I'm dead broke right now -- otherwise I'd help fund your project, but the whole "only gets funded at all if at least $7500 is donated" aspect worries me as well. What happens if the fund doesn't reach $7500? Do you just not release the font? If I get a bit of spending money, I'd love to help, but only if I know that it will actually help...

To answer the previous question (from mjkerpan), Kickstarter accepts pledges through Amazon payments, but the money isn't actually collected until the goal is reached in a set period of time. If the targeted donation amount is not reached by the pre-determined deadline, the project is terminated and no one pays.

Kickstarter helps collect donations to fund creative projects: http://www.kickstarter.com/.

~ Keith.

I don't like this wording at all, because free fonts are truly free. They are fueled by altruism. League Gothic, Diavlo, Bello... In this very forum - Novocento, Terminal, Quicksand etc.
The sum you're asking is huge even for commercial bestsellers, therefore all this automatically smells of hypocrisy.

Exo and Neo look awfully similar.

Hi frode frank, I disagree with you.
Exo is a totally original design
Please evaluate for yourself:

The font might have a similar feeling, it is futuristic, sans serif with a technological look but a lot of other fonts have this feeling too, Akko, Dax, Dobra, and others. Actually it would be too bad if we only had one font family for each "feeling".

Cheers

I think every genre, however narrow, has room for more than one design. Comparing the two I still think it's uncomfortably similar. I don't know exactly how Exo came to be, but looking at these samples it's painfully obvious that someone else has done what you are trying to much better already. So, the question is: What is your design adding, beside being free?

@Frank
Exo started from scratch at my typography classes at university, at that time I didn't even knew about Neo Sans. So its a totally unique design, I can show you early stages of the design.

I must agree that Neo Sans might look better, it was made by and excellent designer, but it is different from Exo. I think there is plenty of room for new fonts, you need constantly new designs, so i think there is a lot of room for Exo. And about your criterion of "uncomfortably similar" what do you think of theses typefaces Univers, Frutiger, Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk, Din, Arial, and sooo on.

I must agree that Neo Sans might look better ...

Compare the internal counterspaces. Neo Sans is better balanced.

... what do you think of theses typefaces Univers, Frutiger, Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk, Din, Arial, and sooo on.

I think Frutiger is a humanist, and far from all the others mentioned.

Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica and Arial have more in common, but where Helvetica is cold and calculated AG is quirky and lively and spaced entirely different. Arial is closer related to Monotype Grotesque than any of these, but it has been shoe-horned into Helvetica's metrics for marketing reasons.

DIN is pure geometry plus straight sides.

Then why comment on something so unworthy of your time?

Neo Sans is a commercial font family that retails for nearly $600 USD. Exo Sans (if it ever comes to fruition) will be free. Comparing a free font (boring as it may be) to a commercial font is a stretch.

@natenine
Free fonts are boring because they are used to death (for the same effect) by lazy designers, something that also happens with very trendy commercial fonts. This is my subjective opinion.

As for my comparison of the fonts you listed, I have no idea what you mean. What criterion did I compare Exo/Neo by that I didn't apply to the others?

@KCH
I comment because I want people to make better fonts, not worse.

@Frank
I agree with you, that is why we constantly need new designs.

As far as I understood, you said Exo/Neo were too similar, but for helvetica, univers, akzidenz, and even others, that didn't seem a problem to you, when they are much closer to each other than Exo to Neo.

No, I don't think Univers is particulary close to Helvetica, other than both being (relatively) monoline (neo) grotesques. Neither of them reference each other but an older established genre and they both answer the ideals of modernism, with very different results. The controversy over Arial, on the other hand, is a well versed theme.

I mean, all Asians look the same don't they?

Frode I accept what you said about Univers and Helvetica, I'm just saying that you should use the same reasoning to evaluate Exo and Neo. They might answer the same "futuristic-technological" concept but in different ways...
The only consistent critic that I received so far has to do with the lowercase "g" which I will change before the release of the font. For the rest the font as an overall different look, the glyphs are different as well. How can the fonts look the same?

Pablo: To compete, you need to offer something else (and hopefully something better) than your competitor.

