Responses by Quinn Keaveney, founder, Quite Type and Daniel McQueen, founder, The Designers Foundry

Background: The Designers Foundry (TDF) offers independent type designers a curated platform to license their typefaces. TDF is known for its stylistic and diverse yet compact collection, and it serves as a great library for designers looking for an affordable typeface to suit their next project. The main purpose of the new website was to build a stimulating and simplistic website for a range of customers to browse and purchase from.

Highlights: Selling fonts with opinionated packaging. Since we generate a customized package for every purchase, we can do some cool customized stuff. Another one of the more interesting elements is the equal padding between each element and the outer window—this changes at different sizes too!

Challenges: One of the most challenging parts of the site is the typeface tester. It was meant to be flexible and meaningful, but that required moving some features for the initial launch. Another challenging part of the site was building the back-end so that designers could get paid as quickly as the foundry does.

Favorite details: The footer. You know when you open a nice book and there is an extra blank page before you get to the index—that is our footer. We also have a scrollbar that is combined with the right padding and a ton of slideshows. Lastly, our sign-in interaction is very optimistic and encourages for users to make accounts.

Time constraints: We still have so much to do. Physical product shipping isn’t done yet and we still want to revise our login and allow the typeface designers to have more control of the way we display their content—and we want each typeface sale to go directly into their account instead of being calculated at the end of the month.

Anything new: There is a lot to learn about what motivates users to buy typefaces. Prior to this experience, we thought it was a calculated decision, but now we realize it is a lot more reactive. While physical products get people excited about the typefaces, discounts are usually the reason users notice typefaces to begin with.