A one-time fee of $500 is worth around two to three hours of good design/branding labor. I think having a distinctive, high-quality font is absolutely worth that investment, especially when you consider that the target audience of the SaaS includes designers.
so I mentioned only $500 dollar expense for the Web application and not the Marketing font that costs $300 more - so why do you need to worry about branding for web application ? I agree that marketing websites would need distinguishing fonts. Just a thought.
It’s less about distinguishing the app with another font and more about designing the app with what I had in mind—the system fonts and more affordable fonts didn’t feel right to me.
Even though I consider myself more of a developer, I went to school for design and it’s a big part of my work, so the look and feel is just as important to me as whether the app works or not. Sure, we could’ve saved $500, but I wouldn’t enjoy using the app as much, or working on it.
I also got to support two type foundries that I really respect. (JAF & Dalton Maag)
The website looks wonderful, and considering just how much text you need to use to get ideas across, the font money seems well spent. The entire page looks... delicious.
I am just using fonts from Google Web Fonts, but when we made the change we had several users reach out with how much they love the new fonts.
Since then, I am very intentional about using fonts consistently and intentionally. I could definitely see us "upgrading" our fonts when we do a design refresh.
