Digested on October 30, 2002Posted by David Earls
Well, it has been a busy week or so in the type world. Perhaps the most interesting snippet was the unfortunate news of the typeface Frothy being disqualified and stripped of its bukva:raz! honourary certificate. Julien Janiszewski’s typeface was deemed to be derivative of Sumner Stone’s earlier ITC Stone Sans design.
The chaps at Microsoft have been busy with the release of the Microsoft Font Validator, a little piece of software for Windows XP and 2000 that checks TrueType and OpenType typefaces for conformity to the format specs. Handy for PC-based typeface designers, I would imagine. On the subject of Microsoft, remember the removal of their web core fonts from the MSTypo website? It appears some in the Linux community have taken to guerilla action and are following the original distribution license to the letter. You can still download them, just not, ironically enough, from Microsoft. An article on typography under Linux over at The Register let it slip, and the typefaces are being distributed here. Interesting.
FontLab officially released FontLab 4.5 for the PC, with the promise of the Mac version to follow in a few weeks time. FontLab seem to have a good development cycle so one hopes that it will be a MacOS X native version – after all, we're not going to get a native version of Fontographer from Macromedia, are we?
Sticking with MacOS X, the media has been carefully telling us all how to manage our typefaces under Apple’s new OS. MacUser magazine here in the UK has run a comprehensive and well-written article on it, which I heartily recommend you rush out and buy. CreativePro.com has run a similar guide that is far less comprehensive, but rather more accessible to the rest of the world.
What else, very briefly? Well, that dashing Parisian Jean-François Porchez has updated his website with a blog. Handy little things blogs, they’ll never take off though. A Welsh designer and word hack got his tonsils whipped out moments after arriving back in the UK from Amsterdam (thats me... pity poor me). Dot Dot Dot issue 5 got released, but not, it appears, through Emigre. And finally, a word from Bruce, slightly-camp CEO of Adobe who in a press release to investors this week said, “I'm excited about aligning our core strengths with emerging market trends.”. Either he’s lying or he needs to get out more.
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Digested on October 26, 2002Posted by David Earls
One of the nice bits about living here in the UK is the NHS; we dont have to worry about paying for operations, or worry about insurance coverage, or any of that stuff like you have to in third world countries like Zambia, Kenya or the USA. The downside is that timings can be, well, a little hokey. Hence, I have just been released from St Marys Hospital here in London after surgery, so my deepest apologies for not providing the first digest as promised. Unlike Chank, I shall not be attempting to cash in on my pain, but I do hope you'll be forgiving if I give myself a few days to recuperate with the aid of numerous pharmaceuticals, some of which I have lovingly photographed for you below.
Now, how about a little typographic easter egg? Are you running MacOS X 10.2? Jolly good, then you'll know of the excellent automatic ligature generation that is part of Quartz. Go open TextEdit, select the Zapfino typeface, pick a nice big funky size (may I recommend my personal favourite, 72pt). Slap in its name, and hey presto, a 7 character ligature.
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Digested on October 14, 2002Posted by David Earls
Where to start? Typographer.com has once again changed direction - first a mag, then a news & commentary feed, and now an almost-weekly digest of the industry.
Why? Ohhh, things change, you know. At the time of the last change there was really only the great work by Si Daniels over at Microsoft Typography providing news on the industry, and whereas his coverage is comprehensive and timely, the constraints of being part of a megacorp sometimes meant that he may have had to bite his tongue. I, on the other hand, am a mouthy self-opinionated idiot with no sense and some time to spare.
Several hundred news posts later, Typographica arrived on the scene with the help of Stephen Coles, Joshua Lurie-Terrell and the gang. Such a good idea - we're in a little community so why not have a news and opinion blog created by members of it. Many hands make light work, and although I believe Typographi.ca has problems, it certainly provides a more thorough research base for news items and more diverse commentary than I or Si can reasonably be expected to provide.
As the months progressed, combined with a stack of bad juju (as my good friend Scut would say) happening in my private world, I decided it was time to take a step back and pause for thought. Typographer.com closed its doors, but didn't lock them.
This, dear reader, is the result. A digest of the typography industry, complete with commentary, which I shall endeavour to publish once a week. Or three times a month, or, well, you get the idea. I will attempt to provide an interesting read (and, I hope for my own sanity, an interesting write), lots of news, reviews, commentary, maybe some things other people didn't spot, and general freeform nonsense.
First proper posting comes in a few days, so untill then, thanks for reading, and its nice to be back.
You could consider this to be a beta release. If you spot any problems with navigating, rendering and so on, do please drop me an email and tell me. The site is meant to look like this, so if what you see is radically different, get in touch.
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The masthead is currently set in Sabon Next, by Jean François Porchez.
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