Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs(brianmoore.com) |
Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs(brianmoore.com) |
One of the major issues we had at my previous company weaning people off of powerpoint (to google docs) was brand fonts. Ours, of course.
A lot of what is considered brand identity in presentations comes from fonts, which makes Google Docs Slides a non-starter for many unfortunately.
(we ended up making them in powerpoint and using the Google Docs compatibility mode with pptx).
> Google Workspace lets brands who pay enough embed custom corporate fonts into their docs and slides. Normally, these are locked to just those brands shelling out for custom typefaces, but there's one loophole: the ol' copy/paste. Below are a selection of brand fonts with which you can do exactly that. Enjoy.So, I need to be super rich? Thats sad.
<html> <body> <!--StartFragment--><meta charset='utf-8'><meta charset="utf-8"><b style="font-weight:normal;" id="docs-internal-guid-8b11d82e-1a25-4b6a-be64-ebdd55b2a698"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:22pt;font-family:'Facebook Sans',sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">I just stole Facebook Sans</span></p></b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><!--EndFragment--> </body> </html>
I was surprised to receive the DMCA (it is hosted on GitHub Pages). I ignored the emails because…I’m lazy.
They (GitHub) eventually took down the repository (and site). So I swapped to another font and I don’t think my wife noticed.
I think all of this was still easier than probably paying for the font!
Lesson of the story? Don’t underestimate the impact of laziness on your potential customers.
You can also just stick them in a font-editor and re-export "as your own font" with some minor tweaks. Not that you should, of course.
Making a typeface takes a tremendous amount of work. The financial upside is extremely hard to justify.
I think non-designers underestimate the amount of effort required by an order of magnitude. I put it in the territory of building indie games. Potentially years of your life go into it, and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.
I do believe whoever the font owners are paying just scrape the HTML and CSS looking for patterns matching their font.
E.g. the Klarna Headline is pretty distinct, but I've never seen it before. The four other Klarna fonts are super generic. Also why do they need five different fonts?
Mostly I think these custom fonts are a waste of money. If you ship software that needs to include fonts, and you don't want to pay a license, it makes sense. If you do it because of "corporate identity" it seems pointless.
It's still an 80 billion dollar company in market cap, so there is that.
Also I'm guessing it's so they have another means of attack on knock off products that directly copy them.
A LONG time ago, I was shared on a document with a brand font and was surprised to see it was a custom one. With a bit of testing, I realized I could pull it into a new document and that new document would then become "infested" with that font and allow me to use it anywhere else within.
I recently realized there must be even more fonts that exist that I don't know of, so (transparently, with the help of Claude,) I ran through a list of potential clients (some listed on Google Workspace's site, some I just assumed) and tested across many. This is the list I came back with.
Related: https://eidosdesign.substack.com/p/why-every-brand-looks-the...
But as someone who has made multiple neutral sans families, I agree. The launch rhetoric about creating a differentiated visual identity is comical when you look at all the interchangeable corporate sans together.
A brand is still free to commission a copy/clone of an 'interesting' font that has character (or, beware even serifs) ...
There are more than enough good fonts under OFL that it surprises me people want to commission a custom font primarily for licensing reasons rather than using a standard one.
After all, gating by IP address? What happens if someone from the marketing team logs on from an airport? All of the slides revert to Arial?
One could imagine that access to the fonts could be restricted to the logged-in user, but that would mean that public documents that can be accessed without a login wouldn't have the specific fonts.
I can just as easily download them from any of the brand's official websites. The vast majority are being utilized via font-face and are rendering inside of heading and body text.
Convenient WOFF format, all weights, and available in 2 clicks in Dev Tools. And if Dev Tools is too difficult there are dozens of free extensions that will do it for you.
I'd argue that what little Google provides now is more secure than the official websites' usage.
If you produced a bunch of screenshots of the output at various sizes, and then asked an LLM to convert to ttf or whatever, I’m guessing that’d be OK. I’m not an expert in this stuff though.
