Meet the Team: Ethan Cohen Updated Our EULA
Ethan Cohen (brother of Jed) has joined the team as Type Designer and Head of Business. To set us straight, Ethan spent his first week at Dinamo updating our EULA. He cut it down from 12 pages to 4 and planted a free-font for you to find. 😎
EULA Updates
Over the years, our EULA (industry slang for End User License Agreement) evolved into a many-headed monster, something between a diary, a time capsule, and a contract. To be clear, we were incredibly proud of our Eula 2.0 (while looking down from peak Mount Stupid) and considered it a beautiful piece of commercial-poetic writing — until we learned better.
We think that a foundry’s EULA is not just a necessary legal document — it’s an expression of values, outlining how a foundry envisions its relationship to its community.
But often, we find that EULAs can be overly formal and archaic — not reflective of an ethos at all. They’re often written by lawyers or copy and pasted from online templates (we’ve done this ourselves in the past). Yet most people cannot—and should not have to — understand legal speak. We want the people using our fonts to be making things instead of pushing paperwork around, so we’ve rewritten our agreement in a way that’s hopefully more like an easy going conversation.
“We also find that a lot of EULAs tell you what you NEVER do with a font. Instead of focusing on what someone can’t do, we focus on what you can do. That’s the most important thing: You don’t walk into a candy store with a list of what you can’t buy, you see what’s on the shelf and pick up the snicker bar you want. Buying a font should be an exciting moment, not something confusing where you’re scared of doing the wrong thing.”Ethan
You can click here to take a look at the new contract in full. Below, we’ve summarized the biggest changes:
One Metric to Rule Them All
The only metric that you need to know to buy a license from Dinamo is the company size. That’s it — no other metric is needed.
Over the past year though, this guiding rule of ours didn’t include social media licenses, which we calculated by number of followers. We realize that it was the only moment in our EULA where things were not crystal clear.
And so now, all you need to know is company size — for every type of license including social media. We feel this is much more in our spirit. If you’re a small company or individual with a large following, you’ll now get our typefaces for a relatively small fee — and we’re more than happy for your success. 😉
License Owner
At Dinamo, the designer doesn’t need to buy a license. The License Owner is the client — i.e. the business entity that commissions the design work. It’s not the agency or individual creative producing work. We’ve edited our EULA so this is hopefully even clearer than it was before. Whoever owns the design work, owns the typeface.
Mystery Prize
There’s something else embedded in our EULA. We’re not saying where — but if you find it, we feel you’ve done something amazing and should be rewarded. Pro tip: Read the EULA until the end! It might be a free font, and it might be good looking…
About Ethan
Ethan Cohen has a masters degree in TypeMedia from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and attended the Type@Cooper Extended Program. Before joining the team, Ethan worked at The Type Founders, LucasFonts, and Mucca Design, and released some of his own typefaces through Future Fonts. Before moving to Europe, he spent many years handling contracts and IP at a record label during the day and playing guitar and banjo in bands at night.