tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38441082008-05-31T14:12:40.871-07:00DigestDavid Earlsnoreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-11755503416692308172008-05-31T14:12:00.001-07:002008-05-31T14:12:40.879-07:00test<p>test " "</p><br /><br />David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1165035304493211422006-12-01T20:52:00.000-08:002006-12-01T20:55:04.516-08:00Hmmm, nearly time to emerge, phoenix-like, from the ashes. David & Yves return with a new Typographer.org, in the next few weeks...David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1139788852469056732006-02-12T16:00:00.000-08:002006-02-13T15:58:59.640-08:00Life 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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> bring yet another surprise or two. More about that in a couple of weeks.<br /><br />The <a href="http://letterror.com/code/robothon06/index.html">Robothon 2006</a> 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 <a href="http://letterror.com/code/robofab/index.html">RoboFab</a> and <a href="http://letterror.com/code/robothon06/talks/basic.html">Python</a>, 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.<br /><br />The old year has turned into the new, and as usual this heralds the season of the obligatory <span style="font-style: italic;">Best of</span>-lists. Linotype <a href="http://www.linotype.com/8-2628-8/favouritefonts2005.html?PHPSESSID=eb87f8e852043104d017c676bff4f988">looks back at 2005’s top fonts</a> and conveniently splits the list in two — <span style="font-style: italic;">Business Fonts</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Casual Fonts</span>. Veer’s <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/gallery.aspx?gallery=264">hottest faces of 2005, as chosen by their customers</a> 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.<br /><br />As last year’s <a href="http://typographi.com/000969.php">Our Favorite Fonts of 2004</a> 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. <a href="http://typographi.com/001045.php">Our Favorite Fonts of 2005 - Part 1</a> 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.<br />Interestingly, instead of just boasting their inclusion in the list, this time around three foundries — <a href="http://vllg.com/offers.php">Village</a>, <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/emtype/relato/?refby=typographica">Emtype Foundry</a> and <a href="http://www.processtypefoundry.com/typefaces/maple/index.html">Process Type Foundry</a> — 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.<br /><br />Somewhat less beneficial is the continuing saga of <a href="http://futurebrand.com/futurebrand.html">FutureBrand</a> ripping off <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=dax&image.x=0&image.y=0">FF Dax</a> for the design of their <a href="http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/index.jsx">UPS Sans</a> 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 <a href="http://typecon.com/tc2005/index.html">TypeCon2005</a> and <a href="http://atypi.org/30_past_conferences/07_Helsinki/30_program/40_speakers/#1444">ATypI — Over the Edge</a> presentations on piracy in corporate font design. Just recently FontShop International divulged in a press release <span style="font-style: italic;">“(...) 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”, </span>bringing this case to a rather unexpected and dissatisfactory close.<br /><br />There are a couple of interesting things to be learned from the press release. First, the <span style="font-style: italic;">“internationally recognized strategic brand development firm”</span> 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.<br /><br />The next part is frankly embarrassing: <span style="font-style: italic;">“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.”</span> 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> 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.<br /><br />Lastly, the <span style="font-style: italic;">“firm has agreed to pay FSI $17,500.”</span> Which I think barely covers legal costs, let alone compensates adequately for the thousands of licences involved.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Before Bald Condensed, a quick word from David...<br /><br /><i>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...</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/spotted-roadpaint.jpg"><br /><br /><span class="headings"><blockquote></blockquote>Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />Then again, what <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> 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.<br /><br />On to the reviews, and I’d like to start with adding a little postscript to last episode.<br /><br />Although you can tell from my last review that I’ve always been a FontFontFan, I must say I find the <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/virtual/newsletters/ff37/">FontFont 37</a> 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 <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&displayfontid=FF.11555.0.0">FF Eddie</a> (how many more of those do we need?) and <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&displayfontid=FF.11556.0.0">FF Headz</a>, 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 <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontpackage&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=FF.7074.0.0">FF Rian’s Dingbats</a>, but to sell this as a package... Oh well, to each his own. The only design that grabbed me is <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontpackage&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=FF.11558.0.0">FF Karo</a>, a digital Fraktur face in three clever variants. Xavier Dupre’s new <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=megano">FF Megano</a> looks fine but fails to excite me, and sports a couple of <a href="http://www.emigre.com/EF.php?fid=128">Triplex</a>-like details that are quite off-putting to me — my take is that the only good thing about Triplex is the <a href="http://www.emigre.com/EF.php?fid=141">italic</a> by John Downer.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/site/fonts.php?id=1">Fedra Sans</a> got augmented with Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, Mark Simonson’s completely overhauled <a href="http://ms-studio.com/FontSales/proximanova.html">Proxima Nova</a> became serious competition for H&FJ’s <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/gotham/index.html">Gotham</a>, and the conversion to OpenType of the FontFont library proceeds in earnest.<br /><br />More than just a re-release in the OpenType format is <a href="http://www.processtypefoundry.com/typefaces/bryant2/index.html">Bryant</a> 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 <a href="http://www.processtypefoundry.com/typefaces/bryantcom/index.html">Compressed</a>, <a href="http://www.processtypefoundry.com/typefaces/bryantcon/index.html">Condensed</a> and a <a href="http://www.processtypefoundry.com/typefaces/bryant2/index.html">Pro</a> 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 <a href="http://www.processtypefoundry.com/typefaces/bryant2/features.html">stylistic alternates</a> (<span style="font-style: italic;">a, m, n, u, w </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">y</span>) 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.<br /><br />Likewise, chester’s <a href="http://vllg.com/Thirstype/ApexNew/Example+About/">Apex New</a> is a major improvement on <a href="http://vllg.com/Thirstype/ApexSans/mudTyper+Weights/">Apex Sans</a>, 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. <a href="http://vllg.com/Thirstype/ApexSans/Example+About/">Comparing both versions</a> reveals the flaws in the original design and shows how those were rectified in this new incarnation.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">“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?”.</span> 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.<br /><br />Speaking of dedication — I’d like to take a look at an unexpected and fun package that popped up on the <a href="http://www.typography.com/index.html">Hoefler & Frere-Jones</a> website. <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/index.html">H&FJ Numbers</a> is a collection of 15 fonts consisting of numbers from familiar (and some less familiar) sources. As Jonathan explains on the site, <span style="font-style: italic;">“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.”</span> Psy/Ops’ <a href="http://www.psyops.com/html/spec_crash.html">Crash Numbering</a> being one of my all-time favourite free font families out there, I couldn’t help but be smitten by this new volume.<br /><br />All the faces comprise the digits, punctuation, and monetary and mathematical symbols, plus a supporting cast of characters <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/charset.html">appropriate to their origins</a>.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more5.html">Deuce</a> which is modelled after the numbers on <a href="http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:znTwG4Ypz00J:www.typophile.com/node/5031+site:typophile.com+playing+cards&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=12">playing cards</a>. On top of the pre-existing numbers (with a <span style="font-style: italic;">0</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">1</span> added) a set of narrow width digits allow for double digits. Also present are the card denominations and symbols.<br /><br />Then there’s a couple of fonts which are intimately related to the world of finance. <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more15.html">Valuta</a>, 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 <a href="http://www.typophile.com/node/16748">U.S. dollar bills</a>, digitised here as <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more7.html">Greenback</a>. It is augmented by a range of additional currency symbols and an extended set of fractions.<br /><br />These handy sets of fractions can also be found in several other fonts — <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more2.html">Claimcheck</a> (the numbers on claim stubs used by dry cleaners, parking garages, and checkrooms the world over), <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more4.html">Depot</a> (the indigenous lettering of the railroads in the prevalent style of the early Victorian age), <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more6.html">Dividend</a> (the perforated numbers made by an antique check-cutting machine), <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more8.html">Indicia</a> (the numbers on <a href="http://www.typophile.com/node/3864">hand-held rotary rubber stamps</a>), <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more9.html">Premium</a> (modeled after vintage gas pump gauges, whose spinning dials tallied both gallons and dollars down to fractional tenths) and <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more14.html">Trafalgar</a> (inspired by a style of lettering indigenous to the City of London).<br /><br />Besides Trafalgar, four other fonts originated (literally) from the streets. The oriental-like <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more.html">Bayside</a> is an adaptation of eccentric house numbers that are native to suburban America, and <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more3.html">Delancey</a> is based on the gilded decals made famous by the transom windows of American tenements. Half a world away, the Constructivist stencil numbers of <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more10.html">Prospekt</a> remain beautifully fossilised as the house numbers on the streets of modern Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more13.html">Strasse</a>, modeled after the glazed ceramic tiles commonly used for house numbers throughout Central Europe, sports a number of tasty extras like arrows and borders.<br /><br />Also from the streets, but this time from public transport, <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more11.html">Redbird</a> is named for the eponymous red subway cars that ran on the New York City subway system from 1948 to 2003. And <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/numbers/more12.html">Revenue</a> was inspired by the most pedestrian of artefacts, a receipt from a local delicatessen.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">so</span> 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...<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <a href="http://www.fonts.com/findfonts/detail.htm?pid=415684&amp;amp;grab_id=0&page_id=32152&query=bookman%20swash">wimpy blandified ITC version</a>, but <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=JBT0000085">“the swashy original”</a> — is boasted by Veer to be <span style="font-style: italic;">“the most comprehensive digital revival of the original ’70s delicacy”.</span> 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... <span style="font-style: italic;">why isn’t it feature-rich OpenType!?</span> Oh, how quickly and easily we take things for granted...<br /><br /><span class="credits">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</span>Yves Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06503653323855137363noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1130860129524241452005-11-01T07:41:00.000-08:002005-11-02T13:40:50.730-08:00Should we expect digital typefaces to last forever, this is the question posed by Adobe’s Thomas Phinney in his recent blog entry. I started to read the article and stopped myself getting beyond the first few paragraphs for two reasons. I wanted to have a stab at the subject without having outside influences affecting it, and more importantly, I think a blog discussing a blog would be just a little bit nerdy even for me, and I don’t trust myself not to <i>react</i> to his opinions rather than forming my own. So thats the last reference I’ll be making.<br /><br />What is a typeface? Is it software, or is it a creative work, or is it a machine, or a tool? It is all of these things, but of course our choice of label for its defining characteristics, its USPs to give a passing embarrassed nod to the marketeers on which our economics works, is key. What is a typeface <i>most</i> to you? Let us get the first myth out in the open for what it is straight away. If I listen to music on my iPod, the qualia created in my mind as a result of that music is not created by software. Software is, according to the data retrieved and displayed (and this transformed into information) within Mac OS X’s dictionary <i>software</i>, “the programs and other operating information used by a computer.”. Data, on the other hand, is “the quantities, characters, or symbols on which operations are performed by a computer, being stored and transmitted in the form of electrical signals and recorded on magnetic, optical, or mechanical recording media.” It goes on to clarify that slightly nebulous description with a usage note of, “Data is now used as a singular where it means 'information': | this data was prepared for the conference. It is used as a plural in technical contexts and when the collection of bits of information is stressed: | all recent data on hurricanes are being compared.”. That qualia is created by information, by “what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things”. Typefaces are a lot like music. Typeface aren’t software either.<br /><br />I suppose you could argue that in being an integral part of a system that creates the end output, typeface data (and for that matter, music data) could be classed as the “other operating information used by a computer”, but, well, that is like saying that a song is just part of a violin. Typefaces (and, you guessed, music) are a specific form of data, they’re ideas, they are the result of solving creative problems, they are inspiration and beauty, and as such are an expression of life, of humanity. Does that sound like software to you? I remember being lucky enough to visit Jeremy Tankard at his former studio in London when he was kind enough to grant me an interview. I remember feeling about 4 inches high as he told me he had just spent 3 weeks solidly kerning a weight of Bliss, hour after hour, day and night. Was that all just for the sake of software?<br /><br />Why am I ham-fistedly hammering this point home with clumsy Welsh hands? I think it devalues high quality typography to label it as software, even if the designers themselves who label it so may be only doing so in order to obtain financial or reputation protection under antiquated and ill-fitting intellectual property law. By doing so, and by necessity of that IP law having to reject notions of typographic worth beyond that which can be measured or quantified in order to be tested under law, it strips away and devalues the humanity and beauty contained within a typeface. I’m a dreadful typeface designer, I’ve no style, I’m technically pretty ropey and everything is quite frankly obsessively geometric and pattern based, but so long as I am careful enough in FontLab, I can create a typeface that, in purely neat quantifiable software terms, is as good as the one in this site’s masthead above. Calling typefaces software discounts the gulf of knowledge, skill, creativity and flair between my infantile efforts and JFP’s, for instance. Worse than that, in doing so we teach by example to those that come after us the wrong lessons about what motivates us as creatives to begin with, and how we see the value of our work within a wider societal context.<br /><br />Of course, what calling a typeface <i>software</i> also does rather neatly is allow those who are not interested in what is not quantifiable (or to put it another way, those who care only about sales not beauty) to mis-apply the rules intended for the purely quantifiable to that which is not. I’ll come back to that later on in Part 2.<br /><br />I don’t think I need to spell out that I think typefaces are creative works, so lets talk about tools and machines. I am a graphic designer, so within that context I would argue that my computer is a machine that I use to create artworks, and that gives me access to specific tools, such as DTP packages, typefaces, image editors etc. Calling a typeface a tool in this context makes sense to me - I use the tool to shape and give certain properties (often designed to invoke specific qualia) to parts of an overall design created within a machine. This isn’t new - my last sentence would work equally well when describing letterpress after all.<br /><br />Letterpress, however, wears out. It is one thing to reject the idea of fonts as software, it is another to assume that fonts last forever, but we need to be clear, honest and upfront to begin with. As noted above, there is a Part 2 to this piece, where I want to discuss further the concept of type as a tool, and what it means to those who need to make a living from providing those tools, and those who’s living is made using them. I’m also going to discuss how I think that we should look again at the business models that are currently engaging with, and start instead to build a more sustainable model for our activities based not on the concept of product, but of service.<br /><br />But for now, here is a photo from my trip away from grimey old London, to somewhere far more agreeable, followed by the words of a chap who is always more agreeable...<br /><br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/spotted-cornwall05.jpg" /><br /><br /><span class="headings"><blockquote></blockquote>Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />You’ll have to excuse me but I don’t really feel like doing a full review of <a href="http://www.atypi.org/07_Helsinki">ATypI 2005 Helsinki - On the edge</a>. One might be tempted to do a little comparison though. You may remember that David and the Typecon people had an almost-altercation a little while ago, both here and on Typophile. Now that I’ve experienced both conferences first-handed, I can attest that Tiff was spot-on in her <a href="http://typophile.com/node/13286">blog entry</a>. Yes, there’s more meat to the bones at ATypI when it comes to “pure type”, but the three tracks were sometimes too much if you have a broad range of interests — I often felt like I was missing out on something else when I was attending a presentation, similar to what you can experience when you’re at a rock festival with several stages. On the whole it was a successful, interesting and highly enjoyable conference, with loads of social activity, very nice food and some kick-ass partying. And I was humbled by the amount of people that showed up for <a href="http://www.atypi.org/07_Helsinki/30_program/20_main_program/view_presentation_html?presentid=224">my presentation</a>, especially since I was competing with the House Inc. superstars on Track 1. And whaddayaknow, now I finally have <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gabrielhl/44799079/in/pool-atypi2005/">proof</a> it’s not all partying I do at conferences.<br /><br />Two minor gripes though. First, Erik Spiekermann’s impromptu fourth track should have been located somewhere near the main hall, not on some lost floor. That really was a missed opportunity. Second, as the T-shirts were already stuffed in the goody bags, you didn’t have any say on what size you were getting. To my regret I can practically swim in mine (hey, there’s a reason I didn’t call my column Bald <span style="font-style: italic;">Extended)</span> which means I’ll probably never wear it. The Typecon system makes so much more sense: pick your size out of the appropriate box when receiving your goody bag.<br /><br />So much for the conference experience. Before I dive into my reviews, there’s something I’d like to clear up. People might start to think I have a vendetta against some of the majors, a secret agenda of some sort. That is <span style="font-style: italic;">so</span> not true. Then again, I mean, come on, admit it, let’s be honest, when you look at the two recent releases below — they’re asking for it!<br /><br />First <a href="http://www.itcfonts.com/default.asp?nCo=AFMT">ITC</a> releases <a href="http://www.itcfonts.com/fonts/whatsnew_fonts.asp?Newrel=oct_05&disp=avantgardegothic">ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro</a> in feature-rich OpenType version. Brilliant news for all you Seventies-fetishists out there (yes you, you know who you are, you just can’t get enough of all those kewl geometric ligatures, can you?). Well, the <span style="font-style: italic;">bad</span> news is they completely botched the oblique. Big time. Read this <a href="http://typographi.com/001029.php">Typographica report</a> by the ever-great <a href="http://www.marksimonson.com/article/128/fake-vs-true-italics">Mark Simonson</a> and weep. I’m not going to spend any more words on this slapdash job.