Applies to every Chronotype studio — Newspaper Press, Label Studio, Pack Prop Studio, Poster & Bill Studio and Pharmacy Prop Studio — and to any studio added later. It replaces version 1.0, which licensed each studio separately.
Free for work nobody is paid for. When a prop goes into something sold, broadcast or commissioned, licence the title — the band follows the production's budget, and one licence covers every studio. You get a signed certificate of originality for the production file. Sell the props you print; they are yours. Don't sell or give away the software. There is no copy protection anywhere in this product: the terms below are the whole enforcement mechanism, and we are relying on you.
Chronotype (“the software”) is a workshop of prop-graphics studios made and licensed by Panagiotis Zachoulitis, set graphic designer, Athens (“we”, “us”). Each studio runs entirely in your browser. It is free to use for work that is not sold, broadcast or commissioned — no account, no trial period, nothing withheld.
A production licence grants a perpetual, non-exclusive right to use the software on commercial work for a named title, together with a signed certificate of originality, an offline copy stamped in the production's name, and any versions released during your update window. You are not buying ownership of the software or its source.
The licence does not expire, is not revoked if you stop paying anything, and does not depend on our continued existence. The software contains no activation, no licence check, no telemetry and no network requirement. If we disappear tomorrow, your copy keeps working.
Anyone may use the software, on any machine, for work where nobody on the production is paid: coursework, student films, unpaid or free-entry theatre, personal projects, portfolio pieces and teaching. Festival entry and awards submission are included.
Nothing is withheld from the free tier. No watermark, no locked studio, no export limit. It is the same app.
If a piece of free work is later picked up commercially, tell us and we will settle the band then. Nobody is chasing a student film that found a distributor.
Paid work is banded against the total production budget, not the art department's. One licence covers every studio for that title.
A per-title licence belongs to the production company for that title and covers everyone in the art or production department working on it. We do not count seats or machines.
The band is a declaration, not an audit. We will not ask for a top sheet and there is no inspection right in this licence. If a budget is genuinely borderline, write and we will call it the lower one. A licence bought in the wrong band in good faith is not a breach; tell us and we will invoice the difference.
When a company licence lapses, work already made and already licensed stays licensed. Only new titles need a current licence.
Every paid band includes a signed certificate — the Chronotype Certificate of Originality and Fictionality — naming the title, the company, the studios used and the date. It states that the artwork those studios generate is original and fictional, and that no registered trademark, masthead, product name, barcode authority or issuing body has been reproduced. It is issued within one working day and re-issued free if the title changes.
What the certificate is. A signed statement of origin from the author of the software, for your production file. It confirms what the generators do and do not produce, and it confirms your rights to use that output in the named title — worldwide, in all media, in perpetuity.
What the certificate is not. It is not an indemnity, an insurance policy, or legal advice, and it does not warrant anything about material you add. If you type a real brand name into a studio, paste in a real logo, upload a photograph you do not own, or trace a real mark, that is your material and outside anything we certify. Clearance for the finished prop remains the production's responsibility.
Output is yours. You may print, cut, fold, photograph, film, sell, hire out and archive the props you produce, with no further payment and no credit required. We claim no rights in your designs.
You may not sell, sub-license, rent or redistribute the software itself, host it as a service, or bundle it into another product. You may not remove or alter the licence marking printed in the footer of sheets produced by a personalised copy.
You may not use the software, or anything it produces, to imitate a real company, product, publication or authority — whether or not the mark is registered. The studios are built so that this is difficult; do not work around it.
What happens if paid work is not licensed. Nothing technical, and we will not pretend otherwise: there is no monitoring, no fingerprinting and nobody watching. What there is, is a hole in the production file. Printed matter in frame has to be cleared like anything else, and the certificate of originality is the document the file needs for it — naming the title, the studios used and the date, and stating that no real trademark, masthead, product name, barcode authority or issuing body has been reproduced. Without a licence there is no certificate, so there is nothing to hand the production lawyer, nothing to put in front of the errors and omissions underwriter, and nothing to answer a distributor's clearance review with. That gap is usually found at delivery, which is the most expensive moment to find one. It is also easy to close: the band is a declaration, we take it on trust, and a certificate is issued within a working day.
Sheets carry a licence line in the print furniture beside the ruler, outside the trim — a free copy says so, a licensed copy names the production. It is on the sheet, not on the prop, so it does not survive the scissors; it is a record for whoever is holding the file, not a watermark. Removing or altering it on a personalised copy is a breach of this licence.
