Digested on August 22, 2003
Posted by David Earls

Last year, my phone lines were ripped out during the Notting Hill Carnival. This year, I'm pre-empting the nonsense and posting just before my little bit of west London gets turned into a monumentally noisy theme park. It may look fun on the telly, but trust me, its no fun for the locals. Just to show I am not a totally grumpy git, I have added in a few images from the Sunday carnival to this digest.



Software releases are big in the type world this week. FontLab has been updated to version 4.6 for both Mac and PC. New features include an improved GUI, including the option to use a simplified interface, drawing tools that have been made more like those one expects in Adobe Illustrator, improved import of Level 2 & 3 EPS files, improved font blending, better handling of Multiple Master to TrueType conversion, and some basic OpenType automatic feature generation. Although this is a free update, there is no direct download available – you need to fill out a form on their site and await a download link by email. I updated my copy earlier in the week and it took under 24 hours.



Sticking to font production software, the Dutch Type Library has released version 2 of DTL Fontmaster. Improvements include a new metrics editor, new batch functions, improved hinting parameters for PostScript Type 1 fonts and upgraded OpenType support. The package also now includes light versions of BezierMaster, IkarusMaster, DataMaster and ContourMaster.



Typographic websites across the globe have been introducing more money-making schemes to pay for ever increasing bandwidth requirements. Typographica has introduced Google-powered text adverts, while the guys over at Typophile are augmenting their membership scheme with a sponsorship scheme. Be prepared for the most handsome banner ads on the web. I was going to type something bitchy there, but I think I am getting old.

Just a brief one this week. To my fellow Brits, have a fantastic Bank Holiday, and to everyone, take care.

Updated during the Notting Hill Carnival, 24th August 2003.


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Digested on August 11, 2003
Posted by David Earls

Its good to be back, and just in time for an interesting bit of news to fellow Eric Gill admirers, this time taken from last Saturday’s Guardian newspaper here in the UK.

The recent discovery of a Gill archive, curated by his brother Evan Gill over his lifetime, includes drawings, watercolours and letters dating right back to Eric Gill’s childhood. The archive has been missing for over 30 years since Evan’s death before being rediscovered by Roger Smith.

The collection looks set to become the property of the museum at Ditchling, where Gill founded the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, an intentional community of artists and craft workers. That is, of course, providing they can find the £110,000 (c. US$177,000). One wonders how Eric himself would see this particular transaction in view of his Christian ideals.

How appropriate then for the sake of this segue, the arrival this weekend on my doormat of a specimen for Priori from Emigre, the latest family from British designer Jonathan Barnbrook. The design was inspired by the work of Eric Gill and Edward Johnson, combined with the lettering prevalent in his London stomping ground. It is billed as a logical progression from Mason (Manson), Barnbrook’s display face that is now a decade old. But unlike Mason, Priori comes in lowercase too, and is intended to be a move towards a more usable text face than that which many of us would associate with Barnbrook.

Given the time gap since the last digest (through lack of access to my web services), I dont think there is much point to me recapping over 7 weeks of news. So, here is a brief run down of what else of particular interest has been happening this week.

John Downer will be heading up what is hoped to be the fastest typeface creation project, live at ATypI in Vancouver this September. He will hand brush the typeface, which will then be scanned, digitised, spaced and kerned by Ken Barber, Christian Schwartz, and Tal Leming. 60 characters, all in 4 hours, starting at 12.30pm on Saturday 27th of September. Anyone want to donate the airfare to me?

Perhaps they could use ScanFont 4, the latest release fron FontLab to help them along their way? The first MacOS X incarnation, ScanFont works in conjunction with TypeTool or FontLab and can take a scan or digital photograph of lettering and convert it to a typeface in double-quick time, including neat features such as automatic baseline detection, automatic character detection and so on. I think I may have to download the demo and try it with FontLab 4.5. I will be sure to bore you with the details next week.

Adobe have rebuilt over 2,000 fonts in OpenType format and released the Adobe Font Folio OpenType Edition. A snip at US$8,999 with a 20 CPU license, or US$4,999 for a 10 CPU license. Owners (well, licensees) of Font Folio 8 and 9 can upgrade for US$2,499.

And before I disappear, just time to remind you that Indie Fonts 2, the sequel to, well, I’m sure you can guess the name of its precursor, was officially released this week. So go buy it, or borrow it from your local public-funded library.

Thanks for the many emails of support, and back again next week!


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Digested on August 5, 2003
Posted by David Earls

Please accept my most humblest of apologies. For about a month and a half, I lost control of my web services, and have only now come up with a way to rectify the problem.

Things are going to take a few days to sort out completely, including moving the entire website 5000 miles onto a different continent, so please be patient. Normal service is very nearly back – expect it to return within one week.


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