<br /><br />Then <a href="http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX">Linotype</a> announces its new <a href="http://www.linotype.com/7-2559-7/bodebeck.html">Bodebeck</a> family (it was actually developed in 2002) by Swedish type designer <a href="http://www.linotype.com/7-2286-7/andersbodebeck.html">Anders Bodebeck</a>. To put it diplomatically — it’s not very good. Bodebeck looks like somebody slammed Trajan into Perpetua, reassembled the debris to piece together new glyphs, arbitrarily adding some Zapf curves (that uc D!) and then blurred the lot with a PMT camera. I find it difficult to understand that a foundry that boasts to be <span style="font-style: italic;">“The Source of The Originals”</span> publishes such a derivative piece of work. As David correctly remarked when I was discussing this design with him:<br /><blockquote>“It would be unfair to describe this as a train wreck of a font, but it’s certainly one I’d be shunting into the buffers sooner rather than later. It’s all over the fucking shop, there’s no balance. Look at lowercase <span style="font-style: italic;">e,</span> it’s, you know, cute and all, but is it in the same typeface family really?”<br /></blockquote>My thoughts exactly. If this is representative for Swedish type, I dearly miss Stefan Hattenbach’s refinement or Peter Bruhn’s playfulness.<br /><br />Frankly, I’m disappointed, and I resent having to have a go at the majors yet again. These are two mainstays, two type foundries with a rich history and — up until recently — an excellent reputation. I really don’t get how they are willing to tarnish that very reputation and squander the goodwill of the type-loving community. And don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying all this to score points with our readers, but out of concern. Concern for the way in which major foundries release and market their fonts. This influences negatively the perception by the audience at large of the whole type industry. So, and I hope they don’t take this personally, I feel it is my sacred duty to point them out whenever they’re releasing crappy fonts. Consider this an attempt to coax them into being more self-critical.<br /><br />A perfect example of how to do it right is the <a href="http://www.fontfont.com/">FontFont</a> Library. Thanks to the Type Board which reviews any submission to the library, the collection is of a consistent quality, with hardly a hick-up. As a result of its success, FontFont has grown into the largest independent type collection, and boasts some undisputed best-sellers.<br /><br />One of these best-sellers is <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=dax&image.x=0&image.y=0">FF Dax</a>. Every time I see new additions to that face, the words of The Jam’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Going Underground</span> ring through my head: “<i>The public gets what the public wants”.</i> You can’t really blame FontFont for cashing in on this success story, but it’s not for me. It’s all a tad too austere, too clinical. Although, the main problem I have with this family is that it is <span style="font-style: italic;">so</span> insanely popular and <span style="font-style: italic;">so</span> overused that there’s no way on earth I could use it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not implying this is a bad type family, it’s just that I feel enough is enough.<br /><br />This time around, the Dax family gets augmented with a text cut: <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=daxline">FF Daxline</a>. It’s about time, because the number of times I’ve seen FF Dax used poorly as a text face... don’t get me started. Surprisingly, FF Daxline salvages the family for me. It is more generous in width, with larger capitals and optically equal weights. This makes it into a real grotesque face. It somehow manages to lose that overly stylised, rigid atmosphere without abandoning those typical Dax characteristics. The new cuts are warmer and more inviting. I’m even inclined to say I like it quite a bit.<br /><br />Another best-seller that gets expanded is <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=meta">FF Meta</a>. The new Headline version comes in <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontpackage&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=FF.11517.0.0">regular width</a>, <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/showfont.cfm?fid=FF.11519.0.0&searchby=searchresults">Condensed</a> and <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/showfont.cfm?fid=FF.11518.0.0&searchby=searchresults">Compressed</a>. After <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontpackage&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=C.118548.0.0">ITC Officina</a>, it was to be expected that FF Meta would get the headline treatment as well, as both presented numerous problems when tracked tightly in display settings. All those problems were addressed by tweaking the letter forms, and by introducing some alternate glyphs. Again, admirably well executed by Christian Schwartz, but how much FF Meta can one handle? We get the impression that Erik is going in ever narrowing concentric circles — compare this one to <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=unit&image.x=0&image.y=0">FF Unit</a>, a point I brought up in a <a href="http://typographi.com/000622.php">Typographica article</a> — closing in on the ideal, perfect typeface. Is that even possible?<br /><a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=oxide"><br /></a>Christian Schwartz also releases a family of his own: the all uppercase <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=oxide">FF Oxide</a>. I don’t get this guy, and I mean that in a good way. He’s freaky talented, but still manages to alternate his “gourmet faces” (<a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Amplitude">Amplitude</a>, <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Farnham">Farnham</a>, ...) with seemingly casual reinventions of archetypes. For example he turned the geometric sans inside out with the high-brow <a href="http://www.houseindustries.com/index.php?page=showfont&id=18&subpage=viewfonts">Neutraface</a> series, reinterpreting two related models into one family: Futura (Neutraface Alternate) and its improvement Avenir (Neutraface). Christian says about FF Oxide:<br /><blockquote>“[The typeface] was really just something I had lying around on my hard drive that I decided to release because I realised there was some demand for it, and because I remembered that I had some fun using it back when I still did graphic design work. It’s a silly stencil face.”<br /></blockquote>The face explores the strict geometry of Agency, Bank Gothic and the likes. It obviously doesn’t strive to be a ground-breaking design; it’s content with being a relaxed, well-balanced, pleasant little family with just a smidgen of playfulness. And a beautiful <span style="font-style: italic;">A, Q </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">&</span> by the way. If anything, this release proves that certain designers have stuff “lying around on their hard drive” that’s simply better than what other people release as if it was God’s gift to typography.<br /><br />Talking about Christian — we were sitting next to each other during the <a href="http://www.atypi.org/07_Helsinki/30_program/20_main_program/view_presentation_html?presentid=221">presentation</a> of the new <a href="http://www.berlingnova.se/">Berling Nova</a> type family by Örjan Nordling at the ATypI conference. The new digitisations looked absolutely brilliant. Everything was peachy until the last slide popped up onto the screen, showing some venues they wanted to explore with the family. Amongst them was — you guessed it — Berling Nova <span style="font-style: italic;">Sans</span>. As if we’d rehearsed it, both Christian and I looked down, muttering: “Oh no...” When Örjan said he imagined Karl-Erik Forsberg looking over his shoulder and wondered what he would say, we — again simultaneously — spoke under our breath, with a wry smile: <span style="font-style: italic;">“Don’t</span> do it”.<br /><br />This just to say that I generally don’t like people chopping off or adding serifs to existing typefaces. It’s not the same as when it’s planned ahead — the Dutch type designers get away with it more often than not— but when it’s done afterwards it just feels like diluting a perfectly fine design. As with movies, the sequel is rarely as good as the original. Also using co-ordinated type systems is not that exciting at all and often results in safe, corporate-like design. What’s wrong with combining a serif with a sans that are not of the same family? Use your imagination, for crying out loud!<br /><br />FontFont are known for their co-ordinated families, and this release includes both an example of how it’s done, and one... of the other kind.<br /><br />The successful one is <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontpackage&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=FF.11512.0.0">FF Absara Sans</a>, a sans variation of <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fontpackage&searchby=manufacturer&displayfontid=FF.11480.0.0">FF Absara</a>. This face by up-and-coming French type design star Xavier Dupré is inspired by the renaissance, and displays his pronounced personal style. Xavier clearly knows how to adapt a serif face to a sans variation, as his FF Absara Sans is not at all burdened by the serif forms it’s derived from. His distinctive signature <span style="font-style: italic;">g</span> is present, as are the recurring subtle Dutch influences. I particularly like the calligraphic, slightly angular details in the italics and the tense, open curves. A colourful multi-purpose family with a nice range of weights and all the typographical goodies one might need.<br /><br />The one I like less is <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=signa+serif&image.x=0&image.y=0">FF Signa Serif</a>. Already I wasn’t too wild about <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=ff+signa">FF Signa</a> for the same reasons I’m not very fond of the aforementioned FF Dax family – it’s all quite cerebral and aseptic, and ultimately a bit boring. If I have to pick a Danish tech sans, give me <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=ff+max">FF Max</a> any day. When examining FF Signa Serif from up close it becomes clear quite a bit of thought was invested in this serif version. Placement of serifs, stroke modulation and contrast — everything looks well thought out. It’s a shame the end result is so strict, so rigid, it even borders on the aggressive. Seeing the different weights in a list, I couldn’t help but thinking of a military parade, with the characters lined up like soldiers. Also, I don’t understand why the family is marketed with the uprights and the italics in separate volumes. Personally I think this is a somewhat redundant expansion of a family that’s already spread out too thin.<br /><br />I was always told to keep the best for last. In this instance that would be Veronika Burian’s <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories=1&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=maiola">FF Maiola</a>. This typeface, well... how can I put it? It’s ridiculous. It’s frustrating. And it’s discouraging.<br /><br />It’s ridiculous how much talent is on display here. This is a gorgeous face, showing a strong sense of nationality, referencing historical models but undeniably of the now. A peculiar trait is that I think this must be the first typeface where I somehow “feel” it was designed by a woman. There’s feminine touches in some stroke endings and curves that are really refreshing. As Tiffany Wardle commented: “Most men couldn’t design with that much nuance. Or finesse”. What’s odd is that it so obviously contradicts some of my preferences in type. I don’t like sharp typefaces. Check. FF Maiola passionately cuts through the paper with its subdued angularity, the sharp serifs hook themselves in your subconscious, and those italics — oh man what splendid italics they are — bring it up a notch with their calligraphic quality. I’m not fond of Zapf typefaces. Check. Veronika ever so subtly references — knowingly, or is it just my imagination? — several Zapfisms, but that doesn’t irk me. There’s also some Veljovic and some Trump in there, all in the right doses.<br /><br />It’s frustrating to see a first typeface that’s so accomplished, so complete and so incredibly well executed. Hey, we’re talking fully featured, multi-language, multi-script OpenType here! Sometimes, I secretly dream of having a go at type design myself, only to be dissuaded by the knowledge of what an incredible amount of <span style="font-style: italic;">work</span> it actually is, and by seeing mind-blowing typefaces like this one. And lastly, it’s discouraging to have to critique it, as it makes me feel inadequate and in way over my head, at loss for words and lacking the academic knowledge needed to properly analyse it.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1125254487653712342005-08-28T11:37:00.000-07:002005-08-28T15:21:59.173-07:00TypeCon has come and gone (plenty on that in a bit from the Belgian below), and next on the list is the 49th ATypI conference, aptly entitled “On the edge” given its location up there in the slightly nippy Helsinki, Finland. If the heat of New York was too much for you, then get your wooly jumper packed as it is less than three weeks away now, running from 15th till the 18th of September.<br /><br />At ATypI, Matthew Carter (the designer of the typeface you’re almost certainly reading now) will be the subject of a retrospective lecture at ATypI presented by Margeret Re, the author of <span style="font-style:italic;">Typographically Speaking — The Art of Matthew Carter</span>.<br /><br />ATypI also wrote in to remind you all of an exhibition running in partnership with the National Library of Finland. Entitled simply “Treasures”, the exhibition will include national and international rarities from east and west, covering a period of over 2000 years, drawn from the library’s archives of Finish literary culture and book printing arts right up to the early part of the last century. What’s classed as a rarity these days? How does a miniature Koran, a 19th century children’s book and a specimen of the first printed cut-out paper doll sound? A book arts fetish!<br /><br />No indication on how much of that collection of ephemera will be in big print for the visually-impaired however. Which painfully contrived segue brings me onto the Royal Mail’s decision here in the UK to scrap postage charges for sending books, papers and even letters set in 16pt or higher. The scheme isn’t new — previously free postage was provided for such items as white sticks, guide dog equipment — but this is a welcome and somewhat large extension. The scheme has been expanded with the help of the RNIB, who many of you will remember were responsible for the development of the <a href=”http://www.tiresias.org/fonts/index.htm” target=”new”>Tiresias</a> typeface family. I feel proud (and a touch smug) to be British today.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/spotted-sohoaugust2005.jpg" /><br /><br />I was muttering on about Adobe’s merger with Macromedia a little while back, and more news has come out in the last couple of days. The stockholders of the two companies have voted to go ahead with the merger, to a fairly unanimous 99% in favour from the Adobe camp and 99.8% in favour from Macromedia. I think the guys with the cash want this to go ahead — and why wouldn’t they? By removing that pesky element of competition, the multitude of owners (mostly pension funds and investment banks such as Barclays — just the sort of people who know what is best for graphic designers) stand to benefit from all that near-monopoly business.<br /><br />There will be those who spout out the usual trite comments about this state of affairs. It will be better for the consumer, better for the companies, better for everyone. Will it fuck. Public companies have a legal duty to their shareholders to maximize profit where ever possible (don’t believe me? It goes way back to Ford vs Dodge), and in the context of this merger, you don’t have to be an MBA graduate to take a guess at what that might mean for Macromedia and Adobe’s product lines.<br /><br />What it inevitably means is that there is no particular reason why Adobe would want to maintain anything other than flagship products from the Macromedia range. If you’re going to keep the same product ranges, what’s the point in merging, after all? Flash, I suspect, is the key, not only as its the defacto package for, er, Flash animations, but also in it’s development of Flash Paper, a direct competitor to Adobe’s PDF and no doubt soon to follow Adobe’s LiveMotion into the software bins of time. The only benefit I can see on the horizon for Adobe Flash is the possibility that the HCI and UI chaps in the After Effects team might lend out a hand on Flash’s trashy interface.<br /><br />But the people to suffer are those who use Macromedia’s Adobe analogs. I can’t see why Adobe would find “synergy” in keeping Freehand going as a direct competitor to Illustrator, especially as Freehand has traditionally cannibalised sales not only from Illustrator but also DTP packages (rumour has it Adobe sell a few of those) as it has multi-page capability — just the ticket for freelancers needing to keep their costs down. Multi-page is something Adobe has resisted within Illustrator itself for just this very reason. I believe its called market segmentation. I call it cynical abuse of power. <br /><br />What of GoLive and Dreamweaver? Again, there is little market differentiation between these products — either one will go, or will be taken to task and remodelled as a completely different solution. Given Adobe’s interface consolidation attempts, will they think its worthwhile to invest huge wads of cash in that, or are we to see another element of diversity and competition leave for pastures new?<br /><br />Speaking of pastures new, Adobe and Macromedia have a current combined staff just shy of 5,500 worldwide. Well, you don’t need two CEOs, that’s for certain, but not to worry about that. Macromedia’s CEO Stephen Elop is safe in his new job at Adobe as president of worldwide field operations. So is the former Macromedia CEO, Rob Burges, who also happily joins the Adobe board. I wonder how safe others in the organisation are. How many lives will be torn apart by redundancy over the coming months, all in the name of cost efficiencies? Just so we’re not confused here — making huge redundancies from huge corporate mergers is nothing short of redistributing money upwards to the rich. It really is that simple. <br /><br />Just in case you’re thinking me a little cynical, pop along to Adobe.com and check out their investor relations section where you can fill your head with figures galore that show you just what sort of organisation we’re all supporting when we buy our Photoshop licenses. In it, you’ll see that for 2005, the board of Adobe unanimously recommended every proposal that increased their access to stock options etc, and unanimously recommended against any proposal that suggested cutting back on director remuneration or benefits.<br /><br />Why? Because, one assumes, that Bruce Chizen’s salary in 2004 of just under a million dollars isn’t in any way an affront to common decency or morality. Neither was his bonus. Of $1,304,687. Did I mention the $125,312 he also received under the profit sharing scheme? To be fair though, the USA is a very expensive place to live, and an income (just from Adobe, not including his income from moonlighting on the board of Synopsis) of two and a half million dollars is hardly excessive, right? Neither are the 450,000 stock options he received?<br /><br />Is this greed talking? Am I just bitter that I don’t live in the lap of luxury? Am I just lamenting that I can’t snort cocaine off a rugby player’s thighs on a sun-soaked Pacific island? No. I am genuinely upset that on this very day 11,000 people will starve to death, while there is someone out there earning $2.5m a year. That isn’t right, no matter how great the healing tool is. No matter how marvellous we find OpenType handling in InDesign. No matter how many fonts reside in the Adobe library.<br /><br />There is a huge cost to us all from this merger, a cost that in typical 21st century style, has been neatly externalised away from the companies involved, and onto us all. It is not just a matter of how it affects us in the creative industry in terms of software diversity, but also how we want our world to be. It is in the lives of those who will lose their jobs (not just in Macromedia and Adobe but also all the auxiliary companies that supply both) through no fault of their own, but through management decisions based only on the acquisition of wealth for a few. It is in a society that is damaged by the excesses of those who care only for themselves and their cronies. It is in the messages that such actions send to our children, to our poor, to our ill, to each and every one of us, not just sat at our computers in Europe and North America, but to all of humanity.<br /><br />I don’t want to leave this on a negative point. There are alternatives to all the corporate entities that, by law and by their nature, have to operate like this. A large part of the problem, as we have seen from Bernie Ebbers and Worldcom, is the separation between ownership of the company and leadership. When CEOs, CFOs and other board members aren’t spending their own money, but will benefit directly, there is always the chance of abuse, and the commercial pressures of a free market do nothing to dampen the likelihood and everything to increase it. This is why laws such as those that stemmed from Dodge vs Ford came about in the first place, but still there is little in the form of accountability. Corporate responsibility is limited in the most part to neatly written words on company websites alone, unfortunately. <br /><br />Again, there are alternatives. Cooperative movements offer a successful business model that can often be built up to a large scale, as we have seen in the UK from the department store chain John Lewis, and the Cooperative Bank, but which also offer an accessible business model for far smaller entities. That is just one example, of course. All that is required is the desire on the part of us as a community to do what we can to think of innovative alternatives, and these alternatives need not be giants — FontLab springs to mind. So does the new Village, from what I’ve read. Of course, community concepts are often counter to the increasingly atomised (and increasingly egocentric and selfish – and yes I am aware that I’m no stranger to ego) world in which we live in, but we need to ask ourselves if that is a product of recent times or something inherent in all of us. I for one do not believe it is. Typography has been a political tool since its inception, and there is nothing to say that its commercialisation cannot be reversed, or that its purpose cannot be shifted away to higher things than mere dollar signs.