Font Smuggler – copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

I love how all these 'brand' fonts look indistinguishable to an untrained eye and still brain-frying-bordedom-inducingly close to each other to someone like me who actually studied & worked in typography.

Received DMCA takedown notices for a paid font I used for my wife’s interior design website that she liked but we didn’t pay for because…I’m lazy.

I was surprised to receive the DMCA (it is hosted on GitHub Pages). I ignored the emails because…I’m lazy.

They (GitHub) eventually took down the repository (and site). So I swapped to another font and I don’t think my wife noticed.

I think all of this was still easier than probably paying for the font!

Lesson of the story? Don’t underestimate the impact of laziness on your potential customers.

Whoa. How does this work?

One of the major issues we had at my previous company weaning people off of powerpoint (to google docs) was brand fonts. Ours, of course.

A lot of what is considered brand identity in presentations comes from fonts, which makes Google Docs Slides a non-starter for many unfortunately.

(we ended up making them in powerpoint and using the Google Docs compatibility mode with pptx).

I didn't know that many brands had their own bespoke fonts. Especially the less prominent players like Colgate or Korean Air. Was this caused by normal font licensing being so restrictive or expensive that they just decided to hire someone to make a font just for them, or design teams insisting that this sans serif that looks almost like all the others (but not quite) is essential to their design?

because they're brand fonts, none of them feel great to write more than a headline with

Would be really good if Google Docs could support custom brand fonts by letting their customers upload them in the admin console.

Is there any difference between Source Serif and Source Sans as listed here and the publicly available versions, given they are open source typefaces?

I knew about this for Google’s own fonts but had no idea they offered the option to use custom fonts. Is there any easy place to find a list of them? I wonder if the custom fonts are just hardcoded/pushed to their CDN alongside all the other ones.

Any idea how did the creator manage to get access to the fonts in the first place? Won't you need a Google Docs document which uses the given font and then copy it from there and put it up on the website? Or is there some way the creator could have put these fonts on his website from publicly available information?

I really like the style of copying the “google tool” style that this website and jmail use. It makes the project feel different compared to all the ai-generated app these days.

Surprised that such font access isn't gated by IP address --- usually font licenses are quite restrictive and have such requirements for usage.

I really like the style of copying the “google tool” style that this website and jmail use. It makes the project feel different compared to all the ai-generated app these days.

because they're brand fonts, none of them feel great to write more than a headline with

Would be really good if Google Docs could support custom brand fonts by letting their customers upload them in the admin console.

Is there any difference between Source Serif and Source Sans as listed here and the publicly available versions, given they are open source typefaces?

It's just the design team running in place. And at a certain scale, it's cheaper to pay a type foundry $100k once, rather than paying Monotype continuous fees for a legacy family.

But as someone who has made multiple neutral sans families, I agree. The launch rhetoric about creating a differentiated visual identity is comical when you look at all the interchangeable corporate sans together.

Pretty sure it's just the pendulum swinging. Today its all about serious and clean and minimal. Then it will be whimsical and maximalist again. Skinny jeans, baggy jeans. Skeumorphic, flat.

The purpose of the brand font is to avoid paying licensing fees. Because the typefaces aren’t protected by copyright it’s usually enough to just have someone go and essentially clone an existing font. The whole thing is an artifact of peculiarities of IP law

I think they just misspelled “Bland fonts”.

that's because a ton of them are just off the shelf fonts they had someone make minor changes to

Received DMCA takedown notices for a paid font I used for my wife’s interior design website that she liked but we didn’t pay for because…I’m lazy.

I was surprised to receive the DMCA (it is hosted on GitHub Pages). I ignored the emails because…I’m lazy.

They (GitHub) eventually took down the repository (and site). So I swapped to another font and I don’t think my wife noticed.

I think all of this was still easier than probably paying for the font!

Lesson of the story? Don’t underestimate the impact of laziness on your potential customers.

Out of interest, did you rename the font prior to use? I'm curious how they found it.

You can also just stick them in a font-editor and re-export "as your own font" with some minor tweaks. Not that you should, of course.

Whoa. How does this work?

One of the major issues we had at my previous company weaning people off of powerpoint (to google docs) was brand fonts. Ours, of course.

