Digested on February 12, 2006
Posted by Yves Peters

Life has a way of making your best intentions go pear-shaped. After the last two-month hiatus, I promised myself there would never again be such an excessive interval between posts. But lo and behold, here we are, three months further, scrambling in an effort not to cross the three months mark and become a quarterly publication. And failing miserably by one day. Yup, that’s irony for you.

The reason for this extended holiday recess is simple — some of our personal lives have been pretty much drastically altered and this inevitably has had its repercussions. Things are slowly coming back to normal, but this time I promised myself... never to make any promises again. Let’s just wait and see what the future brings. Actually, the future will bring yet another surprise or two. More about that in a couple of weeks.

The Robothon 2006 Scripting Conference takes place at the end of the week — Thursday 16 and Friday 17 — at the Royal Academy in The Hague, Netherlands. The conference program will focus on RoboFab and Python, useful strategies for common problems in font production and workflows with RoboFab. This event is in conjunction with the 2006 Gerrit Noordzij Award which will take place right after the RoboThon. Robothon is fully booked, but you can still attend the Gerrit Noordzij Award. We'll report on the Award in a future instalment of the Digest.

The old year has turned into the new, and as usual this heralds the season of the obligatory Best of-lists. Linotype looks back at 2005’s top fonts and conveniently splits the list in two — Business Fonts and Casual Fonts. Veer’s hottest faces of 2005, as chosen by their customers features mainly scripts and display fonts by the usual suspects Alejandro Paul and Jason Walcott, with the odd faces by Gábor Kóthay, Rian Hughes, Nick Cooke, Christian Robertson et al.

As last year’s Our Favorite Fonts of 2004 on Typographica proved to be an overwhelming success, Stephen decided to bring it up a notch and do a two-parter this year — by the way it looks like this list could become the type equivalent of the Academy Awards. Our Favorite Fonts of 2005 - Part 1 provides a handy overview of the cream of the crop released in the first six months of last year. Again it proves that the most exciting stuff is released by small independent outfits.
Interestingly, instead of just boasting their inclusion in the list, this time around three foundries — Village, Emtype Foundry and Process Type Foundry — display astute business acumen by offering special promotions. I’m convinced this kind of cross-pollination to be beneficial for the type industry, improving the perception of type by the general public.

Somewhat less beneficial is the continuing saga of FutureBrand ripping off FF Dax for the design of their UPS Sans custom typeface. This has been a well-known secret amongst type aficionados, and personal research culminated in the — albeit unnamed — inclusion of this example in my TypeCon2005 and ATypI — Over the Edge presentations on piracy in corporate font design. Just recently FontShop International divulged in a press release “(...) that it had reached a settlement with an internationally recognized strategic brand development firm related to a dispute involving the design, creation and licensing of a typefont developed as part of that firm’s work for one of its clients”, bringing this case to a rather unexpected and dissatisfactory close.

There are a couple of interesting things to be learned from the press release. First, the “internationally recognized strategic brand development firm” indicates that the settlement is bound by confidentiality, which is confirmed in the latter half of the release. This is obviously ignoring the fact that it’s pretty much common knowledge which brand development firm the text is referring to. Duh.

The next part is frankly embarrassing: “The firm has denied and vigorously defended the allegation that the typeface infringed FSI’s copyrights or that the typeface was an otherwise unauthorized derivative version of FSI’s FF DAX and FF META typefonts.” Say what? Fair enough, FutureBrand have always acknowledged that UPS Sans was “inspired” by FF Dax. Still there’s a world of difference between “being inspired by” and reusing digital data, a practice commonly referred to as “ripping off”. All one has to do is extract the characters from a UPS PDF and overlay them on the corresponding FF Dax characters to see what really happened. My parents taught me that when you do something wrong, you apologise and try to make it right. You certainly don’t want to make it any worse by lying about it.

Lastly, the “firm has agreed to pay FSI $17,500.” Which I think barely covers legal costs, let alone compensates adequately for the thousands of licences involved.

So, to conclude, this again proves that type still is undervalued even within the design community. It’s shocking that a branding firm whose main activity is intellectual property resorts to unauthorised use of other’s intellectual property to make big corporate bucks. That’s really bad karma, and I fear that’ll be maggots in the next life cycle.

Before Bald Condensed, a quick word from David...

As Yves mentioned, personal circumstances can dramatically change from one day to the next, and how we react to the changing world can be unpredictable. My priorities over the last couple of months have been to look for a new job and try and keep some level of sanity, and now that both are being addressed, my attentions can start to return to the world of type again. Until then, here is a visual reminder of the importance of neatness, followed by Yves once again...