<br /><br />And as I go, a little context for you, rehydration salts to stop an African child from dying of diarrhea costs 8 cents.<br /><br />And now onto Yves, who as TypeCon attendees will no doubt both rue <i>and</i> lament, managed to pick up a gong for his dancing salty chocolate something-or-others...<br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed | TypeCon2005 Edition</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />As I came back from the roller-coaster ride that was the TypeCon Experience to find an insurmountable mountain of work waiting for me, my whole summer schedule went topsy turvy. I’ll stick to an appreciation of TypeCon2005 for this edition of Bald Condensed, and will resume the reviews next time. Sorry’boutthat.<br /><br />In a nutshell, TypeCon was a big success. As a social event, you just can’t beat it. Specifically in my case I got to meet for the first time dozens of people I’d known for months and sometimes even years, and hooked up with loads of new great type persons. The thrill of being able to match a face to an online voice was tremendous, and it turned out almost every single one of them were thoroughly enjoyable to boot. The extracurricular activities were almost as important as the conference itself, as they helped cement relationships in this geographically dispersed community. This is one of the few times a year most of us get to meet the rest of us.<br /><br />As I didn’t have much to do on the first days — I didn’t attend any workshops — I decided to make myself useful as that extra helping hand. This was a great way to get to know the people that make up the organisation, and I can attest that they are a wonderful bunch, some of the hardest working and nicest people I’ve met.<br /><br />Unfortunately I ended up missing some presentations. I only caught the last minutes of <span style="font-style:italic;">Type in Motion</span> by Jakob Trollbäck as I was called up at the hotel that morning and arrived way late because of that. <span style="font-style:italic;">Let Them Eat Type</span> by Louise Fili coincided with my interview for TypeRadio.org. <span style="font-style:italic;">A Glimpse at the Life and Work of Eric Gill</span> by John Sherman came just after mine, and I badly needed to unwind. My greatest regret was missing <span style="font-style:italic;">Thinking With/In Type</span> by Ellen Lupton and Alex White.<br /><br />As a conference, it wasn’t perfect, but I got enough out of it to be satisfied. I found the accent was a bit too much on typography in graphic design, and had hoped to learn more about type itself. This means I was pretty bored by most of the portfolio presentations. I don’t mind “big names” in graphic design, but they should at least have something interesting to say or teach me something new if they’re doing a presentation at a conference. The one I quite liked was Alexander Isley’s as his work is refreshing and original, and his comments were insightful.<br /><br />The presentations where I felt I really got my money’s worth were the ones focusing on the process and the history of type design. Highlights were <span style="font-style:italic;">Cosas de España: Interpretations of Eighteenth Century’s Spanish Types</span> by Mário Feliciano, as he expertly linked historical sources with his reinterpretations/revivals ; the delightful trip into type history which was <span style="font-style:italic;">U & lc: In-Your-Face Typography</span> by John D. Berry and <span style="font-style:italic;">Photo-Lettering: Back to the Future</span> by Ken Barber, the flamboyant Ed Benguiat and the astonishing Ed Rondthaler ; the socio-economical observations throughout <span style="font-style:italic;">Graffiti Exposed</span> by John Downer, Tony de Marco, Carlos "Mare 139" Rodriguez, Wes Wong ; Peter Bruhn’s and Stefan Hattenbach’s laid-back stroll through <span style="font-style:italic;">The Swedish Type Scene</span> ; <span style="font-style:italic;">Experimenting with the Cow</span>, insanity unchecked by Alessio Leonardi ; and Ina Saltz’s fascinating exploration of the world of <span style="font-style:italic;">Typographic Tattoos</span>.<br /><br />Of course there were some special events too. Erik’s half of <span style="font-style:italic;">FiFFteen: an Evening with Neville Brody and Erik Spiekermann</span> was incredibly entertaining, which didn’t surprise me because he is without a doubt one of the quickest and wittiest minds in the type world. The Premiere of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Second Annual Typophile Film Festival</span> was great, period. I want more of that. I really enjoyed getting to know better Matthew Carter’s career in <span style="font-style:italic;">A Life in Type: In Celebration of Matthew Carter</span>. Mike Parker’s and David Berlow’s anecdotes were the icing on the cake.<br /><br />Memories of such an event tend to break up in little fragments, so I decided to just write them down like that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">A TypeCon2005 overview</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most surreal moment</span><br />Bruno Meinert from Linotype walking up to me after noticing my MacRhino/Fountain “Who needs Helvetica?” T-shirt and trying to convince me during the ensuing conversation why Vialog actually <span style="font-style:italic;">has</span> to look dodgy. Look, if you go through all the trouble of producing a type system and promote it, I really don’t see why you can’t at least design decent fonts for it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most surprising moment</span><br />Liza Enebeis and Donald Beekman asking me if they could interview me for Typeradio.org. I remember thinking at first: “Why on earth do they want me?”, but it turned into a incredibly exciting and fun experience.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most embarrassing moment</span><br />Dan Reynolds introducing me to Akira Kobayashi and having my synapses short-circuit, not being able to say anything that sounded even remotely intelligible. Also, walking up to Matthew Carter and trying to introduce myself, wondering if the mildly annoyed look on his face had anything to do with the Fleischmann thingie. And a couple of others, but I’m not telling. Me and my big mouth... (sigh)<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Missed opportunity</span><br />Walking in late at Jakob Trollbäck’s presentation, hearing him say something pretty lame about Helvetica and Bach, and not feeling entitled to heckle him as I felt I should at least have sat through the entire talk to have the right to get on his case. His work looked great though.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most entertaining presentation</span><br />Alessio Leonardi’s “From the Cow to the Typewriter” with its hilarious cartoon illustrations had the whole auditorium in stitches, even if he had to endure David Berlow heckling him (all in good humour) and had to rush through the end part as he tried to cram a 1:30 hour presentation in a 40 minute time slot.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most moving presentation</span><br />Watching type history unfold as Ed Benguiat and centenarian Ed Rondthaler reminisced stories about the Photolettering Inc. days. I had tears in my eyes for the better part of the presentation. The fact that Rondthaler uncannily resembles my late paternal grand-father didn’t help. At all.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most confronting moment</span><br />Tony De Marco pausing at a slide of derelict buildings full of graffiti, saying: “This is where I live.” How can we judge those youths and say anything about vandalism and defacing buildings when all we have to do is shut off the television.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most satisfying moment</span><br />As I walked out of the auditorium after my presentation, having someone from the audience stop me in the aisle, explaining his design firm was developing a worldwide communication programme for a fashion brand, and asking me what he had to do to ensure that all typefaces used for and by his client were duly licensed and legal.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most awe-inspiring moment</span><br />See J.P. switch computers in the middle of Alex Isley’s slide presentation, without having him skip a beat. That woman worked wonders.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most shameful moment</span><br />Miserably failing at the Type Quiz.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Best hugs</span><br />Miss Tiffany (twice), Peter Bruhn (the absolute hugmeister) and Stefan Hattenbach (at last). And Shu too.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most immediate connection</span><br />Stephen Coles, Joshua Lurie-Terrell and Jon Coltz (whadayaguess, they write about type as well). And Shu too.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Warmest welcome</span><br />Tamye Riggs<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Best mindless entertainment</span><br />Christian Schwartz’ karaoke night. I usually stay clear of those, but as they had the only song I agree to sing to, I gave in.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Best food</span><br />Les Halles<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Most surprising food</span><br />WD-50<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Worst food</span><br />TGI Fridays, where we eventually ended up very late at night after finding out Frank Sinatra is a big fat liar (city that never sleeps my arse: all the eateries in our neighbourhood were closing by eleven).<br /><br />Oh, and regarding the keepsake booklets — I’ve got the impression they went down well. We got some really nice comments on <a href="http://typographi.com/001024.php" target="new">Typographica</a>, so we might do something like that again in the future. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for that extra special number 200 which should surface in September.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1122021376381051262005-07-22T01:35:00.000-07:002005-07-24T02:13:39.436-07:00This week, I was meant to be talking about Adobe's decision to merge/takeover Macromedia being questioned by the US authorities. I was going to talk about how it may be good for maximising shareholder value [vomit] but may not necessarily be good for, you know, us. I was going to pick holes in the corporate system that produces the likes of Bernie Ebbers, and go right back to Dodge vs Ford. Then I was going to talk about alternative systems, like the new cooperative of <a href="http://www.vllg.com/" target="new">Village</a>, just freshly announced.<br /><br />I was going to talk about <a href="http://www.typecon.com/" target="new">TypeCon</a>, naturally, and Joe Clark's <a href="http://blog.fawny.org/2005/07/12/type-week/" target="new">investigation</a> into what NYC's Type Week actually meant. About <a href="http://www.daltonmaag.com/news/16.html" target="new">Dalton Maag</a> in Switzerland (along with a snippy remark about Helvetica and German car makers), about the TDC, about Typophile's <a href="http://typophile.com/node/13459" target="new">WikiBlast</a> project, and about FontShop's new mag. Not to mention the release of <a href="http://www.monotypefonts.com/opentype/gill/" target="new">Gill Sans Pro</a> in lovely OpenType format (anyone want to donate a copy to me?) and <a href="http://www.fontlab.com/Font-tools/FogLamp/" target="new">FogLamp</a>, a utility that lets you convert your old Fontographer files to FontLab ones.<br /><br />And of course I was going to talk about the certain thing Yves and I have been working on for TypeCon, and how proud I am to have been involved in that project. More on that from Yves himself. <br /><br />Instead, London is an odd place to be right now, and at the moment, matters type seem a little distant to me. But this is Typographer.org, a website for type, so I'm going to leave this week's post with a visual reminder of just how old the London Underground is, and how it will rebound and continue, and see itself and its passengers through all sorts of bad times, from war to terrorism. London really is no stranger to either, and the events of the last two weeks here are, if we look at our city's history, nothing new, and nothing that will defeat us.<br /><br />To London, a smelly polluted city, perched on an island on the west coast of Europe...<br /><br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/spotted-underground.jpg" /><br /><br />And yes, I shall be ranting about Adobe next week.<br /><br />Over to Yves, who wrote this little gem before leaving on one of those new fangled jetliner things to the New World's front door of New York, freshly stolen from the indigenous peoples...<br /><br /><span class="headings">TypeCon 2005 updates</span><br /><span class="credits">From Yves in NYC and David in London.<BR>Last updated: July 24th, 2005</span><br /><br />Make sure to check out <a href="http://typeradio.org/" target="new">Typeradio.org</a>. Yves was interviewed on Friday July 22nd by Liza Enebeis and Donald Beekman. The interview has appeared on the Podcast today, in 5 easy to handle segments.<br /><br />Typeradio has also covered: Mike Parker, Matthew Carter, John Downer, Christian Schwartz, Chester from Village/Vllg, Lucas de Groot, Gerry Lionidas, Mario Feliciano, Peter Bruhn, Jurgen Siebert, Tamye Riggs, Ed Rondthaler, Ken Barber, Ina Saltz, Carol Wahler and the chaps at Typophile. If you miss any, you can catch up on the Podcasts, which seem to appear about a day or so after they're broadcast live. Or about a year, in the case of Stephen's pretzel munching while talking about Typographica.<br /><br />Can't make it to TypeCon? Too poor by half? Me too! But if living vicariously via audio isn't enough, check out the Flickr <a href="http://flickr.com/groups/typecon/pool/" target="new">TypeCon pool images</a> and marvel at how handsome type people are. No, really...<br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />I must say I'm a little bemused by <a href="http://typophile.com/node/13307" target="new">some of the reactions</a> my comparative review of the Fleischmann revivals generated.<br /><br />Tina Parker for example said that <span style="font-style:italic;">"you need a lot of courage to say that the work by Matthew Carter is great, but not so so great"</span> and continued in her next post with <span style="font-style:italic;">"in my opinion there was a need to talk to Matthew Carter (...) then — when you have the point of view by Matthew Carter — you can say: I need to look at it separately. or not. and why."</span> Paul D. Hunt disagreed on the courage issue, saying <span style="font-style:italic;">"not really, you just need to have your own opinion and not be afraid to voice it."</span> but added <span style="font-style:italic;">"you should have some good reasons to make such a statement, however."</span><br />John Hudson also makes an interesting statement: <span style="font-style:italic;">"Judged as a Fleischman revival, I think Fenway is inevitably going to compare less favourably with most of the other designs that Yves reviews. But I’m not sure that it makes sense to judge Fenway in these terms."</span> At the risk of offending anyone (and please bear in mind I've got my tongue firmly planted in cheek here):<br /><br />What a total and utter load of <em>bollocks.</em><br /><br />First I want to make something clear. If I were a historian or a librarian or some academic whatever, it'd indeed make perfect sense to conduct interviews with all the type designers involved and on top of that do extensive research on the historical models and various references. But I'm not. I'm just your average graphic designer who happens to know a fair bit about type and decided to start reviewing new typefaces. This means I give my very personal opinion on them and try to not to be too air-headed at it. I just look at the typefaces and test drive them if I was so fortunate to receive a review license. Then I draw on my sufficient knowledge of contemporary type and limited knowledge of type history to put certain elements into their proper context and make comparisons where appropriate.<br /><br />What I try to do is approach the typefaces I review as an informed end user. Frankly, I don't think type designers would have much time left to actually design faces if everyone started calling and interviewing them prior to licensing their fonts. As far as I know, there is no need to talk to the designer if you're going to review a typeface. It would feel like I was asking them what I'm allowed to write about their fonts and what not. I don't want their point of view, I'd rather form my own. Because that's just what it is, nothing more.<br /><br />Then, regarding the courage issue. So far, judging from the reactions, people think I'm fair in my reviews, judging the typefaces, never the designers involved. If I happen to review a typeface less favourably, I'm confident its designer will see that I'm only voicing my opinion. Some people will agree with my review, others won't, but it's not like I'm some career maker or breaker. So no harm done.<br /><br />Lastly, in response to the comment that my approach of the review maybe didn't make that much sense, I beg to differ. There is no “proper” way to conduct a comparative review, or any other review for that matter. As it's my review I'm the one who decides how to do it. I was specifically asked to compare the typefaces in light of them being revivals of Fleischmann types — or at least “inspired by”. If any of the designers didn't want to have their designs compared to the Fleischmann models, they were free to not reveal the source of inspiration. But they all did. So if I decide to look at Fleischmann's types and start from there, that's my prerogative. It makes as much sense as I decide it does.<br /><br />OK, now that that's over with, I have an announcement to make about the reviews for this edition — you won't find them online. David and I have put together a keepsake booklet for TypeCon2005, featuring exclusive pre-release reviews of 11 typefaces or families. These are signed and numbered collector's items, produced in a limited edition of 200 copies, with a cover designed and silk-screened by hand by David. I'll be lugging 8,5 kilos worth of them in my suitcase and distribute them at the conference. Try to grab a hold of me and request your copy.<br /><br />We've produced this keepsake to give something back to the community. It is to say thank you for all the help that people have given us and the community in the past, for the support we have now, and for those who will follow the site into the future. So, after you've read the thingie, drop us a line and let us know what you think of this initiative.<br /><br />That's it for this installment of Bald Condensed. I have to pack my suitcase now, as I have a plane to catch in 16 hours. See you all in NYC!David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1119452325570557392005-06-22T07:58:00.000-07:002005-07-06T15:57:36.173-07:00Summer is here and as the fans start whirring I’m reminded of the old farmer’s saying, “Red sky at night – Shepherd’s delight. Drowned sheep in morning – Global warming”. As the early bird pricing for <a href="http://www.typecon.org" target="new">TypeCon 2005</a> draws to a close, and the weather continues hotting up for a blistering New York summer (no doubt Yves will be cracking open fire hydrants and dancing naked through the water come conference week), the TypeCon site went live earlier this month. Michael Bloomberg, mayor of NYC, has decided to declare 18-24th June as Type Week in its honour according to the TypeCon website. I searched the mayor’s website, but I’ve not been able to find any other information about what this may actually mean, but I think you’re allowed to drunkenly remove road signs.<br /><br />Hot on the heels of TypeCon, but in the considerably cooler Helsinki, ATypI’s conference (subtitled <a href="http://www.atypi.org/07_Helsinki" target="new">“On the edge”</a>) organisers have released preliminary details of their programs. The names of those speaking, as one would expect, are not to be sniffed at, and include Jean François Porchez, Peter Bilak, Sue Walker, Thomas Phinney, Sumner Stone, Gerry Leonidas, Adam Twardoch and Yuri Yarmola to name just a few. ATypI has a distinctive international theme to its conference this year, and as ever is the more intellectually rigorous of the two. And, as ever, entrance costs an awful lot more than TypeCon, but hey, you pay for quality and that’s certainly what you’ll get. No word yet, however, on if Helsinki’s local governance has declared it “Anal Kerning and Fastidious OpenType Coding Week” in its honour.<br /><br />Typographica’s Stephen Coles disagrees with my assessment, and is happy to share:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-style:italic;">ATypI’s speaker list is no more impressive than TypeCon’s. It’s horrendously overpriced. If one could afford both, I'd recommend attending both. But if you can only attend one, TypeCon is a much better value - even if you live in Europe!