Some studios embed typefaces so that a sheet prints exactly as it appeared on screen, with no substitution. Almost every embedded family is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 or the Apache License 2.0. Both permit embedding, redistribution and commercial use, and neither requires attribution in your printed output.
Three are different, and they are the ones that letter the road signs. Transport (Medium, Heavy and the Greek cut) and Motorway (Permanent and Temporary) are © Crown copyright and contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0; the pre-Worboys Ministry alphabet is drawn from Crown Copyright drawings in which copyright has since expired. That licence permits copying, adaptation and commercial use — including in what you print — but unlike the font licences above it does ask for attribution. The acknowledgement is in this software and travels with it; you need add nothing to a prop. If you publish something that reproduces the alphabets themselves rather than a sign set in them, credit them as “Transport and Motorway © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0”.
Two consequences worth knowing. First, the props you print carry no font obligation — set anything you like, sell it, broadcast it. Second, if you pass a copy of the software itself to someone (which this licence does not permit in any case), the font licence text must travel with it; it is distributed alongside the app.
Typefaces that stand in for a well-known design are original independent drawings, not copies. Three are metric-compatible substitutes, which is a matter of matching widths, not of copying outlines.
The pictogram library — the drawings inside the signs, as opposed to the plates, borders and lettering, which are the studio’s own — is cut from vector artwork licensed from Freepik. Artwork designed by Olga_spb / Freepik. Two things are deliberately not in that library: a route shield of the United States Interstate pattern, which is a registered trademark, and the supplier’s own watermark; both are excluded by name and the exclusion is checked every time the library is built.
The trade marks the software draws are parametric drawings of families of device — a cypher, a strap, a wreath, a gear, a cut letterform — and every one of them is generated from a seed rather than copied from anything. No engine reproduces a registered trade mark, a granted coat of arms, a royal warrant, a red cross on white, a fiscal or postal device or a standards mark, and none can be made to: the heraldic engines draw invented arms and the ring engines draw invented rings. A mark you generate is yours to use under the terms above, and the same caution applies to it as to everything else here — it is a prop, not a mark you own, and it has not been searched against any register.
One set of letterforms in the software is not a typeface at all. The FHWA Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs — the lettering on every American road sign — are the work of a United States federal agency, and the studio draws them from published outline data under the MIT licence. So the American signs it makes are lettered in the standard’s own shapes rather than in an approximation of them, and that carries no obligation into your printed output either.
This is the clause that matters most, and it is not boilerplate.
The software produces fictional props for dramatic production. Every product name, manufacturer, active substance, batch number, marketing authorisation number and prescription number it generates is invented.
You may not use the software, or anything it produces, on or in connection with an actual medicinal product — not as labelling, not as packaging, not as a package leaflet, not as a dispensing label applied to a real dispensed medicine, and not as any part of a real supply chain. Regulatory text generated by the app is a theatrical approximation of period practice and is not compliant labelling for any jurisdiction, in any era.
The same applies to food, drink, tobacco and alcohol labelling, to newspapers and mastheads passed off as real publications, and to identity documents, certificates and official paperwork. These tools make props. Using them on real goods or real documents is outside this licence and, in most places, outside the law.
Counterfeit medicine kills people. If you are looking for a tool to make packaging for a real drug, this is not it, and we will not help you find one.
Free use gets the current online version. A per-title licence includes twelve months of updates from purchase; after that your copy continues to work indefinitely at the last version you received. A company licence includes updates for as long as it is current.
Small-production licences get email support. Production licences get priority support while you are shooting. Company licences get a named contact and a same-day answer.
The free version is the complete app, so you can evaluate everything before paying. If a licensed copy fails to do what the site says it does, write within 30 days and we will refund it.
A per-title licence follows its title. If the production changes hands, tell us the new holder's name and the certificate and personalised copy are reissued at no charge. A licence may not be moved to a different title, and a company licence may not be split across companies.
The software is provided as is. We do not warrant that a generated dieline will assemble correctly at your chosen board thickness, that generated text is accurate for any real jurisdiction or period, that a colour will match on your printer's stock, or that output will suit any particular production. Check a printed proof before committing to a print run.
To the extent permitted by law, our liability is limited to the amount you paid for the licence. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Governed by the law of Greece, courts of Athens. Nothing here removes rights you have as a consumer under mandatory local law.
Invoices are issued from Greece. EU companies with a valid VAT number are reverse-charged; everyone else pays VAT at checkout. Purchase orders are fine.
Buying, quotes, invoices and purchase orders: sales@chronotype.design. Anything about a licence you already hold — a lost download, a transfer, a question about what clause 04 covers: support@chronotype.design