Collections concept

When I work or advise on foundry ecommerce systems, I recommend making the product structure a different but compatible concept from the idea of a type family.

Even if the site is “custom,” it is really (hopefully!) built on a relatively conventional ecommerce platform. Everything is really a “product” that we have imposed a hierarchy on, to make it match the idea of a type family and its styles.

A foundry probably wants to sell style-like products, and also sell family-like collections, made up of those styles.

By making these similar, but conceptually different, perhaps even if only from the developers’ perspective, it:

• Clarifies that products are different from fonts, since purchasing “a style” or “a family” will often still mean getting fonts in multiple formats
• Leaves the option open for collections that don’t conform to the type family’s structure, ex. selling a subset, or large collections that span multiple type families

Until next time,
Kenneth