</span></blockquote><br /><br />Stephen’s perspectives are always welcome and respected, but in this case I would have to disagree. I firmly believe Europeans and North Americans have different values, and I think that this is reflected in the differences between the two conferences. Stephen does make a valid point about the quality of speakers, however - this has certainly improved leaps and bounds as TypeCon has matured. Indeed this year has seen such great names as Matthew Carter, Neville Brody, Ed Benguiat, Erik Spiekermann, John D. Berry, Simon Daniels, John Downer, Akira Kobayashi, Gerry Leonidas, Thomas Phinney, Adam Twardoch and even our very own Yves appear. While there will certainly be much of genuine worth at TypeCon, and while I accept that I may have been unlucky in my choices of slots to attend in the past, my overall impression is that ATypI provides more intellectual exploration of our field and less rockstar showcasing. The more European-slanted ATypI conference inevitably more accurately reflects the diversity inherent in its less homogenised cultural basis. Combined with Europe’s historically less commerical outlook, this produces a fundamentally different event where the balance between showcasing and intellectual exploration is shifted towards the latter. While ATypI may be more expensive, I believe it provides visitors with more in terms of rigour, and therefore a more European vision of what value means. Of course Helsinki won't have freedom fries on the menu, which is just a crying shame, huh?<br /><br />Fellow Londoners, have you spotted Adobe’s rash of advertising on the London Underground recently? It seems that after its Macromedia takeover, it would like to expand its “customer base” further, but interestingly not wider. Adobe are directly targeting… designers… in mainstream advertising environments, with adverts depicting various creatives lay around on beds all day trying to come up with ideas. Er, Bruce, you’ve just bought Macromedia. Who else are we meant to be buying software off?<br /><br />Some of you’ll have notice the addition of Typographer.org’s very first advert in the top right of the homepage. After 6 years of avoiding any form of advert, the Make Poverty History campaign seemed like an appropriate exception to our own rules. If you like our work here and want to say thanks, consider redistributing some of your wealth to those who need $3 more than you need a skinny decaf latte. Every donation comes with a fluffy warm feeling inside, that can only increase the more often and more generously you give!<br /><br />Speaking of fluffy warm feelings inside, here’s Yves…<br /><br /><span class="credits">Updated on June 26, 2005 - Stephen Coles’ comment and paragraph 3 added</span><br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />This week’s review is going to be weird for me, as this is the first time I’ve specifically been asked to review a certain typeface. Not only that, but people requested I’d compare <a href="http://www.typography.com/" target="new">Hoefler & Frere-Jones</a>’ long awaited <span class="bodytextyvesbold">Mercury</span> to two previous Fleischmann revivals: <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/people/ChristianSchwartz" target="new">Christian Schwartz</a>’s also quite recent <span class="bodytextyvesbold">Farnham</span>, released through <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/" target="new">The Font Bureau, Inc.</a> and <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/people/MatthewCarter" target="new">Matthew Carter</a>’s <span class="bodytextyvesbold">Fenway</span> which he designed as a replacement for Times Roman in Sports Illustrated and which is distributed by The Font Bureau, Inc. as well. I decided to throw in two more contenders. <a href="http://www.dutchtypelibrary.nl/Kaiser.html" target="new">Erhard Kaiser</a>’s <span class="bodytextyvesbold">DTL Fleischmann</span> appears to be the odd one out as it is the most faithful (and quirky) digitisation. As I was gearing up to write this review, <a href="http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/index.html" target="new">Mário Feliciano</a> sent me a PDF of his as of yet unreleased <span class="bodytextyvesbold">Eudald</span>. This family is based on the work of Eudald Pradell, a Spanish imitator of Fleischmann, and is the only one that sports the wonky capitals which can also be found in DTL’s version. So five typefaces in total will contend for the coveted title of <span style="font-style:italic;">Most Totally Awesome Fleischmann Digitisation™</span>.<br /><br />Before starting this review, I stressed in both my e-mail communication with the concerned designers and on my <a href="http://typophile.com/node/12306" target="new">Typophile Blog</a> that I have no academic background whatsoever, and people needn’t expect any roaring theories nor historical contexts. Somehow this must’ve had the same effect as waving a red flag in front of a bull, because it prompted both Hrant H. Papazian and Christian Schwartz to send me scans from original type specimens by Johann Michael Fleischmann and by Jean-François Rosart, his rival at Enschedé. Here’s what Hrant has to say about the level of authenticity of these revivals.<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-style:italic;">Since you wrote “I review type from a gut feeling and using common sense” (to which I say, thank you!) I won’t get into too much historical stuff... except to address the nature of making a revival to begin with, and how that might be relevant to the various Fleischmanns out there.<br /><br />To me they all seem like great fonts. But they miss the genius element that makes Fleischmann more than just another style to pillage from the past. Even the DTL version — which is indeed the most funky — ignores the really juicy stuff. One can understand, since I think considerations of sales make it a bad idea to include what most people would think is “just a mistake”.<br /><br />On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the huge missing piece: the incredible amount of divergence that Fleischmann included in his fonts, especially later in his career, and especially when he wasn’t designing for a specific commission. Nobody talks about this, probably because they think it was... “just a mistake”. But how can such a good designer make such a mistake, so far into his career? To me it had to be intentional, and the only explanation I can think of is that he was shooting for a higher level of readability.<br /><br />The font of his most worthy of study is the #65 in the Enschedé collection. I have their glorious 1908 specimen book, and it can also be found in the 1978. If you look at the bottom line in the attached file, try to explain the stroke stress of the “o”, the too-small bowls of the “b”, “p”, etc., and the greatly varying serif structures (which admittedly have been revived). Besides the question of what the hell Fleischmann was thinking, more relevant to your review might be the question of why such funkiness has been ironed out, and what such a “neutering” implies, both in terms of fidelity, and for the user.</span></blockquote><br />Then Christian Schwartz raises another interesting issue by pointing out that:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-style:italic;">(...) while these families all have roots in Fleischmann’s types, Mercury and Fenway have quite a bit of Rosart influence as well, especially in the italics. (...) the underlying history is interesting. Rosart had a bitter one-sided rivalry with Fleischmann, so it’s bizarre (from a historical, if not aesthetic standpoint) to see revivals that fuse their work together.</span></blockquote><br />Both these e-mails got me intrigued, which means that I eventually <span style="font-style:italic;">did</span> end up studying historical reference material. Which also is the reason why this review is way late. Sorry’boutthat.<br /><br />Let’s start with Edhard Kaiser’s digitisation <a href="http://www.dutchtypelibrary.nl/FleischmannDRegular.html" target="new">DTL Fleischmann</a>. According to the DTL website this revival has been dubbed <span style="font-style:italic;">“Kaisers königliche Fleischmann”</span> in Germany. For those who don’t understand the German play of words <span style="font-style:italic;">(“Kaiser” means Emperor and “königliche” royal)</span> this is a way of saying his version is considered to be, like, really really <span style="font-style:italic;">really</span> good. No review copies of the fonts for this one, but the extensive 80-page <a href="http://www.dutchtypelibrary.nl/PDF.html" target="new">downloadable PDF</a> proved to be very helpful.<br /><br />The Germans are spot on. DTL Fleischmann does the source material justice, capturing nicely the tics and quirks of the original. Most importantly it features the peculiar “ornate” serifs on the caps and retains the specific flavour of some key characters, like the lc <span style="font-style:italic;">y</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">g</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">S</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">s</span>, italic cap <span style="font-style:italic;">A</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">V</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Y</span>, cap <span style="font-style:italic;">Q</span>, that funky section sign... Me being a total ligature junkie, you can imagine how pleased I was to discover a truckload of those are included. I do feel though that the small caps are too small. And could somebody please explain me why we still need a quaint <span style="font-style:italic;">s</span>?<br /><br />As much as I appreciate the idiosyncrasies of the DTL digitisation, I’m not so fond of the very soft and rounded outline treatment. Of course, you can discuss <span style="font-style:italic;">ad nauseam</span> if the specific line quality of the contours were intended or merely a restriction imposed by the then available technology. To overly simplify, would Fleischmann for example have designed angular or round corners if he had access to today’s tools? After all, we mustn’t overlook the fact that these revivals are going to be output digitally, which is an entirely different beast than metal. Beautiful as the DTL Fleischmann family may be (hey, I’m being <span style="font-style:italic;">very</span> nit-picky here) it gives the impression of a rather slavish and conventional interpretation. The basic shapes are spunky in spades, but I still would’ve preferred some more chutzpah, some more bite to the outlines.<br /><br />Let’s now move over to the American interpretations.<br /><br />Matthew Carter’s <span class="bodytextyvesbold">Fenway</span> appears to be incorporating the most Rosart influences. Though I prefer his roman cap <span style="font-style:italic;">Q</span> from Farnham’s and Mercury’s, generally speaking the capitals are so “contaminated” by the Rosart model that at times they look a bit out of place. Especially the leg on the cap <span style="font-style:italic;">K</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">R</span>, as well as on the lc <span style="font-style:italic;">k</span> oddly remind me of Goudy’s work and look a bit tame. I’m not so enthusiastic about the subdued italics neither, as they lack the calligraphic quality of the originals. The very best thing about Fenway are the small capitals. Making them slightly bigger than your average small caps is a brilliant move and makes perfect sense when you keep in mind that this family was designed specifically for editorial use in Sports Illustrated.<br /><br />Please don’t get me wrong. Fenway is a great family, expertly designed and of the highest quality, with the extra Banner optical size on top of the Display as a nice added bonus. But possibly because it is a commissioned type family, designed within certain editorial constraints, it has become the most mainstream and “slick” adaptation. Certain creative decisions must’ve steered it away from the Fleischmann model, insofar that it makes me wonder if I’m doing Fenway a disservice by including it in this comparative review instead of looking at it separately.<br /><br />At least Christian Schwartz doesn’t pussyfoot around with <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Farnham" target="new">Farnham</a>. Now <span style="font-style:italic;">that’s</span> a revival with attitude. When an ink trap or an optical correction is called for, he takes no quarter and really goes for it. It becomes an integral part of the design, thus playing a key role in defining the identity of the typefaces. This creates an obvious tension in the character shapes, which causes the type to sparkle.<br /><br />Furthermore he succeeds in incorporating some defining Fleischmann characteristics without resorting to overly literal interpretations. It really is all in minute details. To name a single example: Christian is the one who gets the cap <span style="font-style:italic;">A</span> right, as the cross-bar is too low in both Fenway and Mercury. Also the fact that his italic is the most accurate plays in his favour. As far as the numerals go, I understand the rationale behind Fenway and Mercury to provide only lining figures (in Fenway’s case hybrid numerals more accurately) but I still think it’s handy that Farnham provides old style numerals as well. My only gripe, as with the two other American Fleischmann revivals, is that those peculiar cap serifs didn’t make this version neither.<br /><br />H&FJ’s <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/mercurydisplay/index.html" target="new">Mercury</a> is a glorious achievement. I won’t go into details, just go over to their website and read the <a href="http://www.typography.com/catalog/mercurytext/grades_duplexing.html" target="new">Special Features</a> section, especially about the Grades. This is an approach to type design that is guaranteed to give me a woody. The whole family of faces is so well thought out and yet seems so obvious. It might well be that Hoefler & Frere-Jones have set a new standard for type systems for editorial use.<br /><br />It goes without saying that these are gorgeous faces, but unfortunately there’s quite a bit of that specific Fleischmann flavour missing. The most obvious is the nifty ear on the lc <span style="font-style:italic;">g</span> that’s lacking in the romans and some quirks that were ironed out here and there. As in Fenway, the italics bear the Rosart mark. Though this makes them less true to the Fleischmann model, some novel interpretations keep them interesting. For example the italic <span style="font-style:italic;">a</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">y</span> — which were among my benchmark characters for comparison — are quite beautiful.<br /><br />The skill and dedication displayed in Mercury are tremendous and the faces look incredibly good. Still, one gets the impression it came with a cost. This is a perfect example of what I call “sand-papered to death”. It seems as if the typefaces lost some of their soul in the process. The root of the problem might lie in the fact that Mercury was in development over such a long period of time. When composing a song you go through a similar phase. You have to compose the music and write the lyrics, learn how to play the song well, then get familiar with it so you can perform it on stage or commit it to a recording. But when you’re living with your song for too long, constantly developing and refining it, you risk losing some of the freshness. The cost of being able to play it flawlessly is the loss of its initial spontaneity.<br /><br />Same goes for Mercury. But - boy - does - it - set - smoothly, like a baby’s bum. I realised that when I was reading the beautifully designed License Agreement, all set in tiny Mercury. Yup, I read it all. No, really! See, usually I’ve got a problem with overly slick typefaces. I recently tried to set a brochure with Minion Pro but in the end I gave up and chucked it. I thought I had every reason not to like test-driving Mercury, but to my surprise I had absolutely no problem. The overall impression on the page is very refined, very elegant, in contrast with the more energetic and lively Farnham. It’s very pleasant to use and read.<br /><br />Before I finish this review, I’d like to take a quick look at <span class="bodytextyvesbold">Eudald</span>, as this is the only face that can go head-to-head with the literal interpretation of DTL’s version. Technically speaking it should be disqualified for being a revival of a typeface by an <span style="font-style:italic;">imitator</span> of Fleischmann’s. The reason to include it is that I totally agree with the approach Mário took in translating the Eudald Pradell designs to digital outlines. Instead of sticking too closely to the source material, he nicely succeeded in distilling the right elements that characterise the Fleischmann model and made them his own. Although he basically used the same approach as Carter, Schwartz and Hoefler & Frere-Jones, credit goes to him for not chickening out and keeping all the idiosyncratic, slightly off kilter elements in the design. He created a face that is unmistakably Fleischmann-esque, but ultimately is its own beast. [Click <a href="http://www.typographer.org/Eudald1.pdf">here</a> for the PDF Specimen]<br /><br />To conclude, I first want to say that this was a very tough review for me, an experiment I’m not likely to repeat in the near future. All the typefaces are top-quality, and having to single one out is nigh impossible. DTL Fleischmann is a very faithful revival, maybe a bit too literal to my taste. It is the “goody-two-shoes” of the bunch. Fenway is a perfect workhorse face, but ultimately too “mainstream” and lacking the specific Fleischmann flavour I was looking for in this comparison. On a character level I prefer Farnham for its audacity and for staying the most true to the spirit of Fleischmann, and I really wanted it to come out triumphantly. In all fairness, I feel obliged to say that the test settings won me over for Mercury, so it’s an either/or situation. On a conceptual level Eudald is the most successful in converting the Fleischmann model to a contemporary digital design while retaining all the peculiar details.<br /><br /><span class="credits">I'd like to express my thanks to Hrant H. Papazian and Christian Schwartz for providing me with visual reference material and background information; Mr. Matthew Carter for sending me PDFs of Fenway; Robb Ogle and Jonathan Hoefler for sending me further background information and review licenses of respectively the Farnham and Fenway full families, and the Mercury full family; and last but not least Mário Feliciano for spicing up the mix with some Portuguese flavour.</span>David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1116682782889947282005-05-21T06:34:00.000-07:002005-05-23T08:46:10.310-07:00It seems that Spring 2005 is a season for bombshells. First Adobe gobbles up Macromedia in an anti-competitive splurge that would make Bill Gates himself proud, now FontLab has bought up Fontographer, the long-shelved dinosaur of a font editor, from Macromedia.<br /><br />It seems that the guys over there on the other side of Europe think it will fit nicely in their portfolio between FontLab and its young sibling TypeTool. What will be interesting is how FontLab will rationalise, if indeed they do at all, the interface design between their products as a completely new codebase enters their portfolio. More fun surely to follow, and we’ll keep you posted, but for now over at Typographica, all-round FOG expert <a href ="http://typographi.com/001001.php" target="new">Stephen Moye</a> gives his thoughts.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/hatfactory.jpg" /><br /><br />Sticking with Eastern Europe a little longer, Filip Blazek emailed in to publicize his <a href="http://diacritics.typo.cz" target="new">diacritics project</a>. In his own words..<br /><br /><blockquote><i>Unfortunately many type designers creates horrible accents and such fonts are not usable for type setting Central or Eastern European languages. So I decided to do something with the diacritics topic - and that decision was the beginning of my Diacritics project.<br /><br />On April 16th 2005 I introduced first results to attendants of a conference Typo.Graphic.Beirut. The aim of this project is to build a free on-line database of knowledge and experience - how to design correct diacritics: what size, shape and position an accent should have. Text concerning the history, use, languages and also some technical information is related to each diacritical mark. The project web site is based on Wikipedia: after a simple registration, anyone can append or correct any published text or upload pictures. There is no need for special knowledge of HTML code, the editing is also similar to Wikipedia.</i></blockquote><br /><br />Elsewhere, Typophile has relaunched for its 5th birthday earlier in the month. The site, still in beta, has been redesigned from the ground up and now features a Typowiki, a news aggregator and a less buggy iteration of the mighty Forums we have all grown so accustomed to.<br /><br />Microsoft are keen for you to <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/resources/design/ClearType.html" target="new">visit their new design site</a> that amongst other things is discussing their ClearType designs. ClearType is starting to show up all over now, not just on those of you unfortunate enough to run XP (such as I). Their Windows Mobile 5 platform that was announced earlier this month appears to also be running ClearType, if the screenshots are to be believed. So now you can enjoy sub-pixel anti-aliased typography on your mobile phone. I think I’ll be sticking to Symbian and Nokia Series 60 thanks all the same, but its good to see that newer more pervasive personal information devices such as smartphones and PDAs are also benefiting from advances in typographic technology.<br /><br />Now over to Yves, who will never be happy with just 5 good faces...<br /><br /><span class="credits">Sources: The Register, Engadget, Filip Blazek, MSTypo, Typophile, FontLab</span><br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />I want to thank everyone who took the time to drop me a line (and in some cases a lengthy e-mail) or react over iChat. It looks like I’m going to be doing what I do for the foreseeable future. One particularly insightful reaction was sent to me by Forrest L Norvell, who runs a great <a href="http://www.typomancy.org/" target="new">type-related blog</a> himself. He made some valid points which I would like to address here.