Bald Condensed
by Yves Peters

I heard something pretty weird a couple of days ago. It appears that when my name pops up in a discussion about type criticism, sometimes my credibility is questioned. In all honesty, it’s quite obvious my credentials are lacking — I have no academic background worth mentioning, I’m not a member of any prestigious association, my work hasn’t been featured in any design book, I don’t teach at any renowned university, I was never published in any trade publication nor did I win any awards. Even worse, I have yet to design and release my first typeface. I think it’s pretty safe to say my credibility is non-existent.

Then again, what is credibility? Is it some kind of diploma? One’s inclusion in an official list of “credible persons”? Do you have to collect a certain number of bonus points of some sort? My take is that it is determined by the people who are exposed to what you do. I trust our readers’ judgement to determine for themselves whether they want to lend me any credibility. And for those who doubt my credibility, be comforted by the realisation that this column is just an insignificant blip in a vast universe of digital chitterchatter.

On to the reviews, and I’d like to start with adding a little postscript to last episode.

Although you can tell from my last review that I’ve always been a FontFontFan, I must say I find the FontFont 37 release a bit disappointing. The new OpenType versions of the four classic FontFont designs FF Dax, FF DIN, FF Meta, and FF Scala are great news of course, but the new releases include a redundant kiddie script called FF Eddie (how many more of those do we need?) and FF Headz, a dingbat font which allows the user to compose — you guessed it — cartoon-like heads. I thought FF Type-Face was a neat little free add-on to FF Rian’s Dingbats, but to sell this as a package... Oh well, to each his own. The only design that grabbed me is FF Karo, a digital Fraktur face in three clever variants. Xavier Dupre’s new FF Megano looks fine but fails to excite me, and sports a couple of Triplex-like details that are quite off-putting to me — my take is that the only good thing about Triplex is the italic by John Downer.

As more and more new typefaces are released in the OpenType format, we’ve also seen a fair number of families getting re-released as feature-rich OpenType in the past couple of months. For example Peter Bilak’s Fedra Sans got augmented with Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, Mark Simonson’s completely overhauled Proxima Nova became serious competition for H&FJ’s Gotham, and the conversion to OpenType of the FontFont library proceeds in earnest.

More than just a re-release in the OpenType format is Bryant by Eric Olsen. Not only did he completely re-draw and expand the original series of typefaces, in addition to the new drawings he’s added Compressed, Condensed and a Pro version with italics. Just like the aforementioned Gotham and Proxima Nova, the family’s roots lie in the American vernacular of monumental lettering on buildings. It manages to stay clear of the corniness I usually associate with rounded typefaces. In addition, a couple of strategically chosen stylistic alternates (a, m, n, u, w and y) allow the user to shift the voice of the typefaces from American gothic to Bauhaus geometric sans, thus broadening their scope. After Klavika and Maple, which were included in Typographica’s Best of 2004 and 2005 - Part 1 respectively, this is yet another fine face from the Process Type Foundry.

Likewise, chester’s Apex New is a major improvement on Apex Sans, originally published in 2003, which he designed with Rick Valicenti. All weights of the type have been revised, and everything heavier than Book has been completely redrawn, plus a Heavy weight was added. Adhering too closely to the geometric principles governing the design of Apex Sans proved to give less desirable results in the heavier weights, with counters clogging up at smaller sizes and a rigid overall appearance. This was another example of a design system working against itself. Comparing both versions reveals the flaws in the original design and shows how those were rectified in this new incarnation.

The dedication shown by these two designers is inspiring, and fortunately they are not the only ones. Both prove to not be afraid to reassess their work and if necessary rework or even retire certain typefaces. For example Eric once explained in a Typophile thread that he discontinued Elderkin because “to me Elderkin and Process Grot[esque] come off as micro variations because they are so project specific (they were initially made for a Russian film festival and were never intended [to] be public). After some amount of reflection, I’m not comfortable adding my take on this period of work. Hoefler and Berlow did (do) a fine job with this stuff so why muddle it up?”. Other examples include Stefan Hattenbach and Josh Darden making unavailable all of their early work, with Stefan offering selected single weights of these early designs as free fonts. They could just as well not care and continue to make a few bucks with them. Instead, they refuse to offer work they deem below par and actually do something about it.

