How to remake a database of typewriters with a 20-year history

In 2013, Paratype, the largest font developer in Russia, decided to change the design. The Red Keds agency following the company’s order came up with a complex one-page AJAX application, which programming three previous contractors could not cope with.

It was necessary to change the design without changing the internal infrastructure, which was the initial difficulty of writing the API: the company's database was formed back in the 90s, and it was difficult to combine it with the modern five-layer SPA interface.

The work began in September 2015. The functionality of the new design was implemented and backward compatibility with the existing database was configured. Paratype started working with the new infrastructure in 2016.

But due to the fact that the database was heterogeneous (some of the information was missing and some was duplicated several times), and it was very difficult to implement the design of RedKeds without changing the internal structure of the site, the product release did not meet industry standards.

Andrey Pesoshin

Co-founder of High-Tech Group, CEO. The project team leader

After attracting an external consultant, Paratype decided to rebuild the database structure and make the project more operational. The company was interested in having Hightech also deal with this task, since involving a new contractor could take several months, and Hightech already had expertise in working with fonts and understood the project specifics.

Font specifics

Paratype is not an ordinary online store that sells products. Fonts are typefaces, each of which has inscriptions, and within the styles there are formats. Each format is sold under one of 14 licenses. Only the headsets in the old Paratype database were about 5,000, and more than 250,000 items were sold. In addition to their own, fonts from other manufacturers are sold, and the rules for selling differ significantly. In this case, fonts are arranged differently, formats can be sold together and separately. Therefore, the database and applications must support all possible combinations.

Another complication is the correct display of fonts on the web. The font catalog works with endless scrolling. On the one hand, it was necessary to ensure a smooth loading of the page, on the other - to display web fonts correctly. In order to avoid suspensions, caching and rendering fonts are implemented in the directory.

Old database

There was no clear understanding of how the new database should look like, both for developers, because of the abundance of specialized requirements, and for Paratype itself, because of conservatism and the power of habit. Many employees of the company worked with an old database that looked like Excel spreadsheets and was maintained since 1995.

Therefore, in the process, besides the specifics of the fonts and the complexity of development, we also had to deal with some internal resistance of the customer’s employees.

What is more, there were a lot of problems with the old infrastructure. It was based on solutions that were completely different in spirit, and at the same time for two decades there was no transfer of knowledge and documentation - only one developer could understand the system.

The work on the new database began in September 2016. For six months, developers, representatives of the company and an external consultant have thought through its structure.

To deal with all the business processes of the company, a series of interviews with programmers, sales managers, consultants took place. Paratype's accountant spoke about the extract of documents, the project manager - about the calculations of royalties.

We saw a fundamentally new interpretation - a stepwise process consisting of selling on the site, calculating royalties between the site and the publisher, allocating second-order royalties from the publisher to smaller producers and font authors, and so on and so forth. We understood what part of this needs to be automated on the system side.

Andrey Pesoshin

Co-founder of High-Tech Group, CEO. The project team leader

Initially in Paratype they were sure that the company sells single styles in one of the formats and advantageous packages at a wholesale price. It turned out that sometimes the minimum option for the buyer is the typeface in two formats or three typefaces in two formats at the same time.

So the idea to introduce the concepts of a font product and its edition was born. A font product is a set of one or several outlines, or whole sets. The editors present valid combinations of selling formats under different licenses. On practice the new model describes 100% of the available sales combinations. And then confirmation of the idea was found in materials from world suppliers - they turned out to also use similar terminology in their business processes.

Andrey Pesoshin

Co-founder of the High-Tech Group, CEO. The project team leader

Font subsystem

Hightech, together with representatives of Paratype, unified and automated the company's business processes - fonts structure, licensing and fonts sales. The design of a model for royalties mutual settlements with font licensors was implemented.

If earlier for each of the 12 third-party font manufacturers the functionality was duplicated both at the database and backend levels, now everything works out of the box: for new manufacturers there is no need to create their own subsystem - just add entries to a couple of database tables. A knowledge transfer scheme is organized as well.

Font subsystem in the new database - 8 tables describe everything you need

Modular contract

The company sold fonts under 14 licenses, of which only two were available on the site. On the old site, each individual font formed its own package of documents, managers complained that any order consisting of more than one position required a large number of documents for each position that had to be sent by mail to a client.

We have adjusted the approach to business processes and licensing policy. Hightech on the instructions of the customer restructured the order - a single license agreement was formed, the modules of which change depending on what the person has bought. All fields are filled in automatically. The client receives not just a template, but a specific document for exactly what he bought.

Andrey Pesoshin

Co-founder of High-Tech Group, CEO. The project team leader

Thanks to this, Paratype was able to switch to the sale of font products, which may consist of a single style, a typeface or a whole font family. A new concept was found - downloading free fonts in the order, which was impossible on the old site

New interface and database

Unlike regular online stores, in the sale and purchase of fonts, in addition to the seller and the buyer, there are three more persons involved - the licensor, the licensee and the user. The latter is the agent of the buyer and the licensee. Hightech programmed the choice of the seller and the licensor of the store, depending on the parameters of the buyer and order.

In the context of the entry into force of the new edition of 54-FZ on the online ticket offices on the old Paratype website, online payment for individuals was disabled. Hightech refined the API and implemented Paymaster from WebMoney, which allowed it to resume sales on the new site.

Hightech has programmed a new interface and remade a personal account. An administrative panel was written, it is a separate site with advanced features.

Backward compatibility was implemented: all data on sales, fonts and customers for almost 20-year history of the company from the old database are transferred to the new one.

The developers of HighTech switched to Time & Materials - pay-as-you-go - and agreed that the customer would not track the resolution of minor tasks. The product owner from Paratype Artem Drabkin took the responsibility for working with Hightech.

I had a very trusting relationship with Hightech. In my opinion, they were lined up optimally in terms of knowledge and experience. Maybe someone else would have done the job better, I don’t know. But those people who gathered on this project demonstrated the maximum of their abilities.

Artem Drabkin

Business Development Manager in ParaType

Work on the project required a deep immersion in the world of fonts.

The guys got into our complex business with specific licenses, formats and nuances and sorted out all the processes as a ball of thread. Hightech has a very strong business analyst - Anastasia Gridina. Without her, we would not do anything. And Andrey Pesoshin - after working with us, he is among the first hundred people who understand fonts in Russia better than anyone.

Artem Drabkin

Business Development Manager in ParaType

In the process of development, Hightech has studied all the business processes of the company and, together with the customer, has come to a new concept - selling font products. It laid the IT foundation on which all sales and marketing are built.

Hightech has changed the structure of the database, automated font subsystems, the formation of the contract and licensing relationships.

Modern fonts.ru, frontend was developed, paratype.com was launched. Work continues on the development of two sites and the transfer of data from the old database. To complete the transition to the new infrastructure paratype.com is being prepared to close.