Last updated June 18, 2018
November 2019
Variable fonts may be coming to SWMCA soon.
The company has just purchased a new computer just for this.
The computer is a
Igel model UD3-M330C and is being shipped from Nürnberg, Germany. While we try to Buy American when we can, just about all the computers sold here are made in China these days, and have been for almost 2 decades. At least we're buying from an American ally nation. All of our other current equipment is obsolete, and is not capable of housing the editors needed to make variable fonts, thus
justifying this purchase.
With variable fonts only a single file is needed, and the designer determines font weight. It will not work on some of the older operating systems. Variable fonts were invented in 2016; but we were too busy trying to save our company at that time. That's part of the reason why they weren't offered by us earlier.
SWMCA plans to go the
variable font route to revive some of our problem fonts such as
Drag Queen Gothic
and Kaballah
first. It would be a shame to get rid of that second one for sure, as it was out first 100% union made download. These and about a third of the SWMCA Catalogs and American Font Smorgasbord products were originally going to be discontinued. Some or possibly all of our SWMCA Schoolhouse line may also be made
available as variable fonts. If this is successful, we may expand this option to all of our fonts. If it's not successful; the new computer is still not a waste of money, as it will be appointed to be used for other purposes. We hope to roll out our first variable fonts sometime in 2020, but no guarantees.
The Igel mini computer is the first time that this company has purchased major equipment that's less than 5 years old since acquiring our WebTV unit as brand new in late 1996 or early 1997. We were the first in the State of Kansas; where we were located at the time, to use WebTV for commercial purposes, and one of the first to get a unit. That makes this the very first brand new equipment purchase for us in almost a quarter of a century.
July 2019
New street signs for Sand Branch, Texas to be offered by our company free of charge.
A town established in 1878 that has a predominately ethnic population has been ignored by Dallas County for decades. Almost none of the roads are paved. Street lights had to be bought by the citizens, which are treated more like '111-th class'. Almost half the buildings IN 2019!, have no electricity. Dallas County wants to evidently eliminate this town which is now the only one that has not been incorporated within it's borders. They had a buy out plan where some residents too the county up on their offer. The cost of demolition was subtracted from the 'offering' of course, and all the families got less than one month's rent in a slum apartment for homes and land they once owned.
The biggest tactic of all was the denial of the most basic services like trash pick-up. Hate your water bill? These folks want one! There are no sewers and no water lines for like 137 plus YEARS! These folks relied on well water. The wells are now contaminated and has been non-potable for over 30 years!
We expect this project to take about 6 to 8 months to a year to complete.
Free signs may also be offered to tornado raved Linwood, Kansas and other small communities with few streets. While we will offer our Sandbranch font at first, others will eventually be used if this test trial is successful. Many of our fonts such as Paradise of the Sunbather,
could be used for street signage with just a few alterations.
Now how in tarnation does that have any relation to reorganizing the company?
Once this project is complete, people will actually have a place to go and physically see a SWMCA font in action. This is one of the best ways to aid in your decision regarding if they're right for your application. To actually see it personally. Why not take your picture in front of one of these new street signs {or all of them if you like}. While street signs are not cheap, they aren't nearly as expensive as the building of custom kiosks, renting space in dead malls or booths at fairs, being mortgaged to our eyeballs to buy land to install custom billboards or to put up single/limited use buildings, and it's definitely far cheaper that turning this back into a sign painting operation. We can just direct people to the town to observe the street signs at work. Oh yeah, once installed, they become a gift to the community, so the local citizenry will be responsible to maintain them, not our company. Since the MUTCD require American street signs to have reflectivity by Federal law now, that means the signs we provide will be better made and far superior than the ones they will replace in many cases...
-most will have a least a lifespan of a decade or more. They will also be usable in more extreme weather too, like those in hurricane conditions for instance, provided that the proper mounting is applied.
There is no specific date for delivery of these signs as of yet.
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June 2019
ALL 'SWMCA CATALOGS' OFFERINGS WILL BE EXAMINED AND THEN REDONE!
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March 2019
We welcome 2 new distributors to the SWMCA family,
Font Daily
and Fontown.
Font Daily:
Font Daily [usually written as one word in all lowercase by the firm] aims to be among the top resources for all of your free font needs. They really do have higher standards than most free font websites. While you may have to wait a bit, we plan to start offering free fonts there by mid-summer. SWMCA is also considering making it's offerings
available on Envato and fontfreebies.net.