<br /><br /><blockquote><em>I do take issue with one of the points raised in your article. You harp on the notion of “classic typefaces”, and provide a list of stodgy old “classics” and contrast them with modern alternatives. I think classics are classics for a reason. Like any other visual medium (or, really, any creative medium at all), typefaces are used to evoke moods, feelings, and nostalgic associations with the past. In semiotic terms, typefaces themselves signify things having nothing to do with the text they set. Clarendon and Futura, for instance, both have particularly complex webs of association surrounding them. I licensed Monotype’s Van Dijck recently because it reminds me of studying art history in school, as well as its idiosyncratic (and beautiful) italics.</em></blockquote><br />First of all, I must confess I polarised my point of view in order to get it across. It was a deliberate attempt to jolt some people out of their lethargy, so excuse me for being a bit heavy-handed about it. I <em>will</em> stand my ground though.<br /><br />Indeed there’s a reason certain classics became classics. That doesn’t mean they still have the same relevance today as they did in their heydays. When talking about evoking certain moods or feelings, I see no reason at all why this couldn’t be done with fresh faces. Even in semiotic terms, there always are several solutions, including contemporary ones, for any given typographic problem. There’s almost nothing Clarendon does that Oxtail can’t do. Agreed, in some cases — when a design refers to a specific historical context — a classic face is called for and even may be the sole option. But I believe these occurrences to be <span style="font-style:italic;">very</span> rare and far between.<br /><br />What I’m aiming at is a reversal of priorities. Instead of instinctively going for the classics, make new type the default and only turn to classics if there really is no other option. Most of the time graphic designers use the “classics” just because they’re familiar with them and know how they will perform in any given situation. This conservative attitude is very uncharacteristic for professionals who work in an artistic field where experimentation and innovation are crucial qualities. This reminds me of the number of graphic designers whose loyalty to QuarkXPress is solely based on their familiarity with the shortcuts, and disregard completely the fact that InDesign outperforms QXP any day of the week. Granted, just like I still listen to Led Zeppelin once every few moths, strictly speaking you <span style="font-style:italic;">can</span> still use Futura. But you’d better have a <span style="font-style:italic;">damn good reason</span> for that. And it’d better not be because some lazy art director mistakes complacency and lack of imagination for “refinement” and “timeless beauty”. I simply won’t accept that.<br /><br />And then of course there’s the zealots, the ones that foolishly profess that they only need five timeless faces for their complete artistic output. The ones that, blinded by their faith in the Modernist dogma, are oblivious to the fact that typography has a thousand different voices and is ever-evolving, constantly reinventing itself. All I can say to them is to wake up and smell the coffee. I doubt they’re listening. You’ll have to excuse me for occasionally wanting to punch Massimo Vignelli in the nose.<br /><br />OK, that’s <em>more</em> than enough soap-boxing, on with the review! This time I’m going to cheat a bit and spotlight a type family that isn’t available to the general public — well, at least not before 2011. I know, I know, it’s not exactly fair to let you drool over some beautiful but unobtainable type family, but I just couldn’t help myself. So sue me.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.typofonderie.com/alphabets/view/Dereon" target="new">Deréon</a> is the corporate typeface designed by Porchez Typofonderie for R&B superstar Beyoncé and her mother Tina Knowles’ fashion line House of Deréon. It is the first type family Jean François Porchez developed with Tom Grace.<br /><br />All the way through the delightful PDFs Jean François sent me, I could picture them giggling like kids, showing each other alternate glyphs they designed and nifty details they added. <em>(Well, actually that kind of conduct would be very weird for a seasoned type designer and his new associate, but you know what I mean.)</em>They must have had quite a bit of fun during the development of the fonts, and it shows. The feature-rich OpenType fonts are filled to the brim with typo-goodness, with alternates, ligatures, swash characters and dingbats galore. Some alternate characters are just too good to be true, like the open upright “Q”, the loopy “o”, the script-like “s”. The feature which immediately struck me and which I like the most are the counters, whose clearly defined “corners” — in conjunction with the triangular serifs — add sparkle and spunk to the faces. It’s sharp, it’s lively and reflects perfectly the spirit of R&B and hip-hop music. Deréon is a prime example of a typeface that was designed according to a clearly defined concept that <em>does</em> work.<br /><br />The type family is like a refined, rich chocolate cake: simply delicious, but to use with restraint if you want to avoid an indigestion. I can easily see people overdoing it with the ligatures, swashes and alternate characters, so all will depend on the House of Deréon designers’ ability to handle the faces. Like the French alcohol ads say: <em>“A apprécier avec modération”</em>.<br /><br />Deréon rekindles my faith in commissioned type design for advertising. It proves that this particular field still has room for imaginative, daring, personable work, and isn’t restricted to the maiming of classic faces (Monotype’s <a href="http://www.monotype.co.uk/DynamicPage/View.cfm?PageName=opel1" target="new">Metro impersonation</a> for Opel), the mimicking of classic faces (BMW’s <a href="http://www.daltonmaag.com/browse/custom/clients/bmw?offset=1" target="new">Helvetica look-alike</a>) or plain rip-offs (Suomi Type Foundry’s <a href="http://www.type.fi/SuomiCommTypes.html" target="new">corporate typeface for Elisa</a> looks <a href="http://www.fountain.nu/catalogue/mercury.asp" target="new">awfully familiar</a>). Jean François once again proves he is one of the great contemporary type designers, now let’s hope others will pick up on it and follow his lead.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1114974221145206022005-05-01T12:01:00.000-07:002005-05-18T09:18:30.436-07:00The type world is shocked by the untimely and sudden passing of <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=virtual.content&area=fonts&content=fonts/tribute/EvertBloemsma.html" target="new">Evert Bloemsma</a>. He was one of the rare few whose designs were not just aesthetic exercises, but the results of extensive research on the mechanisms of reading. Although they were borne out of investigation, his <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/?fuseaction=catalog.fonts&searchID=95&searchby=designer" target="new">typefaces</a> looked deceptively “un-experimental”, as he succeeded to turn these experiments into beautiful and usable faces. He is best known for his FontFont releases: FF Balance, FF Cocon, FF Avance and <a href="http://www.evertbloemsma.nl/legato/about_legato/about_legato.asp" target="new">FF Legato</a>, which garnered universal acclaim and is a <a href="http://www.tdc.org/news/2005prelimresults.html" target="new">TDC05</a> winner. His passing is a great loss for contemporary type design.<br /><br />Monotype Imaging has established the <a href="http://www.monotypeimaging.com/about/pr_display_new.asp?year=2005&pr=242" target="new">Monotype Foundation</a>, a non-profit company dedicated to the worldwide advancement of the typographic arts. Part of its objective is to raise funds in order to support a variety of typographic initiatives, such as educational scholarships and research programs. The Foundation will release reproductions of original type drawings from well-known designers as limited edition, the first being Eric Gill’s original drawing of the Gill Sans Bold Extra Condensed typeface. This must be what I was saving this empty wall for.<br /><br />The review of the eagerly awaited version 5 of <a href="http://www.fontlab.com/Font-tools/FontLab-4.6/" target="new" title="Professional font editor for Mac and for Windows">FontLab</a> in the latest edition of <a href="http://www.magtypo.cz/english.html" target="new" title="Bi-monthly magazine on typography, graphic design and visual communication.">TYPO</a> is causing a ripple of excitement amongst type designers. By the looks of it this will be a substantial upgrade, with lots of added functionality and a series of improvements that will take care of the more tedious and boring aspects of type production. The MS Windows version is expected to be released this spring, with the Mac version to follow a few months later, possibly in the fall. Also in this issue a comprehensive and richly illustrated article about the work of <a href="http://www.p22.com/terminal/preissigintro.html" target="new">Vojtech Preissig</a>. Recommended reading.<br /><br />When <a href="http://www.typography.net/" target="new">Jeremy Tankard</a> returned to the office after a week off, he thought he had covered for any disasters. What he hadn’t anticipated was <a href="http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/22796.html" target="new">a review on CreativePro</a> of his TypeBookOne specimen, which caused his mailbox to be flooded by a torrent of e-mail requests for the booklet. Which is odd, as he never really aimed for it to be purchased on its own. It is currently supplied with all direct web sales, but can now be ordered separately by e-mailing Jeremy. Get your hands on a copy while they last.<br /><br />And finally Typophile (typography’s discussion central) is on temporary hiatus in preparation of the 5-year relaunch on 05.05.05. Stay tuned.<br /><br />That’s it for my guest stint on the Digest. David’s already back from The Netherlands, but this episode remains mine, sorry dude! :) So, over to Yves now, who this time managed to mention sexual activity in his column and — in the absence of David — started talking about himself in the third person...<br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />I fear people may feel I’m too long-winded. At least that’s how I interpreted a recent remark that only readers who are <span style="font-style:italic;">really</span> interested in my reviews will read them in their entirety. I do realise I often get carried away when discussing new type designs and typography in general. Fair enough, if you agree that I should write more concise reviews, drop me a line. I’d rather have more people reading and enjoying my column than I would have me performing literary masturbation. I’ll get on a stage behind my drum kit if I want my ego stroked.<br /><br />Once more, the review of a type family benefited from me having the opportunity to properly test-drive review copies of the fonts. When I first saw Ricardo Santos’ <a href="http://www.veer.com/search/results.aspx?keyword=lisboa*&producttype=typ&clarify=false" target="new">Lisboa</a>, I thought it was a pretty, decent neo-humanist sans, but nothing more. As I received beta versions to play around with, I decided to use those to set some lengthy text with it. The results made me reconsider my first impression in its favour.<br /><br />The type family comes in two variants: <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=FOT0000080" target="new">Lisboa</a> and <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=FOT0000081" target="new">Lisboa Sans</a>. This is quite peculiar, because the differences between them are ever so subtle. Lisboa has hooked terminals and a curved tail on the Q and leg on the R, features Lisboa Sans’ simpler shapes don’t have. The distinction between the two variants is more pronounced in the italics. While Lisboa Sans italic is more conventional, the structure of Lisboa Italic is truly Latin, akin to classic Spanish cursives.<br /><br />I thought the light weight would be too skinny, but the text setting proved my concerns were unfounded. Still I would’ve liked the bold to be a tad bolder. The large number of ligatures are a treat, and as I’m a total ligature bitch, I substituted all of them. Though they are not indispensable, they did improve the setting, so it’s nice the choice is up to the user. The <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=FOT0000079" target="new">Dingbats</a> are a nice addition as well. Lisboa is elegant and stylish, with a dash of Southern sensuality. It sets smoothly, is very pleasant to read, and is just idiosyncratic enough to make it stand out. I prefer the “regular” to the Sans as it possesses more zest and reveals its Latin temperament better.<br /><br />As I wrote in the previous instalment, only recently I found out that the Fedra family of typefaces got augmented with <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/site/fonts.php?id=10" target="new">Fedra Display 1</a> (“1” meaning <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/site/font_in_development.php?id=35" target="new">more Display versions</a> will follow.) Since the original release of Fedra Sans four years ago, Peter Bil’ak has been expanding his brilliant type system, whose design combines Eastern European temperament and a strong sense of style with Dutch elegance and restraint. Its well-defined personality doesn’t impair its usefulness, as it works well in wildly varying settings. The family is without a doubt one of the classics of the turn of the millennium.<br /><br />True to the current fashion in display type, Fedra Display comes in two anorexic weights — Hairline and Thin, both of them available in three widths — Regular, Condensed and Compressed. The new versions make the stylistic details that make Fedra such an appealing design really shine. The feature-rich OpenType fonts contain loads of delectable goodies, such as an expanded set of lowercase ligatures, <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/site/font_experts.php?family_id=10&id=188" target="new">300 capital ligatures</a> (eat your heart out ITC Avant Garde Gothic), and <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/site/font_features.php?family_id=10&id=188" target="new">a special set of common prepositions and articles</a> in various languages. Now this is what I call “with all the trimmings”.<br /><br />Truth to be told, I actually hate reviewing typefaces that are so good I can’t think of anything interesting to say about them. But this release stirred up something else though. It reminded me of how the availability of ITC Avant Garde Gothic Alternates was announced triumphantly in a FontShop newsletter some months ago. Honestly, who needs an awkward geometric face from the seventies that frankly doesn’t even look so good, when fresh new fonts like Fedra Display cover the same grounds, look a lot better and outperform them effortlessly?<br /><br />That’s what exasperates me about those recurring “Which five fonts couldn’t you do without?” threads at the Typophile General Discussions forum. Always the same old faces! As if there wasn’t anything decent released in the last five years. It’s just like people who still pretend The Beatles are the greatest band on Earth and artists stopped producing good music in the seventies. No way! We are living exciting times, with experimentation, innovation and cross-pollination producing thrilling music and typefaces. Of course there’s a lot more rubbish as well, but the good stuff is really good. Who needs Gill Sans when you have Bliss? Garamond when you have FTF Merlo? DIN when you have Sophisto? Sabon when you have MvB Verdigris? Helvetica when you have Parisine? Futura when you have Neutraface? I could go on and on and on, believe me.<br /><br />It’s long overdue we reconsider our type preferences and usage. Most of us graphic designers and typographers operate as small or medium sized businesses. Most innovative type designers operate as small or medium sized businesses. So, stop lining the pockets of big, faceless type foundries who stopped innovating long ago — I’m not naming any names, you know who you are — or more accurately, money-grubbing, faceless shareholders with no interest whatsoever in developing the field. They all seem to suffer from the same disease that plagues Hollywood, content with releasing the Next tired remake of a classic blockbuster, or clogging the market with corny genre faces. If you’ve read this far I’m quite confident you didn’t just skip to the last paragraph, so send me an e-mail with the subject line: Enough with the feature-rich OpenType blandness!<br /><br />Instead, support independent type designers and foundries, just like you appreciate your clients supporting <span style="font-style:italic;">you</span> instead of taking their assignments to the big design agencies. Because it’s those independents who are advancing the field and providing us with the truly good stuff.Yves Petershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06503653323855137363noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1113823760705968102005-04-18T04:27:00.000-07:002005-04-19T13:41:47.616-07:00Today it was announced that <a href="http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html" target="new">Adobe has taken over Macromedia</a>. I am sure this will come as a surprise to many people, and not the kind of surprise that involves cake, jelly and ice cream either. Unless you’re a Adobe or Macromedia shareholder, of course. CEO Bruce Chizen cited cost savings of a streamlined (a nice synonym for “sacked”) workforce and by integrating their respective product lines. I think we can all take educated guesses as to what “integration” means in this instance.<br /><br />So there is a good chance that this may be the end of the line for many of our industry’s applications. Dreamweaver and Flash will surely survive, but what about other applications that more clearly clash with one another. Freehand must surely now be under threat – not only would it take sales from Illustrator, its natural competitor, but also it takes sales from their DTP packages too. Many of us who cannot afford a top-flight DTP package as well as a vector package have come to rely on the multi-page abilities of Freehand to save our financial skins.<br /><br />Maybe it’s not all doom and gloom. Flash may well yet get a user interface that people can actually use – After Effects lent its far more usable interface techniques to Flash’s defunct competitor LiveMotion, and one can hope that some of that timeline interface experience will also make it over to Flash’s development team. On the subject of Flash, we should all watch very carefully to see how it all will be made to work with Adobe’s existing PDF and SVG technologies. Macromedia had been making inroads into eDocument technologies, and while Adobe maybe king of that arena, Macromedia was the vector web king. <br /><br />I’m afraid I rather keep seeing dark clouds. To me, this is akin to Coke buying Pepsi - another industry where two major players hold the dominant share of a market – at least they could compete against each other, fighting for many of the same customers but also relying on differing tastes and market segments. Now, we’ll all just drink coke, and maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll release the odd vanilla or lemon flavour variety. <br /><br />Other news, in brief. Right Brain Left Brain has published an <a href="http://www.eurekaville.com/blog/2005/04/interview-mark-simonson.html" target="new">interview with Mark Simonson</a> this week, MS has started flogging Verdana, Georgia, et al (fonts they once gave away free for download on their website, so I’ll be buggered if I’m giving a link to the sales site), Shelley Gruendler and Caroline Archer have become the new executive directors over at ATypI (and who also happen to be half of TypeEvents, who also just happen to have won the contract to run future ATypI conferences), and finally, a new sentence. <a href="http://www.stbride.org/" target="new">St Bride</a> are running a lecture and book launch entitled “Harry Carter – Man of Type”. Written and presented by Martyn Thomas, its £5 to get in (£3 for concessions) and is on Tuesday 26th April. Easy to remember – it’s the day after my birthday. Which reminds me, Yves shall be taking the floor next week while I enjoy the pleasures of the Netherlands, but for now, over to the Belgian omnivore himself, who this week tells us blatant lies about a time when he wasn’t bald in a land where <i>cojones</i> is French...<br /><br /><span class="credits">Sources: The Register, MS Typo News, Typophile.com</span><br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><br />Before I get to the meat of it — sorry ’bout that David — I have to get something off my chest. <span style="font-style:italic;">Thank you!</span> Thank you Sumner Stone, for at last providing an alternative to that icky lowercase <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&displayfontid=EF.1112.0.1&attributes.sampleSize=48&sampleText=a&sampleSize=388" target="new">‘a’</a> with the newly released <a href="http://www.stonetypefoundry.com/html_pages/ITC%20Stone%20Humanist%20Specim.html" target="new">ITC Stone Humanist Sans</a>. I know, I realise this is not exactly fair of me. <a href="http://www.stonetypefoundry.com/html_pages/ITC%20Stone%20Sans%20Specimen.html" target="new">ITC Stone Sans</a> was very much a product of its time. Don’t we all wish we were dressed by today’s fashion standards in those embarrassing twenty year old photographs? Don’t we all cringe at the sight of our silly hairdos? (Especially me: those were the days I still <span style="font-style:italic;">had</span> hair.)<br /><br />But still, thanks for taking care of that long overdue repair. It’s pretty impressive how a <a href="http://www.stonetypefoundry.com/html_pages/ITCStoneOverview.html" target="new">simple enhancement</a> can salvage a face. Now if only you could do the same thing with <a href="http://www.stonetypefoundry.com/html_pages/ITC%20Stone%20Serif%20Specimen.html" target="new">ITC Stone Serif</a>...<br /><br />Then another thing, and I do hope you don’t mind me bitching and whining. Why doesn’t anyone tell me about their new releases? A friend just pointed me to Peter Bil’ak’s <a href="http://www.typotheque.com/fedra_sans_display_1/" target="new">latest addition</a> to his delightful Fedra that I didn't know of. Having about one hundred foundries in my bookmarks makes it difficult to keep track of all of them on a weekly basis. People might start to question my objectivity as I seem to review mostly Veer releases. Truth to be told, that’s only because my Typophile buddy <a href="http://www.splorp.com/splorp/blog/" target="new">Grant</a> gives me a heads up every time Veer’s got something new coming out. If you want your typeface reviewed, just notify me within a month after its release and send me something to work with: hi-res PDFs, outlines, review copies... whatever enables me to properly study your face. It <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> free exposure and should cause extra traffic to your website, so you can’t lose. Unless <a href="http://www.fountain.nu/designers/peterbruhn.asp" target="new">Peter</a>’s right and I’m turning into the most feared type critic on the Northern hemisphere. Yeah, right.