Comment by EvanAnderson

I've made a couple of fonts. Very bad ones. I know firsthand they absolutely take creativity and tradecraft.

A well made font, from an artistic perspective, is a thing of beauty-- particularly when it incorporates subtle visual themes and nuances. It's definitely more than just "drawing the alphabet". There are also metric ass-tons of glyphs necessary to make a usable font.

Likewise, a properly hinted digital font file, especially with little touches like ligatures, is also a thing of utilitarian beauty. It's a ton of work to get that right.

That the shapes of fonts can't be protected by copyright isn't a new idea. Anybody who makes a font today should know that going in. I wouldn't make a font with the expectation of getting paid outside of doing it for a specific commission. Doing it "for the love" and expecting to get paid seems like a losing business proposition.