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Layers of Complexity
Digital Juice Fonts Update and the "Always Fresh" Guarantee Explained
by David Hebel
Many customers have been emailing me asking when more Juice Drops will be coming out. More volumes are on the way, but for the past six months our Juice Drops team has been locked away working on what we feel will be "the next big thing" at Juice—Digital Juice Fonts.
Right from the concept stage, we knew we would make these fonts layered, at the very least for our internal purposes. The fonts themselves are designed in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator and by preserving the layers, we have had the flexibility to go back and fix anything if needed. Obviously, it is much easier this way than if everything was merged together. But recently our Research and Development team in our Creative Genius Software labs floated the idea that we might be able to support layered fonts in much the same way as we support layered music (i.e. StackTraxx).
All the technologies we need to achieve this, including blending modes, have been developed over the past few years for other projects we have been working on, but it looks like DJ Fonts will be the first product to benefit from all the R&D.
Though we originally intended DJ Fonts to be shipping by June, we decided to send the fonts back for one more round of development to make them more flexible and customizable. By adding the layers to each letter in the font, it will now be a breeze to change the color of only certain layers, add effects, or even remove layers altogether.
At left are a few pictures to give you an idea of how layers will make our new fonts even more powerful.
EDITOR’S TOOLKIT PRO AND THE ALWAYS FRESH GUARANTEE
If you have checked out our Editor's Toolkit PRO line recently you may have noticed our new "Always Fresh" logo stamped on the home page.
Editor's Toolkit PRO is one of our most important product lines. It is the product for which we constantly try out new concepts and styles, while we push the creative envelope. To keep it even more relevant and special we decided to start limiting the number of volumes we produce to 2500 units or less! Does this mean you'll never be able to get a set once a volume is retired? No. Eventually we plan to release individual pieces and sets for download, and those retired animations are likely to show up first. But if you are interested in the best "deal", you should pick up one of the 2500 physical units, as the overall price per set will be much lower in these.
We expect some volumes will sell out more quickly, but it looks like, on average, each new volume will be around for approximately six months. For now, we are only trying the "Always Fresh" concept with the Editor's Toolkit PRO line, but we may expand the idea to cover a few other products in the future. In addition to keeping our animation offerings fresh and up-to-date, this new strategy will also allow us to keep our prices as low as possible by maintaining tight control on our physical inventory.
David Hebel Founder/CEO, Digial Juice, Inc.