Fontown:
When it comes to renting SWMCA fonts instead of buying and downloading them, you now have a fifth choice, Fontown. Fontown is an
Spanish start up which aims to revolutionize the font license market. While SWMCA owned EULAs have been in multiple languages for downloaded product, those for font leasing have only been in English. That is until now. Fontown provides their EULA in English and Spanish. For legal reasons we can post the EULAs of our leasing agents, but we can not translate them ourselves or have them translated. We have to use what's
available language-wise. Fontown is also the first new leasing agent approved by SWMCA since it's reorganization. The last time a leasing agent has been approved to lease out our fonts was in 2016.
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January 2019
Future of Etsy e-store determined.
We've kept the accounts involving our Etsy store even-though it has been closed for years. Sometime this year, it will reopen hopefully. While it will sell fonts, as before, it will only sell certain formats. That's right, it will ONLY sell our embroidery fonts. In otherwards, you now have in incentive to buy that programmable sewing machine, you've been putting off for years!
Embroidery fonts only work with sewing and textile machines, and should NOT be used for your Mac or PC! As for the e-store itself: It will be re-flagged from SWMCA Catalogs into an Ozarktown Promotions dealer. Currently Etsy, although officially closed is the very last of the official SWMCA Catalogs e-tailers.
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October 2018
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June 2018
One new option being explored. There is an option we're seriously considering. That's converting SWMCA into a worker owned co-operative. We have less than 25 employees and they should be involved in making major decisions involving this company. Making them owners will enforce this, but should have little or no bearing for those receiving government benefits.
Our websites:
On an temporary basis SWMCA Mobile will serve as our corporate website while our classic and express websites are rebuilt to ARIA standards and new features are added. One of these features is our type tester which is replacing our Drawing Board section. For years the company has been unfair to those willing to buy our fonts with money as opposed to those that freeload. It's not the company's fault either. It's because free font website often incorporate a program allowing you to "test drive" a font before buying it. We wanted our toll fonts to be affordable to lower income people, so our toll dealer-broker network consist largely of sites such as
revolve.com and
Etsy, which were never equipped to distribute fonts free or not. While we will try some higher-end markets such as
myfonts.com;
where you
can also
test the fonts, we really don't wanna ditch the low-income or middle class customer. With the new font tester coming, you can actually go to SWMCA's main or express website and compare any of our offerings. Sorry that this website (the mobile one) probably won't get that service anytime soon, we hope to eventually incorporate it in the app we're building and eventually here.
Re-establishing prior associations:
We have proudly maintained relations with Fractured Atlas
as well as the Freelancers Union of New York.
We have finally been able to renew our IAMPETH
membership too. IAMPETH stands for International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers, and Teachers of Handwriting. The AIGA
membership will hopefully be restarted by September. It's a good chance this will happen. AIGA stands for American Institute for Graphic Arts. The one association that looks pretty murky at this point is the IWW or the Industrial Workers of the World. We hope to re-establish it, but may end up with ourworkers being represented by a replacement union. A special dedicated financial account may have to be opened for this. It also should be noted that unlike many corporate entities, we champion labor unions. As a matter of fact, the company willing pays the union dues for it's workers at this time since we are small enough to. Compliance with the regulations of the IWW was also the main catalyst to the idea of converting SWMCA from being a pro-profit into a coop.
Free fonts:While many operations have dropped their free font lines over the years; including Larabie Fonts -the "king of free fonts" and originator of them, we're keeping our line. We will be reducing the number of characters drastically however. We know the free fonts positioned us as an international company when we were virtually unknown previously to a lot of the font world. Yet this is a important task, as it was hurting the company badly. We can't introduce new fonts if we're not around, and we felt reducing the total number of characters for free fonts and making them Latin alphabets only
was the best solution. This should also be considered a service to our free font customers. There will actually be quicker download times with our free fonts and will reduce the space required on the customer's hard drive. The toll version will have a complete character set. Our Schoolhouse line is a public service to educators and is exempt from this. All references from the old name SWMCA Catalogs will be removed. By the end of 2018 if all goes well.
Toll fonts and typefaces.
Our consumer guides:
Our formerly free guides will now have to be purchased. They will first be offered for sale at our under preforming e-stores. The toll customer isn't the only one were guilty of short changing. Many of our toll dealer-brokers have not had any newer offerings for quite, some in YEARS. By selling the guides here, it gives them something fresh to sell. They will be many that are upset that were now selling something that used to be offered for the taking... yet
there
still is a way you can get them for free, however;
We're working on creating an app. In fact that work
has already
started.
You will get the latest news from SWMCA. While we'll still use social media, the app will be updated to include stuff that WILL NOT be posted on Facebook or like sites. It will also be the only place where you can view all of our guides totally free!!!
We hope to put a type tester on our app too. Unlike the website version, we plan to sign up some of our competitors for that one. Then you can compare our offering with someone else's.
