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VFL, A license for your fellows!

We announced them earlier, here is our first NFO (Non-Font Object). This particular project is a new hybrid model of license created by our dear member Anton Moglia and now carried by the whole foundry. Welcome the Velvetyne Fellowship License!

Why another license?

As a graphic designer collaborating with other designers and creating fonts, I often need to share work-in-progresss creations with friends and collaborators. The problem is that, until now, I didn’t know how to control this practice. Sometimes, these creations (such as fonts) were shared without my knowledge and then I lost control of their distribution. I have occasionally seen my unreleased fonts reappear somewhere on the internet. How did these people get there? Friends of friends shared them seamlessly, since there was no license attached.

I thought it might be interesting to encourage this practice, and that it could energize the way people share fonts. “I can give you that font if you want! You can share it with your friends, it’s meant to be.”

So I realized that it might be a very good way to distribute some of the fonts that I had in my folders. The idea was born:  we can share some fonts, in a demo version, with friends. They can share them with their friends. It can give a little life to typefaces that would otherwise never be released. It’s also a way to get early usage examples of a font, which in turn can lead to more enthusiasm towards that font. The only restriction is that the files cannot be publicly released. It has to be something that is shared from hand to hand, like an old hacked movie on a USB drive.

So, what’s the deal?!

The Velvetyne Fellowship License allows you to make digital fonts and other creations available to your friends through peer-to-peer sharing. It encourages the distribution, within a defined framework, of any kind of digital creations, that otherwise would remain in designers’ folders. These creations can thus spread organically from one friend to another and can be used normally as long as they are not released on a public distribution platform.

This particular licence allows users to employ these creations in commercial and noncommercial projects alike. However, it prevents anyone to post the licensed creations on any website or online repository whatsoever. The only way to obtain their files would be from another fellow. This licence also allows modifications of the creation, but only after asking their original designer. In this sense, this licence is different from traditional open source and libre licences. Any modification can be shared afterwards as long as they are still under the Velvetyne Fellowship License.

It’s a distribution model in which each holder of the licenced creative files becomes in turn a distributor and guarantees their availability and conservation.

Why should I use it?

→ You produce digital creations in your free time, as part of your studies or a professional activity.

→ You would like to share them with friends, wether they are students, graphic designers, designers, architects or your family.

→ You are used to sharing ongoing creations with your personal and professional network, but you haven’t been able to control the distribution of these files by using a license.

The fellowship license is intended to help you manage this practice.

How to use the Fellowship License?

READ THE LICENSE

DOWNLOAD THE DEMO FOLDER

1. This repository contains a demo folder to help you create a structure which will contain your creation files and which you can then send to your friends.

2. This folder also contains the logo of the Velvetyne Fellowship Licence which must appear in the creation files to guarantee its authenticity.

3. If you share files published under this licence with a friend, feel free to briefly explain its specificity.

Non-Fonts Objects?

————— Globish —————

After several months of collective reflection and debate, VTF is now offering a new kind of publication. We call them Non-Font Objects.

The creation of Velvetyne ten years ago was an impetus to free up practices. Emancipation from a tradition of perfection, asceticism and readability. It was also a celebration of liberated formalism, collective work, of reclaimed spontaneity and perfectibility aesthetics.
For French typography, it was a full-blown entrance into the open-source movement, the adoption of free licenses, the proudly waved flag of authors who work for the commons.

10 years later, the planet is crushed under the weights, foundries are multiplying and questions arise. Do we really need new typefaces to feed the growth of an infinite corpus as our ecosystems crack? To encourage the consumption of digital products, even if they’re free? Is the role of a foundry in 2020 simply to push fonts to the world, fill up its catalog or any space available and for how long?

Thus, we change our tune.

On the one hand, we have transformed our type publications policy. Our releases are no longer the product of a disheveled formalism but the expression of our convictions: plurality of scripts, representativeness of genres and cultures, forms stemming from uses and needs. And we think the resulting designs will be even crazier and more grounded in life.

On the other hand, we now alternate our font publications with objects that aren’t fonts. We might not know if the world needs new typefaces, but we do know that it needs more tools for creation, sharing, reflections, and, more simply, nudges that nourish desires for the future and collective visions.

So we welcome NFO #1, let us all greet the Velvetyne Fellowship Licence.

————— Français —————

Après plusieurs mois de réflexion et de débats collectifs, VTF propose aujourd’hui un type nouveau de publications. Nous les nommons Non-Font Objects.

La création de Velvetyne, il y a dix ans, c’est un élan qui libère les pratiques. C’est s’affranchir d’une tradition de la perfection, de l’ascèse et de la lisibilité. C’est la célébration du formalisme libéré, du travail collectif, de l’esthétique revendiquée de la spontanéité et du perfectible.
C’est aussi, pour la typographie française, une entrée de plain-pied dans le mouvement open-source, l’adoption des licences libres, le drapeau fièrement agité d’auteurs qui travaillent pour les communs.

10 ans plus tard, la planète est noyée dans les graisses, les fonderies se multiplient et les questions surviennent. A-ton vraiment besoin de nouvelles typos, besoin de nourrir la croissance d’un corpus infini à mesure que nos écosystèmes craquent ? D’encourager la consommation de produits numériques, fussent-ils gratuits ? Le rôle d’une fonderie en 2020 est-il simplement de pousser de la fonte pour gonfler son catalogue et jusqu’où ?

En réponse, nous changeons notre fusil d’épaule.

D’une part, nous avons transformée notre politique de publications typographiques. Nos sorties ne sont plus le produit d’un formalisme échevelé mais le manifesté de nos convictions : pluralité des écritures, représentativité des genres et des cultures, formes issues d’usages et de besoins. Et nous pensons que les dessins qui en résultent seront encore plus fou et ancrés dans la vie.

D’autre part nous alternons désormais nos publications de fontes avec des objets qui n’en sont pas. Si nous ne savons pas si le monde à besoin de nouvelles typos, nous savons qu’il a besoin d’outils de création, de partage, de pensées, et, plus simplement, des coups de pouces qui nourrissent des envies de futur et des visions collectives.

Nous souhaitons donc la bienvenue au NFO#1, bienvenue à la Velvetyne Fellowship Licence.

Typolibrisme francophone : 10 ans et plus

On vous prévient au dernier moment mais on organise jeudi 28 prochain à 18:30, une table ronde virtuelle réunissant un joli panel d’actrices et d’acteurs francophones du mouvement des fontes libres. Frank Adebiaye, Lucas Descroix, Loraine Furter, Alice Savoie, Baptiste Sozoo et quelques membres de Velvetyne se réuniront pour dresser un panorama des pratiques libres typographiques à travers les évolutions observées cette dernière décennie.

Cet évènement, s’inscrit dans la programmation de l’Open Publishing Fest.

Rejoindre la conférence, en live le 28/05 à 18:30

Typos: Outward de Raoul Audouin (sortie future) et Minipax de Raphaël Ronot.