That is pure trolling, I'd say.

I'm appearing to you all now. Did you think I died? I'm not a ghost. I'm live. I kept logged out and kept reading many of your comments and I laughed at you all. When I read, I thought myself: "Yes, I was very right, the typodesigners are arrogant, hypocrite, smugs, douchebagg and Mac users, and think they are the best and they love accusing the other of copying the fonts of other. They think they are the ones that never copied of anyone. Then I hate the typodesigners and ready."

I come to troll and humiliate some of you, principally and specially Frode.

Dear Frod and typodesigners,

Why did you complain too much the other copied the fonts of other? Did you never copied the fonts of other, udring every your life?
Why did you complement too much the fonts Frutiger, Helvetica and Akzidenz Grotesk if they were copied from Arial?
Why did you complement too much the fonts Akko and Univers if they were copied from Neo Sans?

Congratulations for your hypocrisy!

You all aren't anything saint! You all have every copied something from somebody! There's no use to lie to us.
Do you know why did you say that?

Because you are arrogant, smug and douchebagg.

Some of you are against the free and libre fonts, anti-GPL and anti-open source. One guy that I insulted, is against every free and open source font, the which you defended and you called me a troller. He seemed to be a Mac user and wants every poor to buy the expensive fonts. It made I being alert. I'm not blind or silly. I know who you are really.

I'm sure you all are in favour of SOPA, PIPA and ACTA.

Sigh.

Anybody who hasn't seen the great effect of including intentional
mistakes when copywriting* in order to avoid an editor making
regrettable changes to the text (because they have to prove their
worth too) really needs to learn the skill of typodesign.

* Please note the "w" and absence of "gh".

hhp

Touchè.

hhp

Oh, foo... Is that whinging fluffbunny out of its bolthole and back to giving us FOSSphiles a bad name?

Nothing is totally void of truth.

But the signal-to-noise ratio has to be
high enough to engage meaningful debate.

hhp

To be honest I think the comparison with Neo Sans is fair but that doesn't make Exo Sans irrelevant. I think there is plenty of room for a typeface like this. However, if you're going to be cocky about its release and funding I would really make sure there are no imperfections. For example, the 'm' is the width of 2 n's which is too wide and the W/w look stylistically out of place (a 'W' as in Neo Sans would fit the style of your typeface better).

But why would you want to offer this typeface for free anyway? I think the style is so specific that the general designer won't have any use for this. I would leave it up to demand and ask a price for it. Anyway, I see the funding target has been accomplished so my point is contextually superseded.

There's a difference between hater and picky.
Those who realize they can't spend the time
making a quality product for free should not
mischaracterize people just so they and their
ilk feel better.

hhp

The website is now running again. It was overloaded.
Feel free to download the font files here

Yes, I'm a troller.

@frod

I'm glad I'm not a typodesignwr, like y'all!

Of course you're a typodesigner. Your site tells you design the typefaces.

Don't try to mistake us.

I want to troll again, but preferbly Frod because of his fonts

When Frod accused falsily Natanel of copying the font Neo Sans, I would like to accuse Frod of copying 4 fonts to his very modified font Aften:
http://www.frodehelland.com/?page=aften

1) Droid Sans Mono: http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Droid+Sans+Mono
2) Liberation Mono: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Liberation-Mono
3) Inconsolata: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Inconsolata
4) Cousine: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/cousine

Frod copied each some letters from these fonts to his font Aften.
Frod thinks he's always right and the best, and he's the one who never copied.

Frod is a Macf** douchebaggy and stuck-up rich gentleman viking. It's why he's a hater. At his site, he put his screenshots of his jobs with the Mac OS X's tollbars and windows, only for showing off that he owns a Mac and is the best than the other. Yes, a stuck-up and snooty rich gentleman. And a Linux, GPL and freedom hater. Poor of Norway, a country of stuck-up rich gentlemen and ladies vikings, suffered a massacre of young people by an ultra-right Neo-Nazi terrorist.

I will never pay the fonts for a Macf** stuck-up rich gentleman like Frod. I prefer paying the fonts for Natanel and the humble typodesigners.