Where do fonts come from? This one business, mostly

https://thehustle.co/where-do-fonts-come-from/ 

Ten years ago, Cindy Thomason was walking down the stairs at home when she heard her phone ring. 

On the other end was an executive from Warner Bros. Entertainment, calling to let her know that a font she designed would be featured in the upcoming blockbuster adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

“I had to sit down,” Thomason says. “I’m just somebody who decided to design a font on a whim.”

A nurse in suburban Virginia, Thomason began tinkering with fonts in her free time using a software package she bought for $100. She’d listed the font, which she named Grandhappy, on an online marketplace called MyFonts. 

That’s where producers from Warner Bros. found it, and bought it to use as Jay Gatsby’s handwriting in the 2013 film.

It should have been a dream come true, a big break for a hobbyist font designer. But Thomason’s cut for her design’s feature-film cameo was a whopping $12 — not even enough to recoup what she paid for her design software.