Village

We just liked the idea that we could get together some talented friends under a kind of co-op, a strong group with strong individual voices. That despite being scattered around the world, we could band together for the benefit of the group, sharing knowledge and expertise.

Village includes: A2-Type, Constellation, Feliciano Type Foundry, Incubator, Klim, LuxTypo, MCKL, Schwartzco, Type Supply and Urtd.

No. Our members and designers (originally) hail from…

Canada: Patrick Giasson, Chester Jenkins
China: Keith Chi-hang Tam
Denmark: Henrik Kubel & Trine Rask
Finland: Saku Heinänen
New Zealand: Kris Sowersby
Norway: Magnus Rakeng
Portugal: Hugo d’Alte & Mário Feliciano
Slovakia: Ondrej Jób
Switzerland: Edgar Walthert
United States: Josh Finklea, Tal Leming, Greg Lindy, Jeremy Mickel, Christian Schwartz & Lucas Sharp

No. We are a very small independent distributor, publisher and designer of typefaces. Village consists of two partners in Brooklyn, with member foundries around the world, ranging in size from 1 to 3 people. We are registered and based in New York City, with our studio in the creative hub of DUMBO.

Our core group was assembled by invitation, and new members are either invited, or have approached us to request membership. We have curated our group very carefully around the Village aesthetic and philosophy.

Please contact us to discuss potential membership. We have curated our group very carefully around the Village aesthetic and philosophy, and only add member foundries on rare and extraordinary occasions.

The individual foundries make decisions about releases in consultation with fellow Village members.

Your computer shipped with a large number of fonts already installed; these have all been licensed or commissioned specially, so their designers and publishers have already been compensated. You pay to license our types in order to have access to new and unique typographic tools for your communication. (Sounds grandiose, we know.)

We select Village members and Incubator designers solely on the quality and inventiveness of their work, and on no other basis. We welcome submissions from all, regardless of age, race, sex, or nationality. Our members and designers are men and at least a couple of women from North America, Northern and Southern Europe, China, and the South Pacific.

Most of our members and designers are based in countries which use the Latin alphabet. Some of our designs cover other scripts, and we hope to add more designs with more language support. Our members support certain languages and scripts based on their clients’ needs and personal interests. We do offer a couple of typefaces which support the Cyrillic script, and one which supports the Hebrew script. We aim to widen our customer base and language support in the coming years.

The Incubator is Village’s foundry for new work from under-represented designers. Incubator typefaces are almost always the first published typefaces from emerging designers who work with Village partners and members to hone their work for publication.

The Incubator publishes work by: Hugo d’Alte, Josh Finklea, Saku Heinänen, Trine Rask, Lucas Sharp, Keith Chi-hang Tam & Edgar Walthert. Work is currently being prepared for release from nearly a dozen incredibly talented young designers.

Please contact us to discuss potential publication. Half of the designers of Incubator typefaces have approached us’ the other half we have approached. We are always on the lookout for interesting new work.

The types published through the Incubator are selected by the Village partners because we found something interesting and worth sharing with a larger audience. We ask ourselves, ‘Do I like this typeface? Would I want to use it?’ Besides the Village partners, Incubator typefaces are usually reviewed by two or three Village members.

Our site was created by Oak with art direction and design by Village.

We accept major credit cards — Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover — as well as PayPal and bank (wire) transfers. Customers can order using credit cards on vllg.com using our secure e-commerce engine. PayPal and bank transfers can be arranged quickly via telephone, fax and email. If you wish to pay by check, please contact us to discuss.

No. If we give away our work, that sends the message that we do not value our typefaces. And if we don’t value them, why should you?

We only accept purchase orders from existing clients and in worst-case scenarios; from educational institutions which only use POs, for example.

No. Where applicable, all taxes are included in the price you pay.

No. We do not charge VAT or any other taxes. Where applicable, taxes are included in the price you pay.

Yes. Very secure. We have an Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer certificate, which is the most secure possible solution. Our certificate is from Comodo, a respected and international provider of security products. From the Comodo site: “The EV SSL certificate was designed to strengthen e-commerce security and combat phishing attacks to make EV SSL the most complete SSL certificate available. […] Obtaining an Extended Validation SSL certificate requires a rigorous validation performed by Comodo, a registered Certificate Authority (CA). This is required to ensure that the company behind the site meets Extended Validation standard. These strict validation guidelines help keep the green address bar associated with only trusted organizations to maintain the highest level of security and trust with visitors.”

Only a few seconds. When you send your order to us through our e-commerce system, our merchant bank asks your credit card issuer to release the agreed funds. When your credit card issuer says “yes” to our merchant bank, our system creates a PDF receipt for you, along with a email receipt and a download link for the file(s). This whole process usually takes only a few seconds.

Sorry, no. All fonts licensed through vllg.com are available as download only.

No. We do not provide fonts for trial except under extraordinary circumstances. If we give away our work, that sends the message that we do not value our typefaces. And if we don’t value them, why should you?

Over 90% of the types we distribute are available as single weights. We follow directions from our member foundries, most of whom are happy to license single weights.

Sets are either large groups of several related fonts, or small groups from within a larger family. For example, the Flama Complete set contains all weights of all widths of Flama. There is also a Flama Essential set which contains 6 selected fonts from the Flama family.

Because many of the typefaces we offer come with large comprehensive families, a font set is a way to offer a useful set of fonts at a lower cost than the complete family, or if the same fonts were to be ordered piece-by-piece.