Speaking of dedication — I’d like to take a look at an unexpected and fun package that popped up on the Hoefler & Frere-Jones website. H&FJ Numbers is a collection of 15 fonts consisting of numbers from familiar (and some less familiar) sources. As Jonathan explains on the site, “for more than a century, typefounders considered numbers separately from the provision of other printing types. Nineteenth century type specimen books often displayed a separate section containing fonts of numbers alone, many of which contained unique features suited to specific kinds of settings. (...) The practice of creating specialized number fonts began to disappear at the beginning of the twentieth century, vanishing completely by the dawn of the digital age. But recognizing the usefulness of this practice, H&FJ has revived the tradition with its Numbers series of fonts.” Psy/Ops’ Crash Numbering being one of my all-time favourite free font families out there, I couldn’t help but be smitten by this new volume.

All the faces comprise the digits, punctuation, and monetary and mathematical symbols, plus a supporting cast of characters appropriate to their origins.

It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but as moderator of Typophile’s Type Identification Board I always get a little excited when typefaces that are requested over and over finally get digitised. The H&FJ Numbers series includes several of those, the first one being Deuce which is modelled after the numbers on playing cards. On top of the pre-existing numbers (with a 0 and 1 added) a set of narrow width digits allow for double digits. Also present are the card denominations and symbols.

Then there’s a couple of fonts which are intimately related to the world of finance. Valuta, which means “currency” in Hungarian (and Dutch), is based on a set of numbers used by Hungarian banknotes between 1947 and 1995 and comes in both outline and solid variants. Another often requested identification is the serial numbers that appear on the U.S. dollar bills, digitised here as Greenback. It is augmented by a range of additional currency symbols and an extended set of fractions.

These handy sets of fractions can also be found in several other fonts — Claimcheck (the numbers on claim stubs used by dry cleaners, parking garages, and checkrooms the world over), Depot (the indigenous lettering of the railroads in the prevalent style of the early Victorian age), Dividend (the perforated numbers made by an antique check-cutting machine), Indicia (the numbers on hand-held rotary rubber stamps), Premium (modeled after vintage gas pump gauges, whose spinning dials tallied both gallons and dollars down to fractional tenths) and Trafalgar (inspired by a style of lettering indigenous to the City of London).

Besides Trafalgar, four other fonts originated (literally) from the streets. The oriental-like Bayside is an adaptation of eccentric house numbers that are native to suburban America, and Delancey is based on the gilded decals made famous by the transom windows of American tenements. Half a world away, the Constructivist stencil numbers of Prospekt remain beautifully fossilised as the house numbers on the streets of modern Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Strasse, modeled after the glazed ceramic tiles commonly used for house numbers throughout Central Europe, sports a number of tasty extras like arrows and borders.

Also from the streets, but this time from public transport, Redbird is named for the eponymous red subway cars that ran on the New York City subway system from 1948 to 2003. And Revenue was inspired by the most pedestrian of artefacts, a receipt from a local delicatessen.

The brilliant part about this volume is that — even when taken out of context — those numbers are instantly recognisable and carry such a rich history. Applying them to a design means adding subtle layers of meaning, changing the context and manipulating how the graphic piece they are integrated in is perceived. Plus, let’s admit it, they are so beautiful, which makes singling out a personal favourite nigh impossible. Testament to that are the absolutely gorgeous samples as found on the H&FJ website pages. These had me wondering if the samples were truly designed to show off the typefaces, or if it was the other way around...

In an unguarded moment I caught myself wishing H&FJ had added full alphabets to the fonts, but quickly came to my senses and realised that this was the only proper way to do it. Like true historians they restored a number of beloved numbering styles to their former glory, slightly polishing them where needed but leaving their original sheen intact. I applaud their integrity and can only recommend this series of fonts very highly.

Before I sign off, I’d like to quickly point you all to another typeface often requested on the Typophile Type Identification Board that has finally made the transition to digital. Bookman Swash — not the wimpy blandified ITC version, but “the swashy original” — is boasted by Veer to be “the most comprehensive digital revival of the original ’70s delicacy”. Although I haven’t had the opportunity to test it, Jason Walcott’s Jukebox Bookman looks like it’s the real deal. It has all the vintage traits of the original Bookman — moderate x-height, higher contrast, obliques instead of italics — and the alternates are simply swashalicious. My only qualm is... why isn’t it feature-rich OpenType!? Oh, how quickly and easily we take things for granted...

The review of H&FJ Numbers reuses fragments of the general descriptions for the different fonts as found on the H&FJ website. Send any complaints to sue.me@get-a-life.org

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