Various print shops have systems in place for previewing/approving print jobs as well.
Where did things go this wrong?
Granted, you now need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee for Powerpoint instead of a one-time-fee. But that is in large part because too many people preferred Google Docs, so Microsoft tried to become more like them
Never felt myself lacking for fonts in Docs, myself. Quite the opposite, Google Fonts has way more than I'd ever have preinstalled and is now my primary avenue for typeface discovery.
Are you building a slide deck on your systems architecture? Probably doesn't matter.
Are you building a marketing deck on your new corporate identity? Probably matters a lot.
Either way, the tool I'm using shouldn't be the one deciding what matters and what doesn't. Just let me use my font as I please!
This isn’t much different; there still are plenty of non-Google options for creating presentations to choose from that do allow using your own font.
I think that supports the "Where did things go this wrong?" sentiment.
Depends on the place. Tons of restaurants in New Jersey encourage you to bring your own wine bottle and don't charge a "corking fee".
If people want the freedom to use their own fonts in their own presentation, and don't want to pay handsomely for the privilege, LibreOffice is freely downloadable. But they don't want to use that for some reason.
Yes, the EULA may prohibit modifications of local installations, but you’re not physically restricted from doing so - only contractually.
Then because your contract with Google is large enough to matter, they'll add your custom corporate branded fonts to your font dropdowns.
That said, a certain corporation's bought up a load of fonts made over the past x decades and is making a tidy sum selling old rope again and again without adding anything of value, or funding the original designers/converters, so I'm quite happy to illuminate how an individual can get around such things for use on their personal blog with an audience of ten, should they so wish.
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ed - you're also not as likely to be able to get a whole usable font from a small foundry in the first place, without buying it.
I get that they're trying to make their ROI back from enterprise customers who can justify paying thousands a month for their specific corporate font, but I would like to see more personal use, project based pricing that's affordable for hobbyist use
You can't copyright the alphabet.
>and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.
I've never pirated a font. Not once have I boarded a ship in the middle of the ocean, gun in hand, taking the crew and cargo of typography hostage.
But more seriously, I acknowledge that it's a problem. It's just not my problem.
You're not paying to use the alphabet, there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.
>there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.
You mean there are plenty of bezier curved shapes which are within the public domain and no one can stop me. I'm not obligated to surrender my rights so you can turn typography into a business model. If you piss me off, I might just release tools that even stooges can use that copy the shapes out of the otf file, rearrange those completely so that no file fingerprinting will match, and has the user rename the files. I will go to war.
⸻
1. I would note that bitmap fonts do not receive the same protection as Type 1 or OTF fonts.
Legally based off the carefully considered positions of philosophers of law like Thomas Jefferson, and others just as renowned, who actually created modern copyright law in the United States, because they weren't trying to set you up to be rent-seeking degenerate scribblers for the next umpteen millennia.
>but digital font files are considered programs
As precedented in case law by degenerate judges who should be brought up on treason charges. They aren't programs in any meaningful sense, culinary recipes are likely closer to programs (they, arguably, run on a Turing-complete machine, the human brain, and have something akin to branching going on once in awhile).
>You can try to justify the theft
What theft? No theft occurred, because I denied no one the possession of their own property. Even the judges and lawyers have to admit that this is at most infringement, so please use that word or just confess here and now that you'rea manipulative liar.
>I would note that bitmap fonts do not receive the same protection as Type 1 or OTF fonts.
What!?!?! Those aren't programs too? Please, consult the computer scientists, they must be informed! Are they also not stored as ones and zeroes?
I do not argue with idiots.
Such companies should be mocked and shamed, not held up as examples to follow.
As others have said, your point comes across as "let's remove design who cares" because design and human computer interaction roles stopped where your understanding ends. Everything looks the same to you after all (it doesn't, you just haven't noticed it affecting your decision making).
If I follow your train of thought to its logical conclusion, nothing matters. Which is correct, but sort of pointless to state. On top of this nothingness, we typically stack personal preferences.