A lot of what is considered brand identity in presentations comes from fonts, which makes Google Docs Slides a non-starter for many unfortunately.

(we ended up making them in powerpoint and using the Google Docs compatibility mode with pptx).

From the small info icon that opens up a section.

  > Google Workspace lets brands who pay enough embed custom corporate fonts into their docs and slides. Normally, these are locked to just those brands shelling out for custom typefaces, but there's one loophole: the ol' copy/paste. Below are a selection of brand fonts with which you can do exactly that. Enjoy.

copy/paste doesn't tell you much - here's the text/html content they put on your clipboard if you're curious. Apparently GDocs supports this out of the box, just hides it from the selection box. Which makes sense given that it doesn't support any font.

<html> <body> <meta charset='utf-8'><meta charset="utf-8"><span style="font-size:22pt;font-family:'Facebook Sans',sans-serif;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre;white-space:pre-wrap;">I just stole Facebook Sans  </body> </html>

> Google Workspace lets brands who pay enough embed custom corporate fonts into their docs and slides. Normally, these are locked to just those brands shelling out for custom typefaces, but there's one loophole: the ol' copy/paste.

For most of these fonts, I feel fairly certain if someone gave me a sample I could identify the brand.

>like Colgate

It's still an 80 billion dollar company in market cap, so there is that.

Also I'm guessing it's so they have another means of attack on knock off products that directly copy them.

I have respect for the design teams that at least just drop the bullshit and say "Yeah Inter is our font, whatever, who cares"

Have a look at the raw clipboard data with something like https://evercoder.github.io/clipboard-inspector/ and you'll see how it's all set up. A bunch of markup that can be obtained from any google doc with the font name updated.

It's just setting the font-family in the style attribute of a . (As you can see by inspecting the text/html content of your clipboard, e.g. with `xclip -selection clipboard -o -t text/html`)

Surprised that such font access isn't gated by IP address --- usually font licenses are quite restrictive and have such requirements for usage.

The licenses (from major foundries/vendors) are indeed usually quite restrictive; however, the hard part has always been enforcing them. It's not surprising to me that Google hasn't built any guardrails around this.

After all, gating by IP address? What happens if someone from the marketing team logs on from an airport? All of the slides revert to Arial?

It's just the design team running in place. And at a certain scale, it's cheaper to pay a type foundry $100k once, rather than paying Monotype continuous fees for a legacy family.

Pretty sure it's just the pendulum swinging. Today its all about serious and clean and minimal. Then it will be whimsical and maximalist again. Skinny jeans, baggy jeans. Skeumorphic, flat.

that's because a ton of them are just off the shelf fonts they had someone make minor changes to

I think they just misspelled “Bland fonts”.

After all, gating by IP address? What happens if someone from the marketing team logs on from an airport? All of the slides revert to Arial?

My comment was not on why but what.

A brand is still free to commission a copy/clone of an 'interesting' font that has character (or, beware even serifs) ...

Is that true, though? Wouldn't it be possible to just copy a font wholesale, since they are uncopyrightable? How would licensing fees be enforced?

From the small info icon that opens up a section.

  > Google Workspace lets brands who pay enough embed custom corporate fonts into their docs and slides. Normally, these are locked to just those brands shelling out for custom typefaces, but there's one loophole: the ol' copy/paste. Below are a selection of brand fonts with which you can do exactly that. Enjoy.

Oh thanks! I looked but I missed that.

So, I need to be super rich? Thats sad.

Out of interest, did you rename the font prior to use? I'm curious how they found it.

You can also just stick them in a font-editor and re-export "as your own font" with some minor tweaks. Not that you should, of course.

You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries.

Making a typeface takes a tremendous amount of work. The financial upside is extremely hard to justify.

I think non-designers underestimate the amount of effort required by an order of magnitude. I put it in the territory of building indie games. Potentially years of your life go into it, and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.

For most of these fonts, I feel fairly certain if someone gave me a sample I could identify the brand.

Remove the name from the font and I'm fairly certain that I'd get none of them, well maybe HP.

E.g. the Klarna Headline is pretty distinct, but I've never seen it before. The four other Klarna fonts are super generic. Also why do they need five different fonts?