<br /><br />On to this week’s review, which took a surprising turn I must say.<br /><br />There was quite a bit of a excitement surrounding <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/people/XavierDupre" target="new">Xavier Dupré</a>’s new <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Zingha" target="new">Zingha</a>, released through The Font Bureau, Inc. This might have to do with the news that his stunning <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=absara&image.x=0&image.y=0" target="new">FF Absara</a> took honors in this year's <a href="http://www.tdc.org/news/2005prelimresults.html" target="new">TDC2</a> type design competition.<br /><br />So I headed over to the Font Bureau, Inc. website to meet this new typeface. It was obvious right away Zingha shared a lot of stylistic characteristics with FF Absara. The design crackled with energy and displayed the trademark curves and angles of a Xavier Dupré creation. I found it all looking very fresh and vibrant, until I clicked through to the <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Zingha/more" target="new">second sample page</a> and discovered — shock horror — what I experienced as a complete mess of varying serif shapes and aggressive protrusions; a very disturbing sight. Believe it or not, I even got angry over it. That pointy tail on the a, the sharp ear on the g, the crude triangular serifs, all those different angles that defied logic and historical reference were a very disturbing sight, and I also took exception to the obvious Matrix references in the italic and Deco weights.<br /><br />As I clicked through the sample pages I gradually calmed down, to finally, at the <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Zingha/more/3" target="new">last page</a>, come to the conclusion that this seemingly unholy mess actually worked really well. The PDF I downloaded and printed confirmed my final verdict, which in turn confirmed my original impression (talk about going back to square one). Not only is Zingha a very strong, energetic design and does it perform brilliantly, but most of all it's got personality in spades and — pardon my French — some serious <span style="font-style:italic;">cojones</span>.<br /><br />Afterwards I felt quite elated. It's not often that the review of a typeface turns out to be such a roller coaster of conflicting emotions. A design that has the power to move people is quite rare. Oh sure, you can get overcome by the beauty or cleverness of a typeface, no big deal. But I honestly can't remember when was the last time I actually got angry at, and then fell in love again with a collection of friggin' glyphs!? How nerdy can you get?<br /><br />As I'm finishing this review I'm listening to Fennesz' latest album <a href="http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/f/fennesz/venice.shtml" target="new">Venice</a>. Oddly enough this helped me understand the intermediary stage where I got disturbed by the design details of Zingha. Fennesz makes very sensitive, melodic, dreamy music. Yet, for all its beauty, it is entirely made up of static, dissonance, noise — intrinsically unpleasant sounds. So although you could be disturbed by its base components, the overall impression you get is one of harmony, and the tension created by this contradiction makes the music so much more remarkable. Therein lies the special appeal of Zingha.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1112871474844598812005-04-07T03:53:00.000-07:002005-04-13T16:58:05.636-07:00In the April edition of Creative Review here in the UK there is the first part of a multipart interview with Matthew Carter, entitled “A Life in Type”. Simon Esterson joined him in St Bride Printing Library for a general discussion on his career and his thoughts on the industry. It is good to see CR aiming at longer pieces recently, so nip out to the shops now before they’re all sold out.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/phototypesetting.gif" align="right" />Interestingly, the article also points out Typographica, providing me with a contrived but useful link to the next item. A couple of weeks ago over there, Stephen Coles posted a <a href="http://typographi.com/000981.php" target="new">neat article</a> on the use of Flickr for typographic imagery, from found type through lettering in the environment. Spend a few minutes with that article, it's fun. Well, that is not all Flickr can do when people put their minds to it. <a href="http://metaatem.net/words/" target="new">Spell With Flickr</a> is a neat bit of coding that takes your words and creates typographic montages from Flickr user libraries. Fun stuff.<br /><br />April 1st came and went, with a few fun typographic spoofs including Porchez acquiring Fonderie Olive and Fontographer MX making an unscheduled appearance over at Typophile.com. Personally my favourite goes to The Register, with their report that Steve Jobs was to <a href=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/01/steve_jobs_joins_ikea/ target=”new”>join the board of Ikea</a>. Give it a few months…<br /><br />Release news time. P22’s Lanston Type Company has announced the release of the Lanston Collection B, a collection of 32 remastered in digital form, including amongst its ranks four OpenType families (Californian, Goudy Heavyface, Goudy Oldstyle and Village #2). More details on the collection can be found <a href=http://www.p22.com/lanston/catalogB.html target=”new”>here</a>. Font Bureau have released their <a href=http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Zingha target=”new”>Zingha family</a>, a range of 14 styles designed by Xavier Dupré, winner of the Certificate of Typographic Excellence two years in a row from the TDC. An impressive range of styles to keep in one family, and definitely worth a peek.<br /><br />Before I hand over to Yves, one final piece of news. Adobe has announced <a href="http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/indesign/" target="new">InDesign CS2</a>, complete with mandatory product activation. Hurrah! <br /><br /><span class="credits">Sources: MS Typo News, Typophile.com, Typogaphica, The Register, Flickr</span><br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><p><span class="bodytext">Veer released through its Umbrella typeface collection two type families and a type system by the two Brians — J. Bonislawsky and Jaramillo of the collaborative digital type foundry <a href="http://www.versustwin.com/" target="new" title="Coming soon">VersusTwin</a>. <span style="font-style:italic;">I was fortunate enough to receive review copies of all three families.</span> <br /><br />The schizophrenic <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=UMT0000132" target="new">Ink Gothic</a> is something of a strange beast. On one hand it's a slightly awkward looking heavy industrial slab serif — its mix of straight lines and simple curves creating a similar tension as the one found in the highly popular <a href="http://store.adobe.com/type/browser/F/ROSQ/F_ROSQ-10005090.html" target="new">Rosewood Fill</a>. <span style="font-style:italic;">Allow me a brief digression: why on earth did they even bother to design the <a href="http://store.adobe.com/type/browser/F/ROSQ/F_ROSQ-10005000.html" target="new">Regular</a> weight? I mean, nobody uses it!</span> On the other hand the skeleton of the character shapes reveal a more delicate typographic approach. This is hinted at by the unexpected plunge below the baseline made by the leg of the lowercase <span style="font-style:italic;">k</span>, and becomes fairly obvious in the alternate weights with their loopy ascenders and descenders. The family comes with a distressed version which emphasises the industrial feel, and a nice 'n' butch shaded 3D version.<br /><br />I must say I initially didn't think much of the <a href="http://www.veer.com/search/results.aspx?keyword=fuel*&clarify=false&producttype=typ" target="new">Fuel</a> type system. This modern update of the techno sans looked too blocky for my taste, and above all I didn't quite know what to make of the weird horizontal ink traps. Don't get me wrong: I'm a sucker for ink traps as an artistic device; it's just that I'm really fussy about which shape they come in. Blunt, quirky shaped traps as found in <a href="http://www.thirstype.com/fonts.php?font=Eunuverse" target="new">Eunuverse</a>, <a href="http://www.type.fi/SuomiTang.html" target="new">Tang</a> and <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=verity.search&font_categories_search=font_name_search&searchstr=hydra&image.x=25&image.y=10" target="new">FF Hydra</a> are the ones I prefer, yet I don't care much for spiky ones like those in <a href="http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Amplitude" target="new">Amplitude</a>. Fortunately, as this review has been delayed due to last month's hiatus, I had the opportunity to test-drive the Fuel faces more thoroughly. The ink traps gradually started to make more sense, lending a notion of speed and motion to the faces. On a second level they also convey a sense of volume, as if some parts of the characters were chiselled out and created little drop shadows. Mind you, I'm still not so hot about certain glyphs like the square lowercase <span style="font-style:italic;">a</span>, but I've come to appreciate the family as a whole, my favourite being the retro-looking <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=UMT0000136" target="new">script</a> variants.<br /><br />Discovering <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=UMT0000129" target="new">Occulista</a> was the typographic equivalent of munching magic mushrooms. This all caps Op Art tribute comes in nine variants of inline and outline madness and simply is truckloads of fun. At first I was a teensy bit disappointed that the different variants were predefined and that there was no possibility to create the overlays of my choice, but upon close inspection the configurations proved to be well thought out. Not only are the combinations of inlines and outlines very inventive, the basic character shapes as well are really nice. I was also particularly pleased by the attention to detail that was given to the non-alphabetical glyphs and the creative solutions that were found for specific design problems in the punctuation and the likes.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1112175134984815452005-03-30T01:30:00.000-08:002005-03-30T01:32:15.090-08:00Staff shortages (translation: I'm ill and have yet to work out contingency plans for what to do when that happens) mean there is no digest for the last couple of weeks. That doesn't mean Yves isn't simply both fantastic <i>and</i> reliable though...<br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><br /><p><span class="bodytext">Veer recently released <a href="http://www.fountain.nu/designers/gaborkothay.asp" target="new">Gábor Kóthay</a>’s Incognito/Terra Incognita. I was really looking forward to it as I had seen a sneak peek on Fountain’s <a href="http://www.fountain.nu/catalogue/fresh_upcoming.asp" target="new">Fresh/Upcoming</a> page. It feels like an addition to or extension of his voluptuous <a href="http://www.fountain.nu/catalogue/zanzibar.asp" target="new">Zanzibar</a>, that — hadn’t it been a re-release — I certainly would’ve included it as a favourite of mine in Typographica’s <a href="http://typographi.com/000979.php" target="new">Our Favourite Fonts of 2004</a> thread.<br /><br />As Veer’s promotional blurb explains, years ago, designer Gábor Kóthay discovered a rare book containing historic maps and various cartographic signs. Gábor had been quite an explorer as a child, and this antique book enabled him relive his love for the term ‘Terra Incognita’ or ‘unknown land’. Working on the Incognito typeface was a typographic — and topographic — journey into his Hungarian past and the folklore and history of another time.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=FOT0000074" target="new">Incognito/Terra Incognita</a> suite of typefaces consists of a roman and an italic with their respective ligature fonts, augmented with small caps for the regular and four sets of swash capitals for the italic. The dingbat font Terra Incognita rounds out the collection. <span style="font-style:italic;">I was fortunate enough to receive review copies, which allowed me to properly test-drive the faces. Which was pure joy.</span><br /><br />At first sight Incognito looks like another fine rendition of Nicolas Jenson’s Renaissance model, similar to Bruce Rogers’ and Frederic Warde’s <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontpackage&displayfontid=M.2534.0.0&searchby=searchresults" target="new">Centaur</a>, with a Cochin flavour in the capitals. Upon closer inspection though, the face reveals it is peppered with numerous quirky details, the most obvious being a cute pear-shaped bottom serif on the ‘S’ and ‘s’, the leg of the ‘k’ which extends below the baseline and a striking italic ‘w’. The outright bizarre numerals with their swash-like curly endings on the 1, 4, 5 and 7 brought a smile to my face. As for the lovely small caps, they incorporate a dotted ‘i’ and ‘j’ that only makes sense in Turkish. Weird, but beautiful. Although I personally would've liked to have seen more options in the ligatures fonts, a couple of idiosyncratic combinations make them worthwhile. I am especially charmed by the italic ‘ff’ and ‘fr’.<br /><br />The Terra Incognita dingbat face is an extensive collection of design elements lifted straight from historical maps: symbols, ornaments, borders, blocks, catch words, navigational instruments, silhouettes of continents, even the obligatory funny-looking whale is there.<br /><br />A striking feature of the italics are the four swash variations. Their names come from the Latin terms for the points of a compass, and indicate the general orientation of the swashes on the capitals. So Septentrio has swashes oriented upwards, to the south; Occidens to the west; Oriens to the east; and Meridies downwards. The design for those swash capitals is imaginative and daring. One can set them “out of the box” in combination with the lowercase to great effect, though for the accomplished typographer there’s the possibility to combine capitals from the four variations into stunning typographical compositions. This is not for the squeamish though, as it requires skill, compositional insight and judicious kerning, but the results are extremely rewarding.<br /><br />The strength of Incognito lies in how the source material was approached. It all boils down to the level of interpretation when translating the found type into a digital font. Too often type designers will rationalise the character shapes to a point where the typeface looks sand-papered to death. You could draw a parallel with formula-driven pop music: it all slides through your ears like vaseline without making any lasting impression. The same happens with typefaces that are too slick — at first sight they might look beautiful, but in the end they fail to inspire you or challenge your creativity. Even the early Picasso included jarring or disturbing details in his otherwise naturalistic paintings to catch the viewer's attention. Perfection is boring.<br />Incognito on the other hand looks “authentic” by staying very true to its source material. Gábor understands perfectly that scripts on antique maps are so captivating and endearing just because of the slight awkwardness in their character shapes and the weird details, as well as the energy and unrestrained joy in the swashes and ligatures. These qualities have been carefully infused into the digital fonts, which results in an honest, inspiring and simply beautiful type family.<br /><br />Another notable recent release is <a href="http://www.virusfonts.com/" target="new">Jonathan Barnbrook</a>’s Tourette. When discussing the face with David, he made a picture perfect analysis. For once I'll be lazy and simply quote him.<br /><blockquote>Hmmm, well the way I saw it was that he’d drawn two fonts, one straight and one with the vocal tics often present in a Tourette syndrome person’s voice represented in visual form. I think it’s clear to understand, just not that interesting to engage with as a design and concept. The straight one reminds me of film titling typography of the silent film era actually. Tourette himself was from the 19th century so that’d fit in with Barnbrook’s noted time period.</blockquote><br />Barnbrook tends to be an acquired taste. His work defies categorisation, as he’s developed a unique voice and seems to evolve in a realm totally his own. Add to that his very outspoken political opinions and you get a designer who tends to polarise his followers and his detractors (the promotional text for Tourette can be seen as either deliciously offensive or plain sad and juvenile). Basically either you're into his type designs or you think he’s an overhyped poseur. It's up to everyone individually to decide whether he's merely rehashing the same basic ideas over and over or if he's perfecting a striking typographical language with this bold new arrival.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1109783685114126962005-03-02T09:14:00.000-08:002005-03-02T11:08:50.666-08:00The main news item in the type world over the last few days has been the untimely and unfortunate death of Justin Howes, curator of the Type Museum here in London. The Times has published an obituary in his honour that can be found <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1505298,00.html" target="new">here</a>. [Link from MS Typo news]<br /><br />This week the digest is somewhat brief, giving the floor over to Yves’ mammoth review of an entire CD of fonts. Never one to do things by half is our Yves, even when inserting the word <i>wikkid</i> into the mix. I know it is for charity, but a whole CD, Yves...<br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><p><span class="bodytext">This month <a href="http://www.typetype.net/" target="new">Dirk Uhlenbrock</a> is <a href="http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/72/64670.html?1107551648" target="new">launching</a> a limited run of 1000 CDs covering the first phase of his <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/" target="new">Fontomas</a> site. I was intrigued, so I contacted Dirk for more information which he generously provided.<br /><br />The concept for Fontomas’ first year is really interesting. The website followed the format of a magazine or tv-serial, as each week saw the release of another new free font. Those fonts — designed by either Dirk himself or other people whom he invited or who submitted stuff — had the life-span of exactly a week: they “disappeared” after 7 days. As Dirk explains it on the site:<br /><blockquote>I got some bad experiences with eyesaw, most people do use the web as a huge supermarket and they grab every thing for free they can have. there are less people out there who give their respect to the authors who did and made all the free products or just say "thank you".<br />When I thought about the next step of eyesaw I decided to include some limitations - it's harder to get the files, you have to be there at the right time or you have to ask for it. The way is a harder one but the "things" are getting more "valuable".</blockquote><br />The restrictions of this format mean I will review that first year separately from the second year, which followed a less rigid and demanding schedule.<br /><br />When you oversee the output of the first year, there are two main categories which catch the eye: the remixes/grunge fonts, and the geometric experiments. Although I think overall it’s a great collection of fonts, I’ll just go ahead and admit I have some reservations with a couple of remixes. There’s no doubt in my mind <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/04/index.html" target="new">Persona</a> was indeed scanned from labels on personalised mail and I’m willing to believe Thomas Schostock that <span style="font-style:italic;">most of the images [of the old filmsetting headline font Fiesta] are taken from old magazine ads (published in 1965/66) and dirty, worn jeans</span> for <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/31/index.html" target="new">After Midnight Sale</a>. One might wonder though to what extent the outline data for <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/30/index.html" target="new">Mess Age</a>, <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/20/index.html" target="new">Pyrostyle</a> (and its remix Zorkon), <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/18/index.html" target="new">Trigan</a> and <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/05/index.html" target="new">Y2K</a> were reused from pre-existent typefaces. On the other hand I’m aware that remixes/grunge fonts have always been situated in a grey area, so I won’t be casting any stones.<br /><br />For the rest though, I couldn’t be happier with the lion’s share of the first year. There is a sense of wonder and excitement that permeates the collection and it shows that the designers had loads of fun while designing the fonts.<br /><br />To continue with the remixes/grunge fonts, <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/19/index.html" target="new">Old Phart</a> is a tongue-in-cheek hybrid of Old English Text and Optima, and <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/11/index.html" target="new">Accient</a> has a lovely fluidity which belies its origin as a distorted fax experiment. Rubber stamp face <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/41/index.html" target="new">Testerus</a> and destroyed circus font <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/38/index.html" target="new">Melancholie</a> display the right amount of wear and tear, while the multiple outlines on <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/34/index.html" target="new">Scratch</a> lend the face a disturbing nervousness. Then there’s <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/16/index.html" target="new">Xmess</a>, a typical “crunched” English script, and the riotous Halloween circus sideshow called <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/07/index.html" target="new">Freaks</a>.