No. Sorry.

Our member foundries all have their own license tables and End User License Agreements (EULAs), although there are large areas of overlap between them. Our members all dictate their own terms of use and pricing. As their distributor it is Village’s job to do as they request.

EULA is the acronym for End User License Agreement. This is the agreement between the type foundry and the customer which sets out the rights and responsibilities of each.

Some of the licenses are a little hard to parse, so we are always happy to help. It’s easiest to send us an email to discuss licensing issues, so that we can have a written record of any discussion for future reference.

We can work something out. Call us to discuss your needs.

Yes. We would be happy to take your order over the phone; we will then process your card and send you a receipt and your licensed types, all within a few minutes.

Yes. We would be happy to receive your order via fax; we will then process your card and send you a receipt and your licensed types. We recommend following up a fax order with a confirmation email.

Yes. We would be happy to receive your order via email; we will then process your card and send you a receipt and your licensed types. If sending credit card information via email we highly recommend splitting credit card numbers across 2 or more email messages.

Sorry, but we can’t refund money on font license purchases. There is no way for us to verify that you no longer hold copies of the font software, so we cannot provide a refund.

vllg.com supports all “modern” web browsers which include: Firefox 2+, Safari 2+ and IE7+. The website is best experienced in Firefox and Safari.

Many of our OpenType format fonts have small caps programmed as features. Just use your software’s OpenType controls to apply the Small Caps feature to your selected text. Basic OpenType format Small Caps fonts are provided as separate files. Legacy format Small Caps fonts are provided as separate files.

Many of our OpenType format fonts have small caps programmed as features. Just use your software’s OpenType controls to apply different numeral styles to your selected text. Legacy forms fonts with several numeral styles are provided as separate files.

When you ordered, you were provided with a PDF receipt to download. If you have a user account with us, you can always download the file again. Our automated system also sent you a text receipt via email. If you didn’t receive it, please check your email spam filters. Many free email services filter our receipts into spam folders. Amongst the guilty parties: Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail.

The Taste Test is our program which ensures that our customers never overpay for their type licensing. When customers license a single weight (or more) of any typeface we offer, then return later to buy a family set they are credited the amount of the original sale.

We know that you might want to try out one or two weights of a typeface to decide if it’s right for a project you’re working on. While the Typer and PDFs are very useful, there is nothing quite like trying out a typeface yourself. So, you visit vllg.com and license your “trial” font (or fonts) and work with it for a while. A couple of hours, a couple of months, or a couple of years. If you decide you want to get a family set, just come back to vllg.com and purchase a license online. Send us a note on the checkout page or via email and we will deduct the original cost of your “trial” fonts from your family order.

Sure. Here are three:

You license the Upright Italic weight of Odile for US$50. Two weeks later you license the Odile family for US$200. We refund US$50 on your family order so you pay US$150. Your total cost is the family cost: US$200.

You license the Book weight of Apex New for US$50. Four months later you license the Apex New Central set for US$200. We refund US$50 on your order so you pay US$150. Three months later you license the full Apex New family for US$300. We refund US$200 on your family order so you pay US$100. Your total cost is the family cost: US$300.

You license the Auto 1 Office package for US$300. Three days later you license the complete Auto package for US$680. We refund US$300 on your family order so you pay US$380. Your total cost is the family cost: US$680.

All of them.

Yes. The Taste Test covers all possible licensing situations.

Yes. You can always extend your licensing to cover more computers. All of our licensing is cumulative; it is our policy never to over-charge our customers.

The heart indicates products which are available exclusively from Village.

We accept major credit cards — Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover — as well as PayPal and bank (wire) transfers. Customers can order using credit cards on vllg.com using our secure e-commerce engine. PayPal and bank transfers can be arranged quickly via telephone, fax and email. If you wish to pay by check, please contact us to discuss.

Not for products, sorry.

No. Where applicable, all taxes are included in the price you pay.

No. Our products all come with three prices; one for orders sent within the United States, one for orders sent to Canada, and one for orders sent anywhere else in the world.

No. We do not charge VAT or any other taxes. Where applicable, taxes are included in the price you pay.

Sorry, we are not currently selling wholesale to new merchants.

Yes and no. We do not have a store, just a small studio, so we only allow in-person pickup of products by special arrangement. Please do not drop by unannounced.

Yes, if you call us to place your order, and give us at least 4 hours to prepare your shipment. The extra cost for UPS or FedEx will be added to the product’s price.

No. Sorry.

Yes. We would be happy to take your order over the phone; we will then process your card and send you a receipt via email.

Yes. We would be happy to receive your order via fax; we will then process your card and send you a receipt via email. We recommend following up a fax order with a confirmation email.

Yes. We would be happy to receive your order via email; we will then process your card and send you a receipt via email. If sending credit card information via email we highly recommend splitting credit card numbers across 2 or more email messages.

Sorry, but we can’t refund money on product purchases once they have been shipped. We are happy to provide a complete refund if your product has not yet been shipped.

Many of our types are available as web fonts at present. Within the coming months we will be adding more, and expect to be able to offer all of the types on our site as web fonts in the fullness of time.

No. We don’t work with any of the web font hosting services. At the moment, when you license web fonts from Village, you get the font files for self hosting in WOFF, EOT and SVG formats.

WOFF, EOT, and SVG.

The web fonts on vllg.com are all licensed at a one-time cost; there are no renewal fees. Different foundries have different tables and terms; please read the “Licensing” page for each font for details.