Megafont Review

Softmaker, a software company from Germany, has been selling digital fonts for quite a long time. We recently purchased their Megafont package, some 7500 fonts with a commercial license, for thirty-five US dollars. This seems like a pretty good deal for a small publisher; we can print books with them without any restriction (other than the number of computers on which they may be installed). So—are they as good a buy as they seem?

The first thing to note is that of those thousands of fonts, more than a third are ‘special effects’ versions of the other fonts: outlined, antiqued, etc. These would prove somewhat useless to most of us and we would be unlikely to ever install most of them. Yes, I could possibly see using one in the main titling of a book or something of that sort.

The ‘normal’ fonts are of three sorts, some licensed or reissued from older (often out-of-business) foundries, some outright clones of older type (and not always done that well), and a few original fonts created for Softmaker. It should be noted that the quality of the fonts has improved since Softmaker (and others) started issuing digital type, decades ago. It should also be noted that the big-name foundries (many of which have been bought up by Monotype now) were not always that good either with their digital fonts.

I can not complain about the quality of the typefaces in the package (aside from the aforementioned special effects variants). Most are usable enough, though some lack italics or weights we might want. It is not always easy to tell what other typeface they might mimic, either—what is included might or might not provide a desired replacement font. They tend to be heavy on older and somewhat old-fashioned fonts, from the late Nineteenth–early Twentieth Century period. Many would not be a first (nor even second) choice for publishing modern fiction (though they could work, if nothing else were available).

I will say right here that one could publish quite decent books with nothing but open license typefaces, such as the ones available on Google Fonts. Many of those are geared toward online use rather than print but others are perfectly usable. EB Garamond, Alegreya, Crimson Pro—I would not hesitate to use one of those in a print book. The venerable Charter and Utopia are good too. I could keep listing useful fonts, but back to the Megafont package.

Some fonts from Softmaker have already proven of use. We have redesigned the novel ‘The Crocodile God’ (a fantasy adventure by Stephen Brooke) with their Gareth, a stand-in for Galliard, and it looks just fine. We may revise other books from time to time, though there is no great hurry about it. New books are entirely likely to use open license type, but it is nice to have something to plug into revisions or new additions to a series. The Softmaker package is, if nothing else, security, a back up source of typefaces. The $35 is a fairly good deal really; one could spend that much for a single commercial font.

To be sure, this typeface collection includes many that would be of more use to a designer than a publisher. After all, we do need to design ads and book covers and such, too, so they may well prove useful. Whether I would recommend it to a graphic designer, I’m not so sure. Oh, at that price, why not?

But for the everyday user, maybe not. This is an investment—albeit a small one—in commercial typefaces. For personal use, one would do as well to stick to what is available free. There are more good choices every day!