<br /><br />The first year also features a couple of more conventional faces — “conventional” being a relative term. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/21/index.html" target="new">Cord</a> is a delicious chubby shaded race car font, ideal for when you feel the need for speed. While Miguel Visser’s <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/03/index.html" target="new">Basm Fat</a> is an inconspicuous tag script, his graffiti style <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/42/index.html" target="new">4 Dead Mosquitos</a> on the other hand is outstanding. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/25/index.html" target="new">Bully</a> and <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/35/index.html" target="new">Mole</a> are rather inconsequential. I don't really know what to make of the stretched geometric semiserif <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/40/index.html" target="new">Slick</a>. The James Bond font <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/36/index.html" target="new">Jetset</a> simply looks cool, and <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/52/index.html" target="new">Tunasalad</a> is just a whacky idea turned into an alphabet. Not only is the four-weight <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/48/index.html" target="new">Thaiga Thaipe</a> a successful experiment in infusing Asian script influences into a Latin alphabet, it also forebodes of one of my absolute favourites from the second year.<br /><br />As mentioned before there are quite a lot of geometric experiments included. Now, Oscar Wilde is rumoured to have said “Experiment is what everybody calls their mistakes”. In this instance though there are few mistakes to be found.<br /><br />There are a couple of interesting tile designs. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/49/index.html" target="new">9 Square Grid and Bath</a> explore the possibilities of squares and quarter circles: the former does that in a — you guessed it — 9 square grid, the latter pulls it off in a much more demanding configuration: 4 high and 2 wide. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/26/index.html" target="new">U11</a> uses the same base elements but draws its inspiration from subway signage.<br /><br />Next up are the pixel fonts. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/43/index.html" target="new">Quant</a> is a typical coarse LCD-style pixel font; <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/43/index.html" target="new">Pinx</a> has slightly rounded inside corners; <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/01/index.html" target="new">Pizzo</a> uses a fine grid of circular pixels; <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/32/index.html" target="new">Dotto</a> allows superimposing of its dot pixels to achieve different outline and shade effects. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/15/index.html" target="new">ATP Interactive</a> does something refreshing with the dot matrix motif, by applying ellipses for the corners and diagonals. Echoes of De Stijl can be found in <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/09/index.html" target="new">Basm</a>, <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/22/index.html" target="new">September</a>, <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/29/index.html" target="new">Limbex</a> and the truly imaginative <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/10/index.html" target="new">Corner</a>.<br /><br />The strict square design <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/27/index.html" target="new">Block It</a> features some very nice glyphs; the squiggly <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/23/index.html" target="new">Chromosome</a> is simply mad and surprisingly readable, a joy to behold. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/50/index.html" target="new">Honey</a> — using the honeycomb as a pixel grid —, <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/39/index.html" target="new">Kazoo</a> — an elegant, far more beautiful alternative for the ubiquitous Isonorm face —, and the wikkid sci-fi angular <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/37/index.html" target="new">Tricky Treat</a> all provide the possibility to create outline or shaded fonts by overlapping different weights, which is just peachy. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/24/index.html" target="new">Mega</a> looks deceivingly simply and is impeccably constructed. Both Simon Schmidt’s contributions are very nice, but that's never a surprise. Neo-pixel face<a href="http://www.fontomas.com/12/index.html" target="new">Close Race</a> is a generously wide square face, and by adding connectors to the lowercase he turns the sans <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/47/index.html" target="new">Close Hookline</a> into a script hybrid. Stephen Payne’s <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/13/index.html" target="new">T-Series</a> is merely an adequate college/army style sans, but his fragmented bitmap italic <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/06/index.html" target="new">Eurasia</a> has a lovely texture and vibrance to it. Two of my favourites are the soft and rounded <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/44/index.html" target="new">Term</a> that makes the most of non-connecting elements; and the striking <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/17/index.html" target="new">Mighty Tiza</a>, the other race car font in the collection which is beautifully upgraded for the digital age.<br /><br />The two dingbat faces that top off the collection are a hoot: the weird little eyebats that populate <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/45/index.html" target="new">Ispy</a> are very original and stylish, and you can’t help but fall in love with those cute little <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/02/index.html" target="new">Buddies</a>. Brilliant stuff!<br /><br />Over to the second year which features another 10 well-executed, hi-concept, lo-tech fonts/families, all by Dirk Uhlenbrock himself. With lo-tech I mean these at least are fonts that don't have to rely on OpenType niftiness to be successful. They're plain and simple good ideas turned into great type designs. <span style="font-style:italic;">(As these typefaces have no dedicated website pages, I linked directly to the PDFs)</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/gen3000.pdf" target="new">Gen 3000</a> and <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/pile.pdf" target="new">Pile</a> are — again — very well-conceived experiments in modular type design. The former uses straight-sided ellipses in an unexpected way, the latter is a strict geometrical square design which is especially interesting because of its horizontal division. The characters of the scripty sans <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/pellegrini.pdf" target="new">Pellegrini</a> are drawn entirely with straight line segments. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/hannelore.pdf" target="new">Hannelore</a> is the perfect pixel script for text-messaging passionate confessions to your secret lover. <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/turbon.pdf" target="new">Turbon</a> is an attractive connected sans which is reminiscent of 50s logos for refrigerators and motorised vehicles. The infectious <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/microb.pdf" target="new">Micro B</a> hovers between a decorative face and a dingbat font. One can’t help but notice the influence of Neville Brody’s Tokyo Dome type in the condensed geometric sans <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/mass.pdf" target="new">Mass</a> with its inline and outline variants, which unfortunately seems to lack adequate optical correction in some minor details.<br /><br />My absolute favourites of the second year are <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/swisz.pdf">Swisz</a> — a stylish, sharp and elegant all caps sans which allows the creation of outlines by layering both weights; the beautifully ornate <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/ove.pdf" target="new">Ove</a> and a simply mind-blowing mixture of hindi script and latin alphabet called <a href="http://www.fontomas.com/files/rickshaw.pdf" target="new">Rickshaw</a>. Here, as with the majority of his other designers, Dirk proves he is a keen observer and analyst, because to pull off such a beautiful blend of two unrelated alphabet systems is no mean feat. He doesn’t copy superficial minutiae by sticking foreign bits on his characters. No, he understands the true nature, the essence of what he studies, and succeeds in building that into the very structure of the glyphs. By doing so he escapes every possible cliché — not only has he created a typeface that’s challenging and engaging, but it is a thing of strange beauty indeed. This one alone is already worth the price of admission.<br /><br />The Fontomas CD is a must-have for anyone who likes leftfield, inventive type. The collection is loads of fun and spans a broad range of unconventional styles. Furthermore at $40 for over 75 fonts it’s a steal, and the whole profit will be given to a children’s project by the international humanitarian organisation <a href="http://www.worldvision.de/" target="new">World Vision</a>. I mean, what better reason do you need? All I can say is: order it. Right now. You won't regret it, I promise.</span>David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1108593594613996712005-02-16T14:38:00.000-08:002005-03-01T05:50:59.413-08:00Jean-François Porchez has announced that Tom Grace has joined <a href="http://www.typofonderie.com/" target="new">Porchez Typofonderie</a> to work on custom font designs and to help in the conversion of JFP’s library to OT format. His first job is the completion of the House of Deréon typeface family for Beyoncé’s (and mother’s) fashion line of the same name. A graduate of Reading’s MA in Typeface Design, Tom developed fonts for Jeremy Tankard and Font Bureau before joining Jean-François, not bad for someone still in their twenties! Congratulations, Tom, you’re a very lucky man indeed to be working alongside such an inspirational designer as Mr Porchez.<br /><br />While we’re on the subject, Typographica has posted its <a href="http://typographi.com/000969.php#000969" target="new">Favourite Fonts of 2004</a> review, a collection of 17 families reviewed by a whole gamut of type enthusiasts (or should that read geeks?), including my own review of JFP’s Costa, and Yves’ review of GalaxiePolaris and Klavika. Definitely worth a read. Other reviews feature Tiffany Wardle, Erik van Blokland, Christian Schwartz, everyone’s heart-throb Hrant Papazian and Grant Hutchinson.<br /><br />FontLab has released <a href="http://www.fontlab.com/Font-tools/TransType/" target="new">TransType Pro</a>, a new version of its font conversion utility that now allows you to convert to OpenType (PostScript flavour). Other new features include being able to manually edit the family and style names, Python scripting support, enhanced converting of legacy-encoded fonts to Unicode, and the ability to convert directly from Stuffit archives. Heck, they’ve even thrown in a Preview panel and the ability to create OT layout features from Type 1 or TT GX/AAT fonts. The release of the Pro version means there are now two members of the TransType family, Pro v3 and Standard v2.1. The former costs $179, the latter $97.<br /><br />Boris Mahovac from Alphabet Design in Canada emailed us news of Branimir Zlamalik’s new family, <a href=”http://www.alphabet-design.com/FONTS/Ulixa.html” target=”new”>Ulixa</a>. Drawing its inspiration from European lettering artists, this uppercase-only family comes in three weights to make up a 6 font family, with alternates in the lowercase. Interestingly, there will be a free upgrade to a later OT version that eliminates double-character pairings. Of course, there are a lot of comic book fonts out there, but its good to see that people are starting to use OT features to enhance the genre, and equally refreshing to see someone taking the effort to produce a proper family of weights too.<br /><br />Over at MS Typo they’ve spotted a <a href=”http://www.pittsburghpostgazette.com/pg/05043/456599.stm” target=”new”>great article</a> on a 7foot high 300lb (that’s about 150% of me) letter B falling 500 foot to the ground in downtown Pittsburgh, USA. Thankfully, no-one got hurt, apart from maybe the designer.<br /><br />Coming back to OpenType for a moment, it does appear that the format is here to stay and isn’t going to go the way of GX fonts and other innovations, and I for one am happy to be seeing more and more typeface releases taking advantage of the technology. I’ve been fooling around in FontLab with character string substitutions over the last few months to create new playful forms of fonts and its just great to see the possibilities come to life. Of course, as with the introduction of any new technology, its not all peaches and cream — as Typophile forum regulars (cynical and embracing alike) will testify — but overall, if we as a community can concentrate on experimenting and implementing the new technology in meaningful ways then the entire design community can only benefit from that. Its great to see that those of us who <i>aren’t</i> the Hoeflers, JFPs and Carters are able to dip our toes in the OT waters with TransType too - that’s the encouraging sign I took away from this week’s news.<br /><br />I’m going to hand over to Yves now, but I do want to say that I agree with Yves’ concerns expressed last week over the use of OT as a marketing angle. It is an enabling technology, not an end in itself, and I hope that foundries are going to save the song and dance for real innovation, rather than just mere me-too posturing.<br /><br />Now over to Yves, who’s posturing is always very much his very own...<br /><br /><br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span><br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><p><span class="bodytext">Nobody’s getting paid for this; David made that abundantly clear in his <a href="http://www.typographer.org/2005_01_01_digests.html#110570575917623429" target="new">call for contributors</a>. You might ask yourself why then we’re prepared to suffer the nerve-wrecking stress of finding a suitable subject and facing the deadline on a weekly basis. Personally — besides fame and groupies, hey I <span style="font-style:italic;">am</span> a rock drummer — I do it for the feedback. Getting reactions from people who’ve actually read what you wrote is a great ego-booster. At least then you know you're not shouting in the desert, so it makes it worth your while.<br /><br />All this to say that last week’s review of Varius and my subsequent remark about using the OpenType technology as a sales pitch elicited an interesting reaction:<br /><blockquote>You are right that technology alone does not equal merit. [...] Currently, Linotype has two typefaces that are tricked-out with OpenType features for sale: Zapfino Extra Pro, and Varius. [...] The OpenType-ness of [Varius] is one of the cooler things about it (it does have some other nice features, and it fit well with the timing of the release and promotion, zeitgeist and all…) For the moment, OpenType is such a topic of designer chatter that I am comfortable telling people: "Look at this font; it can do this and this with OpenType." [...] By the end of 2005, I suspect that there will be well over 100 OpenType feature-using big families on the market. Then, it will be less of a selling point. But today, it’s still a selling point for me.</blockquote><br /><br />Point taken. I was over-reacting. Also, the more I look at it, the more I suspect the OpenType-ness actually is the only redeeming quality of Varius, which means Linotype sadly had no other option for the promotion of the type family...<br /><span class="credits">And to say David thought last week I was mean...</span><br /><br />As last week was kind of a slow week, I went hunting for new or recently released typefaces. Over at MyFonts I stumbled onto a peculiar little face in two weights called <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/subcommunications/subalde/" target="new">Subalde</a> by Canadian <a href="http://www.subcommunication.com/" target="new">Valérie Desrochers</a>. The design pairs a clinical look reminiscent of rounded DIN and Isonorm faces with a more human, almost calligraphic quality in the details. There’s an underlying atmosphere of "updated neo-grunge" to it and in some respect reminds me of both Barry Deck’s 90s-defining <a href="http://www.emigre.com/dp/getfontpage.php?PTemR.html" target="new">Template Gothic</a> and Lux Typographics’ idiosyncratic <a href="http://lux.thirstype.com/fonts.php?font=LuxSans" target="new">LuxSans</a>. My suspicions about the calligraphic influences were confirmed by Valérie who explained in the e-mail accompanying the hi-res PDF that the design originally was inspired by forms based on hand-writing.<br /><br />I’ll be the first to admit that Subalde has some minor problems, most notably the uneven weight in the bold lowercase <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/subcommunications/subalde/bold/mac-t1/263405/character/0067/CP4/1/" target="new">g</a>, but the calligraphic details like the curved stroke endings and joins and the "double" corners lend the face a pleasant — and unexpected — fluidity. I was particularly attracted to the uppercase <span style="font-style:italic;">A, H, J</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Y</span>, and the aforementioned lowercase <span style="font-style:italic;">g</span> does a much better job at describing the tricky curve of an open bowl than Microsoft's dreadful <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/microsoft/trebuchet/" target="new">MS Trebuchet</a>. Considering this is only Valerie’s second typeface, it’s a very good effort. I like it.<br /><br />Further investigation led me to two new scripts released by <a href="http://www.sudtipos.com/" target="new">Sudtipos</a> last month: Cuisine and La Portenia. Alejandro Paul has a solid reputation as a designer of script faces — Veer’s recent <a href="http://typographi.com/000936.php" target="new">Top 20</a> featured four of his scripts — so my expectations were quite high. He didn’t disappoint. <span style="font-style:italic;">(I had the privilege to receive review copies of the actual fonts, which means I was able to properly test drive them.)</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.sudtipos.com/fonts-portenia.htm" target="new">La Portenia</a> is based on a sketch by Diego Giaccone; the finished drawings are by Angel Koziupa, <span style="font-style:italic;">an old guy who’s been doing lettering for 40 years</span> as Alejandro Paul describes him. Alejandro is responsible for technical development, glyph additions, ligatures design and so on. La Portenia is a swirly connected script, "which indeed involves curly bits all over" (couldn’t resist that one). This time around though, it’s the <span style="font-style:italic;">right</span> kind of curly bits, and they make the script dance elegantly on the page. The dynamic design simply oozes Latin sensuality. It comes in two variants: to get optimal results, set the text with the base font delaRecoleta and then substitute selected characters with its companion delaBoca for added swooshiness. All the necessary ligatures are included to avoid clashing of swashes in specific letter combinations.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sudtipos.com/fonts-cuisine.htm" target="new">Cuisine</a>, a design by Alejandro himself, is a chubby, friendly display script one expects to find on food packaging and the likes. Again the font is skilfully built and features numerous ligatures, alternate caps and extras. I don’t care much for the uppercase <span style="font-style:italic;">Z</span> and especially the <span style="font-style:italic;">K</span>, as I find them lacking definition, but that’s more a matter of personal taste. The loopy alternate lowercase <span style="font-style:italic;">z</span> on the other hand is loads of fun, as are the bouncy numerals.<br /><br />On the surface Cuisine is honest and straightforward, qualities I appreciate in type design. But there’s more, and it took me a while to realise why this script amused me so. At some point it dawned on me that it actually looks like Alejandro took the <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&displayfontid=LH.69.0.2&searchby=searchresults" target="new">Kaufmann</a> model and made a run for it. It’s as if he took a good long look at the structure of that rigid ol’ thing, smiled and fixed everything that was wrong with it. A job well done if you ask me.<br /><br />You see, this is what I enjoy the most when reviewing typefaces. This is what I tried to convey in both <a href="http://www.typographer.org/2005_01_01_digests.html#110657341976586300" target="new">my original review of FTF Flama</a> and last week’s less favourable critique of the IHOF releases. When new designs reference certain typeface models or archetypes, I want those references to be subtle and knowledgeable. I simply hate it when type designers underestimate my intelligence — or anyone else’s for that matter. Instead of having the whole story slapped in your face, it is infinitely more rewarding to find out the references for yourself. Nothing beats that <span style="font-style:italic;">aha-erlebnis</span> when you discover what the intentions of the type designer were.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1107814464139866852005-02-07T14:13:00.000-08:002005-02-10T04:19:44.276-08:00Quark will be demonstrating some of the, shock horror, OpenType and Unicode tools featured in their new upcoming product, InDesign Lite. Or Quark XPress 7. One of the two. According to Digit magazine, the features will be shown at the TypoTechnica conference (more on that <a href="https://www.linotype.com/forms/typotechnicaform.html" target="new">here</a>) during an hour-long seminar on the 17th of this month. If you want to know if Quark is ready to regain the DTP lead when 7 debuts later in the year, the demo starts at 11.50 in the Bridewell Room at St Bride.
