugliest free typeface on Dafont. My first instinct was to go by the overall ‘feel’ or, ugh, ‘vibe’ (words I ban from my lessons, but we’ll get into that another time). Anyway, I picked this font because I question every single design decision.

First: it’s a handwritten font. And honestly, you’d be better off writing it yourself. The problem with script typefaces is that they try to look handmade, but when the character set is this limited, every ‘e’ is a clone. So much for the handwritten charm.

Second: the angle of the (probably digital) brush. Very questionable. Because of this, some areas look like they’re clogged up with ink. For instance, check out the lower part of the ‘a’, and the upperpart of the ‘n’.

Third: the proportions. All the lowercase letters are crammed into the same rigid height, but that doesn’t work when you’ve got letters like b, d, and p, which are supposed to break out of that space.

And then there’s the ‘t’: a truly tragic character. Its horizontal bar isn’t even pretending to align with the x-height.

Oh, and let’s not forget the random mix of uppercase and lowercase construction. If that’s a design choice, I’d love to hear the reasoning… from a safe distance.

And the name of this font. ‘Cweamy’. Sounds like a typo after one too many lattes. It’s like the font tried to be cute and ended up with a vowel meltdown.

“The question that has been occupying my mind for a long time: What do I see when I look, has received a temporary answer: I only see what I know.”

This quote by Gerrit Noordzij captures his approach: a typographic thinker and designer deeply focused on how type functions, not just its appearance.

Could one separate the quality of the typedesigner from the quality of a font? Of course not. Quality makes quality. You can see his skill in every curve, every balance, and every subtle detail of Ruse. This typeface captures the precision of Noordzij’s mind.

As he writes himself: “Ruse is related to my handwriting. I transferred the rhythm of the written word image into this typeface: the emphasis lies on the balance between the white shapes that keep the black shapes in place. The appearance of the typeface is casual, but what’s casual for me doesn’t necessarily have to be for other people. Let’s say that I excluded any striking peculiarities.”

Let’s not get into the debate about whether you might prefer ‘Cweamy.’ You might argue that it’s simply a matter of personal taste. No, it’s not. Taste isn’t some untouchable force that exists in a vacuum. It’s shaped by experience, education, and exposure. It can be refined, questioned, and yes, even corrected. So, while you’re free to like ‘Cweamy,’ let’s not pretend that all choices are equally valid just because they’re personal.

I get it: €562 for a font is a lot. But here’s a way around it. There’s probably someone in your class with a large collection of illegal fonts. Find that person and ask if they’re willing to share.

“WHAT‽” The glasses of one of the typography teachers just fell off his face. Hear me out for a sec. I believe you need to feel type, not just look at it. I mean, you wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a spin, right? Same idea with fonts. Go ahead and explore, but just a heads-up: using fonts illegally could get you in trouble and your client, too. Plus, respect the designer’s work, just like you’d pay for any other artist’s work.

Now, where do you even begin? I tried counting all the foundries out there, and honestly, it’s impossible. The scene keeps changing. Typebase.com helps by collecting many in one place, and it’s constantly growing.

Many foundries offer test fonts with a basic character set, a great way to see how a font behaves. And if you have Adobe Creative Cloud, check out their ‘foundries’ section.

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Grab your bag and start shopping!
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Type designers charge for the research, the testing, the workmanship that goes into making something that functions well at every size, in every context, across every language. A free font rarely has that level of polish.

But sometimes, you don’t need that polish. Sometimes, you just need something that does the job, and if you know what you’re doing, you can make it work.

So go ahead, step into the shop. Buy the expensive font if you need it. Download the free one if it works. Just don’t let the price (or the lack of one) make the decision for you. Let your knowledge, your skills, and your eye for good typography be what guides you.