Digested on September 30, 2003
Posted by David Earls

Just a short one this week. ATypI 2003 over in Vancouver looks like it was a resounding success, with plenty of interesting things announced. The most interesting, I think, has to be the new set of applications released by Adobe under its new CS branding (Numbers are dead, dude, its all CS, MX, X, XP et al from now on). CS? Creative Suite, of course!

First on the list for us typophiles is the new type editing tools within Illustrator. Now supporting OpenType, with many features brought across from Adobe's excellent work on InDesign, Illustrator is becoming increasingly powerful as a single-page layout application, rather than merely pushing beziers about. New in this release is the Adobe Dimensions-like 3D tools that contains most of the features of this venerable product. So much so infact, that Adobe has announced it will no longer update Dimensions.

Skipping over some naff features serious creatives probably wont be rushing out to play with (scribble filter, predesigned templates, etc), the other main points are the small library of 100 OpenType fonts, improved PDF support (PDF 1.5 is now supported, for example, as is layered PDF), improved print output capabilities and yet closer integration with other CS applications. Anyone get the feeling that Apple's OpenDoc technology was ahead of its time?

Photoshop also gets updated with a Match Color command that helps to match the color scheme of one image to another, a Histogram pallete that updates dynamically as you work on a document (how cool is that?), further support for 16bit per channel images, raw digital camera support, a specialist shadow/highlight correction tool and something called Layer Comps that allows for easy reversioning. That last one intruiges me, as I am constantly doing DVD menu designs across multiple languages here in Europe.

InDesign and GoLive also get a clutch of additional features, but I'm off on holiday in a few hours, and I need to pack, you know? Typographic photos abound on my return, but till then, see you in a week or so!

Who bought my book in the auction, by the way?


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Digested on September 19, 2003
Posted by David Earls

The current edition MacUser here in the UK has run an editorial piece on FAST and Agfa Monotype's new font anti-piracy campaign. Calling the current system "near chaotic", Paul Nesbit draws an interesting comparison with Napster & Kazaa and Adobe & Quark. Both InDesign and Xpress have commands that automatically preflight designs, copying fonts across to new folders for burning to CD for sending to our friendly neighbourhood bureau, more often than not illegally according to a great number of font licenses. One does have to wonder if there is a vast difference between this and mp3 piracy via peer-to-peer. Both can be used completely legitamately, both can be used illegally and against the wishes of the IP owner's wishes, yet we do not see either Adobe or Quark challenged in the courts.

Trouble ahead on that one, I reckon. I dont have a problem with Agfa Monotype, but FAST, pretending as they do that they have some sort of psuedo-quango* status, are a bunch of arses. Personally, I liked the idea proposed by one of the contributors over at Typophile's forums - small foundries who distribute fonts in smaller numbers could conceivably embed a license code into the font itself that can be tracked to an individual. Technically, this is really not an issue - you can just pop the code in, for example, the copyright fields already provided for in TT or PS, or the various additional info fields provided for in OpenType format fonts.

I would take it one step further. At present, the situation is untenable - bureaus cannot be expected to purchase every single font on the planet, and to insist they do so is utterly nonsensical. However, for those foundries that have problems with distribution of fonts to bureaus for the purpose of outputting, there is a compromise available that protects the foundry but does not annoy those of us who buy our fonts legally. If we accept that a font can be tracked with a license number related to a person, then if the bureau can provide evidence of a job submitted by that client to them within a timeframe of, say, 6 months, then that should be deemed acceptable usage. Of course, the font should not be allowed to be used on other jobs.

On to other news, but sticking with Agfa Monotype - they have added fonts from the Australian Type Foundry, Patricia Lillie and Nerfect Worldwide to their library, hot on the heels of the releases from Fontsmith, Baseline Fonts, Bannigan Artworks, Chris Costello and Joe VanDerBos. More details can be found here, naturally.

Over in Vancouver, things are hotting up for ATypI 2003. Thomas Phinney from Adobe has revealed that he will be demoing the next version of Adobe Illustrator, complete with Unicode and OpenType advanced feature support. Now, if only it had support for multiple pages, I might even ponder switching from Macromedia Freehand MX. SoTA will also be exhibiting their TypeGallery2003 show at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design during the conference. And finally, the ATypI auction is gathering pace with its call for submissions from around the globe, with two news articles (here and here) on the ATypI website give a flavour for some of the submissions you can bid for this year so far.

