The week of March 3rd was the launch of Glyphr Studio Beta 3, and it turned out to be a little more exciting than anticipated. The Beta 2 launch was much different – it was only communicated in a Typophile community forum in October 2012. Typophile is a great source for technical or professional font designers… and, because of that, Glyphr received a luke-warm welcome.
No bother. Feedback was taken, probably the largest of which was to focus on hobbyist font designers (if such people existed). In software design, and engineering in general, having a clear idea of your target audience is crucial.
So, fast forward to March 2014. Beta 3 was done, and I wanted to get feedback on the shiny new set of features. This time around, I decided to go a little bit more low-brow – I started a thread in Reddit’s Typography sub-Reddit. Considering the Beta 2 launch, I was expecting middling results – maybe a few people commenting and giving feedback.
But no! Here’s a rundown of that week:
- 23 comments on Reddit and 50 comments on Hacker News
- 250+ new Twitter followers
- 200+ unique visitors to the source code hosted on GitHub
- 80,000+ unique visitors to glyphrstudio.com
I spent a ton of time that week answering forum posts, emails, and tweets… the whole time completely flabbergasted by the volume of the response. There were still some comments along the lines of “This could never be a professional application” – but overall comments were quite positive, excited and surprised that something like Glyphr Studio existed.
So, with renewed energy I took all the feedback I received and plotted a course for Beta 4. The feeling of momentum is amazing, and it’s all because of the amazing interactions I’ve had with the not-so-little niche market I wasn’t even expecting to exist: the noble Font Design Hobbyist.
Stay tuned!