I’m a big fan of the Proxima Nova font and have been using it on Preceden for years:
For a long time I was loading Proxima Nova on Preceden via Typekit (a hosted web font service) for $49.99/year, but at some point I decided to self-host it to avoid the third party request which improved Preceden’s performance metrics.
Turns out this is not such a good idea because I recently received this email from the licensing department for Mark Simonson, the creator of Proxima Nova:
Hello,
I’m writing to you from Mark Simonson Studio, the creator of the Proxima Nova that you’re using on preceden.com.
Unfortunately we cannot locate an appropriate license for this use in our records. We know that font licensing can be confusing so we are here to help ensure that you have the proper license for these fonts.
If you did purchase a web license from one of our distributors, please let us know. If you send us a copy of your receipt and/or license, we will update our records accordingly.
If you do not have a valid license for these fonts, we kindly ask you to purchase one, which you can do here: licensing-assistant.marksimonson.com/s/…
Let me know if you have any additional questions-we’re here to help!
Thank you so much!
I had stopped paying for Typekit at some point (now called Adobe Fonts) so inquired whether I could simply resume paying for Adobe Creative Cloud, which would give me access to Proxima Nova. He responded:
Hello Matt,
Thank you for getting back to me.
The issue here is that your use is only covered by your Adobe CC subscription if you load the fonts according to Adobe’s guidelines: helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#server
By self-hosting the font files, as is the case now, you are not covered by your Adobe CC subscription and are required to hold the appropriate license.
Please keep in mind that when you self-host the font rather than using it according to Adobe’s guidelines, we, as a foundry, unfortunately do not receive any payment for our work.
You can switch to Adobe Fonts, but as our team already witnessed this infringement, we kindly ask you to purchase the correct license : licensing-assistant.marksimonson.com/s/….
Thank you fo your cooperation and understanding, and please let me know if you have any questions!
Fair enough.
After some additional back and forth, I learned that they use some service to check for high-traffic sites that self-host Mark Simonson’s fonts. They seem to have reliable monthly traffic numbers for the sites too, which matters when you purchase a license, since it’s based on your monthly traffic.
I went ahead and purchased a $450 license a cover the prior year of usage. Part of me wanted to ignore it to see whether and how it would escalate, but I do still love Proxima Nova and have gotten a lot of value out of it, so was fine paying its creator and avoiding further drama.
As far as switching over to Adobe Fonts, you can purchase a yearly subscription to InCopy (the cheapest product in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite) for $59.88 + tax which gets you unlimited access to Proxima Nova and other fonts, assuming you load it properly and don’t self-host it.
In the end, they said thanks, and closed my case:
Hello,
Thank you so much for purchasing the appropriate font licenses – we really appreciate it!
We can consider this matter closed and we’ll update our records accordingly.
Thanks again!
One of a million little things you gotta deal with running your own SaaS 🤣.
Matt Mazur 