Now for something frankly silly. Stephen Coles of Typographi.ca is off to Sweden, the lucky bugger. The country has had a lot to face over the last few weeks, with the horrendous murder of Anna Lindh and the rejection of the Euro currency. Now they have to cope with Stephen's arrival too. The chaps over at Typophile is aiming to boost the Swedish economy as a sort-of apology by selling stewf tees. No, really...

*: Not sure if the word Quango is in common usage outside of the UK, so just incase, its an acronym - Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation.

Edited: 22 September 2003. Apologies for the naughty word in the original version of this post, and thanks to Yves Peters for spotting this week's obligatory typos.


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Digested on September 1, 2003
Posted by David Earls

The main typography news this week is, of course, the startling revelation that I had a wisdom tooth extracted, and my mouth hurts.

Plenty of conference news this week. Firstly, ATypI has just uploaded to its website the full schedule for their Vancouver bash this year. I am devastated that I am going to miss Gerard Unger speak - I was lucky enough to sit in on a lecture of his at Reading Uni's MA course earlier in the year, and I promise you this, if that experience is typical, it will be worth your while attending both his segments on legibility and national characteristics in type design.

The rest of the line up includes segments from Gerry Liodinas, Kent Lew, Erik Spiekermann, Jean-François Porchez, Nick Shinn, Grant Hutchinson, John Hudson, Kieth Tam, John Berry, Yuri Tarmola, John Downer, Frank Blokland, Thomas Phinney, Roger Black, Akira Kobayashi and countless others. All kicked off with a keynote speech by Robert Bringhurst. Wow, just how insanely jealous am I of all of you with plane tickets to Canada!

JFP has asked me to remind all attendees that the 2003 ATypI Auction will be held on Friday, September 26th. It is a great way to help financially support ATypI, and a lot of fun for both those who have donated items, and those in the bidding for typographic treasures. You can take items along in person right up til just before the event, but you should ideally let them know in advance. More details can be found here if you would like to participate.

Staying with ATypI for just a bit longer, FontLab has announced that it will be demonstrating and officially announcing TransType Pro, its font format conversion software. The new version will include OpenType support, two-byte font compatibility. Interestingly, FontLab have identified that not everyone will need the additional functionality offered, so have decided to maintain two versions, version 2 and Pro. But wait, there's more! For us FontLab users, they will also be demonstrating FlashFonter, a Python plug-in that goes a large step towards automating Flash-centric bitmap fonts from your regular outlines. Neat.

Enough conferences. Quick and dirty font news time. Adrian Frutiger's Avenir has been made the official typeface of Amsterdam (see their sexy but overly-wide website here, but you'll need to learn Dutch first, of course). Here in the UK, Birmingham has, in a similar move, decided to license the entire Chank library for its use. Hmmm, that joke may not translate outside of the UK.

Agfa Monotype has joined forces with FAST (Federation Against Software Theft, an organization that has occasionally been accused of being heavy handed in its approach). I would give you more details on what this means, but the press release didn't really say!

Emigre has added two more fonts to its Cholla family, designed by Sibylle Hagmann. The new weights (Cholla Slab Ultra Bold and Cholla slab Ultra Bold Oblique) were commissioned by Entertainment Weekly magazine in the USA.

Distro news. Jonathan Barnbrook has signed up with MyFonts.com to distribute his Virus eclectic range of typefaces. In a similar move, Test Pilot Collective have decided to sign up with Veer, making their typefaces somewhat easier to get hold of.

Finally, regular visitors may have noticed a few slight changes to the site over the last few days. Along with slowly migrating to the Typographer.org domain, I've started the process of moving over some of the old Typographer.com articles to the new server - it seemed a waste for some of the better articles to languish. To reflect this, there have been some minor other amendments to navigation and content, but if you spot any glaring inconsistencies, do let me know.

Enjoy your week, and as they say in my country, hwyl fawr!


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