Mostly I think these custom fonts are a waste of money. If you ship software that needs to include fonts, and you don't want to pay a license, it makes sense. If you do it because of "corporate identity" it seems pointless.

My comment was not on why but what.

A brand is still free to commission a copy/clone of an 'interesting' font that has character (or, beware even serifs) ...

>like Colgate

It's still an 80 billion dollar company in market cap, so there is that.

Also I'm guessing it's so they have another means of attack on knock off products that directly copy them.

I have respect for the design teams that at least just drop the bullshit and say "Yeah Inter is our font, whatever, who cares"

It's just setting the font-family in the style attribute of a . (As you can see by inspecting the text/html content of your clipboard, e.g. with `xclip -selection clipboard -o -t text/html`)

The access would presumably need to be done through a VPN to have the fonts.

Is that true, though? Wouldn't it be possible to just copy a font wholesale, since they are uncopyrightable? How would licensing fees be enforced?

Brand fonts are typically a specific license by the original creator of the font, often together with some adjustments (e.g. big companies often need additions for global markets that were not in the smaller original font)

I think modern fonts include hinting software and stuff like that.

If you produced a bunch of screenshots of the output at various sizes, and then asked an LLM to convert to ttf or whatever, I’m guessing that’d be OK. I’m not an expert in this stuff though.

You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries.

Making a typeface takes a tremendous amount of work. The financial upside is extremely hard to justify.

I'm actually a designer, have paid for many fonts - including licenses for websites - have made a couple myself and have a good idea how hard they are to make.

That said, a certain corporation's bought up a load of fonts made over the past x decades and is making a tidy sum selling old rope again and again without adding anything of value, or funding the original designers/converters, so I'm quite happy to illuminate how an individual can get around such things for use on their personal blog with an audience of ten, should they so wish.

ed - you're also not as likely to be able to get a whole usable font from a small foundry in the first place, without buying it.

>You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries.

You can't copyright the alphabet.

>and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.

I've never pirated a font. Not once have I boarded a ship in the middle of the ocean, gun in hand, taking the crew and cargo of typography hostage.

But more seriously, I acknowledge that it's a problem. It's just not my problem.

Oh thanks! I looked but I missed that.

So, I need to be super rich? Thats sad.

No, you need to be at least a medium-sized corporation basically.

Then because your contract with Google is large enough to matter, they'll add your custom corporate branded fonts to your font dropdowns.

Why did we go from owning the software we run and being able to just modify things as we see fit to "You have to give Google a lot of money so you can have your own font in your own presentation"?

Where did things go this wrong?

Remove the name from the font and I'm fairly certain that I'd get none of them, well maybe HP.

E.g. the Klarna Headline is pretty distinct, but I've never seen it before. The four other Klarna fonts are super generic. Also why do they need five different fonts?

Different people work differently I suppose. It's true that some of the fonts seem designed to be forgettable, such as Source, Product, Optimistic. But others are, like Netflix, Verizon, Korean Air, HP, and Colgate look heavily branded to me.

The access would presumably need to be done through a VPN to have the fonts.

I'm actually a designer, have paid for many fonts - including licenses for websites - have made a couple myself and have a good idea how hard they are to make.

ed - you're also not as likely to be able to get a whole usable font from a small foundry in the first place, without buying it.

I think modern fonts include hinting software and stuff like that.

If you produced a bunch of screenshots of the output at various sizes, and then asked an LLM to convert to ttf or whatever, I’m guessing that’d be OK. I’m not an expert in this stuff though.

No, you need to be at least a medium-sized corporation basically.

Then because your contract with Google is large enough to matter, they'll add your custom corporate branded fonts to your font dropdowns.

Basically the level where you've progressed from user to customer.

>You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries.

You can't copyright the alphabet.

>and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.

I've never pirated a font. Not once have I boarded a ship in the middle of the ocean, gun in hand, taking the crew and cargo of typography hostage.

But more seriously, I acknowledge that it's a problem. It's just not my problem.

>You can't copyright the alphabet.

You're not paying to use the alphabet, there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.

