BBC Sport ditches Gill Sans and replaces it with bespoke typeface(designweek.co.uk)
designweek.co.uk
BBC Sport ditches Gill Sans and replaces it with bespoke typeface
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/14-20-august-2017/bbc-sport-rebrands-dropping-100-year-old-typeface-bespoke-one/
3 comments
I imagine that the BBC are thinking long term here and the payoff may take 10+ years to recoup but it makes sense if you think your organisation is going to be around for at least another 50 years.
Playing around on MyFonts:
- 5,000 desktop licenses (BBC has 20k+ employees) - $200k (one-time). Note that desktop licenses often have limitations on use in logos, e.g., so this might not cover BBC's usage.
- 1.5B pageviews for the webfont - $1.7M (monthly). BBC gets 1.5B pageviews per month.
- App (50k), ePub (1k), and Server (4) licensing - $200k.
So full retail, Gill Sans would cost BBC $20M+ per year. I guarantee BBC isn't paying full retail, but you can get a sense from the size and scale of the spend why this might be a cost-effective solution.
- 5,000 desktop licenses (BBC has 20k+ employees) - $200k (one-time). Note that desktop licenses often have limitations on use in logos, e.g., so this might not cover BBC's usage.
- 1.5B pageviews for the webfont - $1.7M (monthly). BBC gets 1.5B pageviews per month.
- App (50k), ePub (1k), and Server (4) licensing - $200k.
So full retail, Gill Sans would cost BBC $20M+ per year. I guarantee BBC isn't paying full retail, but you can get a sense from the size and scale of the spend why this might be a cost-effective solution.
> It's fascinating to me that 100-year-old fonts can still be so expensive
I wonder if it would've been cheaper for them to commission a clean-room digital version of Gil Sans? From what I gather the font itself (published 1928) is out of copyright in the UK, so the main licensing issue is probably just the more-recent digital representations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans
http://www.museumscopyright.org.uk/private.pdf
I wonder if it would've been cheaper for them to commission a clean-room digital version of Gil Sans? From what I gather the font itself (published 1928) is out of copyright in the UK, so the main licensing issue is probably just the more-recent digital representations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans
http://www.museumscopyright.org.uk/private.pdf
That was my immediate thought. Does anyone know how much these licenses cost?
Just for info, the new typeface is Reith Sans.
font-family: ReithSans,Arial,Helvetica,freesans,sans-serif;
And IMHO it looks lovely. :)
font-family: ReithSans,Arial,Helvetica,freesans,sans-serif;
And IMHO it looks lovely. :)
It's fascinating to me that 100-year-old fonts can still be so expensive that it's cost-effective for an organization to commission their own (not to mention the costs of replacing everything) from scratch like this.