Legally, typeface designs do not receive protection (which is based on idiotic declarations like “you can’t copyright the alphabet”) but digital font files are considered programs and thus are able to be protected as IP.¹ You can try to justify the theft to yourself but somewhere there’s an individual (or on some occasions many individuals) who spent a long time making decisions about how that typeface should look and choosing the best points to turn it into splines to describe the shape and you decided that your laziness trumps their work.

⸻

1. I would note that bitmap fonts do not receive the same protection as Type 1 or OTF fonts.

Why did we go from owning the software we run and being able to just modify things as we see fit to "You have to give Google a lot of money so you can have your own font in your own presentation"?

Where did things go this wrong?

When we stopped paying for things. Seriously. If you pay for software, you can modify it. If you pay Google, they’ll modify it for you.

Yes, the EULA may prohibit modifications of local installations, but you’re not physically restricted from doing so - only contractually.

I'm going to go the unpopular route and ask, how mission-critical are fonts, really? Protected fonts such as these can't be mission-critical, legally, right?

Never felt myself lacking for fonts in Docs, myself. Quite the opposite, Google Fonts has way more than I'd ever have preinstalled and is now my primary avenue for typeface discovery.

If you want to drink your own wine in a restaurant, you have to pay for that, too.

This isn’t much different; there still are plenty of non-Google options for creating presentations to choose from that do allow using your own font.

You can still pay Microsoft money to get a desktop copy of Powerpoint, which will use your system fonts. Using google docs is entirely self-inflicted

Granted, you now need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee for Powerpoint instead of a one-time-fee. But that is in large part because too many people preferred Google Docs, so Microsoft tried to become more like them

>You can't copyright the alphabet.

You're not paying to use the alphabet, there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.

Basically the level where you've progressed from user to customer.

⸻

1. I would note that bitmap fonts do not receive the same protection as Type 1 or OTF fonts.

When we stopped paying for things. Seriously. If you pay for software, you can modify it. If you pay Google, they’ll modify it for you.

Yes, the EULA may prohibit modifications of local installations, but you’re not physically restricted from doing so - only contractually.

If you want to drink your own wine in a restaurant, you have to pay for that, too.

This isn’t much different; there still are plenty of non-Google options for creating presentations to choose from that do allow using your own font.

I'm going to go the unpopular route and ask, how mission-critical are fonts, really? Protected fonts such as these can't be mission-critical, legally, right?

Never felt myself lacking for fonts in Docs, myself. Quite the opposite, Google Fonts has way more than I'd ever have preinstalled and is now my primary avenue for typeface discovery.

Depends on what you do.

Are you building a slide deck on your systems architecture? Probably doesn't matter.

Are you building a marketing deck on your new corporate identity? Probably matters a lot.

Either way, the tool I'm using shouldn't be the one deciding what matters and what doesn't. Just let me use my font as I please!

You can still pay Microsoft money to get a desktop copy of Powerpoint, which will use your system fonts. Using google docs is entirely self-inflicted

You can still pay Microsoft a one-time-fee instead of a yearly one. You can even go to a physical store and get a physical box with Office (granted, it doesn't contain anything inside it anymore )

Depends on what you do.

Are you building a slide deck on your systems architecture? Probably doesn't matter.

Are you building a marketing deck on your new corporate identity? Probably matters a lot.

Either way, the tool I'm using shouldn't be the one deciding what matters and what doesn't. Just let me use my font as I please!

I could see some kafkaesque organization writing-up or firing someone for using the wrong font on a PowerPoint presentation.

Such companies should be mocked and shamed, not held up as examples to follow.

It doesn't matter on the corporate identity either.

I could see some kafkaesque organization writing-up or firing someone for using the wrong font on a PowerPoint presentation.

Such companies should be mocked and shamed, not held up as examples to follow.

It doesn't matter on the corporate identity either.

It may not matter to you, but in this circumstance, your opinion doesn’t matter.

It only matters to the designers. The users don't care which sans-serif font the designers picked, they all look the same.

Fine, I’ll take the bait. If this is true, then why isn’t everything in the world Arial/Helvetica?

It’s subtle, but attention to detail all around will add up to something that looks polished. I appreciate that as a user, at least

The designers are generally the ones doing and watching presentations on design. They are also the users of the office suite in this case.