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<br />Those St Bride folk are popping up more and more frequently in the news over the last year or two. Channel 4 here in the UK are going to be featuring St Bride Library's Nigel Roche, demonstrating typesetting techniques from the English Civil War. The programme, entitled "Blood On Our Hands: The English Civil War" will be broadcast at 9pm (Thursday 10th) on Channel 4 (more details <a href="http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/B/blood_on_our_hands/" target="new">here</a>). I can't believe I am going to have to miss <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm" target="new">Newsnight</a> <i>and</i> <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/default.stm" target="new">Question Time</a> to see it.
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<br />TDC have posted their early results for TDC51 and TDC2 2005. Its just a list of numbers as usual for the preliminaries, but at least you get a feel for the international coverage and how it's all split amongst our geographies. You can view the results <a href="http://www.tdc.org/news/2005prelimresults.html" target="new">here</a>, and needless to say [cough] we will be bringing you those results when they're public. Perhaps Yves will cast his eyes over the winning entries?
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<br />Version 7 of RoboFab has been released this week for all you font clever clogs out there. I have enough trouble understanding FontLab as it is without introducing Python scripting to the mix, but if you're game the details are <a href="http://www.letterror.com/code/robofab/index.html" target="new">here</a> for your enjoyment.
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<br />And finally, Dirk Uhlenbrock has announced over at Typophile that next month he is launching a limited run of 1000 CDs covering the first phase of his Fontomas site. The disk will feature over 75 fonts and only costs 40 euro, with all the profits going to WorldVision Germany. You can pre-order <a href="http://www.typetype.net/" target="new">here</a>. If you want <i>even more</i> type and warm feelings, you also have until Valentine's Day to buy FontAid III fonts over at MyFonts. 100% of the price goes to Tsunami relief — <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/fontaid/" target="new">read more here</a> for what fonts are included.
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<br />And on that charitable note, over to mean old Yves...
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<br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span>
<br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><p><span class="bodytext">Last week saw a couple of releases from foundries big and small. Unfortunately I'm not so happy with them, and although I decided going in that I would try to avoid negative reviews as much as possible, I feel I have to speak up.
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<br />The hand-written script <a href="http://www.madtype.net/casino.html" target="new">Casino Hand</a> is proudly announced by <a href="http://www.madtype.net/index.php" target="new">Matthew Desmond</a> as <i>MADType's first OpenType font</i>. Remember the thing I wrote in <a href="http://www.typographer.org/2005_01_01_digests.html#110657341976586300" target="new">my review for FTF Flama</a>, that one needed a very good reason to release yet another neutral sans? Well, Matthew needs an even better reason, because there are a gazillion hand-written scripts out there. Trust me, as moderator of Typophile's <a href="http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/83/83.html" target="new">Type Identification Board</a>, I know. When we get a request for a hand-written script, we usually just give up after a while. Matthew has designed some <a href="http://www.madtype.net/fonts.html" target="new">fine typefaces</a> — heck, his <a href="http://www.madtype.net/variable.html" target="new">Variable</a> was even voted <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/sp/200501.html" target="new">best new sans serif</a> at MyFonts! I think it's a shame he invested his energy in building his first OpenType font for such a pedestrian script. Fair enough, there are alternate glyphs for almost every conceivable character, which are automatically replaced by the software. Big deal. Superior technology is no excuse and certainly not a valid substitute for an interesting design.
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<br /><a href="http://www.p22.com/ihof/" target="new">International House of Fonts</a> releases two typefaces, one high-concept and one... not. The latter is <a href="http://www.p22.com/ihof/bramble.html" target="new">Bramble</a>, a new addition to the expansive family of "fun scripts". Which indeed involves curly bits all over. The typeface comes in two variants, Normal and (drum roll) Wild. It's all a bit too obvious and heavily endebted to the Letraset/ITC school of anecdotal display scripts. Personally I prefer my "fun" subtler.
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<br /><a href="http://www.p22.com/ihof/mantra.html" target="new">Mantra</a> is more problematic. The blurb says it <i>blends the Roman alphabet with Tibetan calligraphy and Hungarian folk influences to create a true hybrid of world cultures in this striking display font.</i> Now that's a mouthful. I haven't got anything against high-concept design, but at least the result should look good. And it doesn't: the shapes look awkward and unbalanced, you get the impression there is no optical correction on certain curves and joins, and the character set lacks unity overall. I did some quick'n'dirty research on Tibetan calligraphy, and there's a lot more potential than what we're getting here. Frankly, if the grand idea doesn't help you to achieve a satisfying result, lose the concept. Being a bit more self-critical is not such a bad thing.
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<br />Next up is one of the big ones: <a href="http://www.linotype.com/" target="new">Linotype</a> announces the release of the <a href="http://www.linotype.com/7-2389-7/varius.html" target="new">Varius</a> font family. Actually it's a mini type system, comprising of Varius 1, a baroque serif, Varius 2, a slab serif egyptienne and Varius 3, a semi serif variant. All faces have accompanying italics, and two pi faces round out the family. It has its own beautifully restrained <a href="http://www.varius-typeface.com/" target="new">dedicated Flash website</a> which is very well done.
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<br />I have to admit this family doesn't grab me. The concept sounds interesting enough — the starting point for the design was the italic f-shaped holes in Stradivarius violins — but somehow it falls flat in the execution. The introduction of fragments of the f-shapes in certain characters feels forced and makes for some jarring glyphs. The general impression I'm getting is one of indecision: it's as if the designer couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted his typeface to be casual or not.
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<br />Plus there is this bit in the announcement which bothers me: <i>[...] that deserves special attention for its excellent use of OpenType alternate glyphs and ligatures.</i> Again, superior technology <i>is not</i> the <i>raison d'être</i> of a type family. Good imaginative design should always be the focal point. I mean, seriously, if everyone's going to use this as a sales pitch, the "deserves special attention" argument will wear thin pretty fast. It's like praising an album because it was recorded with state of the art recording equipment in Abbey Road Studios. That doesn't amount to anything if the music sucks.
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<br />I'm probably overreacting, but still...</span>David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1107421949663373192005-02-03T01:07:00.000-08:002005-02-04T00:34:46.163-08:00One word. Flu. So, over to Yves, who has somehow managed to include erect penises into his column this week. Pretty impressive...
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<br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span>
<br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><p><span class="bodytext">I'd like to introduce a pet peeve of mine to this column: <i>typographic onomatopoeia</i>. I don't even know if you can say that in proper English, but what the heck, it's my column, so sue me. I use that concept to define two things. First there's stereotypes in typography. I mean, it's already bad enough that some people feel an irresistible urge to open <a href="http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/83/63760.html?1106647564" target="new">ranch-style tea rooms</a>, I really don't need them to ram it down my throat with big spiky serifs. Same goes for Chinese restaurants implying I can't grasp the notion of an establishment that serves Asian food without <a href="http://www.fontshop.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.fontdetail&displayfontid=LH.100149.0.1&searchby=searchresults" target="new">ridiculous fake Asian calligraphy</a> to go with it. Second are the type designs that are way too literal, for example ornamented caps that have <a href="http://www.philsfonts.com/detail.html?sku=ET00001401M1" target="new">actual flowers</a> stuck to them. Like our tutor told us in our first year at the Academy: "Just because you typeset porn doesn't mean you need to use characters that are made up with little erect penises."
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<br />So, now that that's out of the way, let's get to it.
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<br />Two weeks ago Veer released <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/gallery.aspx?gallery=265&vendor=det&resultsperpage=36" target="new">30 new type families from Device</a> a.k.a. one-man foundry <a href="http://www.devicefonts.co.uk/" target="new">Rian Hughes</a>, celebrating ten years in type design (see also the interview with Rian on <a href="http://typographi.com/000964.php" target="new">Typographica</a>). 30 families indeed, a grand total of 112 fonts if I counted them correctly, all released in one big gulp. In typical Device fashion it's a very eclectic mix, ranging from stylish text faces to fonts so quirky their possible usage seems predefined by their design.
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<br />On a general note, it's undeniable Rian knows how to design type. His background in illustration and graphic design plays a defining role in his style and makes him an interesting subject of scrutiny. The concepts he comes up with are well-fleshed out and impeccably executed, resulting in balanced, coherent typefaces. He manages to inject a unique personality into each of his designs and — what's even more important — succeeds in keeping it up throughout the complete character set. Plus he earns big points for the audacity and sheer madness of some of his typefaces.
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<br />Back to the current release. As far as the text faces go, I couldn't help but be a tad disappointed. I didn't discern the worthy heir to Rian's fabulous <a href="http://www.veer.com/search/results.aspx?keyword=paralucent&pricemodel=RF,RM&producttype=TYP" target="new">Paralucent</a> family I was hoping to find. The <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000233" target="new">Rogue</a> family that was designed as an accompaniment to Paralucent for Loaded — London's notorious lads-mag — lacks the immediate appeal of the latter and looks wilfully over-designed. Here, his background as an illustrator works against him, as "style" tends to get in the way of the type. I prefer <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000215" target="new">Dynasty</a>, which is more rounded and very open in its squareness. And I'm partial to its wedge-shaped details and chiselled stroke endings. <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000231" target="new">Ritafurey</a> is just so mad I still have to make up my mind if I like it or not. But usually I consider that a good sign.
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<br />I've got more of a problem with a number of his display faces, which dangerously veer towards — you guessed it — typographical onomatopoeia. There are a couple of ornate faces, something rarely seen in Rian's oeuvre. <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000241" target="new">Yolanda</a> has pendants dangling from its capitals, <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000224" target="new">Moonstone</a> simply — errr — sparkles, and there are friggin' <i>leaves</i> sprouting on <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000211" target="new">Dauphine</a>'s characters. This release even includes outright revivals. I was convinced we had left behind <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000220" target="new">inflatable type</a> in the seventies; I'm not so sure anyone was waiting for <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000221" target="new">an alternative to Stop</a>; and <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000216" target="new">Electrasonic</a> looks like it belongs to a campy 80s disco record sleeve. Make no mistake, they're all very well executed and will certainly find their way to their target audience. It's just that I'm not convinced said target audience will appreciate the quality of the type offered to them nor be willing to shell out the dough to license it. My position is simple: if they are going to produce crap typesetting, let them use <a href="http://www.dafont.com/en/theme.php?cat=902" target="new">crap type</a>.
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<br />Fortunately, there are a couple that I really like as well. It's no coincidence that those are the ones that succeed in removing themselves just enough from the source material. <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000209" target="new">Absinthe</a> is the perfect sci-fi/Jugendstil hybrid, <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000238" target="new">Straker</a> is pure <a href="http://typographi.com/000539.php" target="new">compu-retro goodness</a>, <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000228" target="new">Radiogram</a> takes the <a href="http://typographi.com/000918.php" target="new">Bifur</a> model in new directions, and <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000240" target="new">Xenotype</a> just makes you wanna shake yo' booty. My favourites are <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000222" target="new">Miserichordia</a>, a crazy, joyous decorative serif font; an experiment in readability called <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000223" target="new">Monitor</a> which just happens to look very cool; and the deliciously chunky stencil face <a href="http://www.veer.com/products/typedetail.aspx?image=DET0000226" target="new">Payload</a> which includes a great spray-can version.
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<br />"Spray-can version"? Did anyone say anything about typographic onomatopoeia?
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<br />The advent of the CD and its increased storage capacity has created a luxury problem for the album as a concept. Due to the 45 minute limit of an LP, artists were forced to be very critical about their material and had to weed out the lesser songs. Nowadays the length of an album on CD can be up to half an hour longer. So some artists feel the need to include more songs, resulting in potentially great albums that are marred by the inclusion of weaker tracks.
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<br />I get the feeling the same thing might have happened here. Though fundamentally there's nothing wrong with the 30 new releases, it's a shame some weaker fonts detract from the quality of the good ones. I'd rather have had a kick-ass, tight collection of 20 great families, especially since Device is a signature foundry which has always offered top-notch quality. Long live the 45 minute album.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1106573419765863002005-01-24T04:59:00.000-08:002005-01-24T14:18:17.546-08:00I'm going to keep my ramblings brief this week, but a quick note about the next <a href="http://www.typocircle.co.uk/" target="new">TypoCircle</a> lecture at St Bride here in London. At 7pm, February 3rd 2005, Alessio Leonardi (the Italian delegate for ATypI) will be conducting a lecture with the enticing-sounding "From the Cow to the Typewriter: the (true) History of Writing". Beefy title (sorry). Alessio describes the lecture as an unconventional look at the religious and scientific perspectives on the latin alphabet's history, along with his own interpretation. The lecture culminates in a presentation of an experimental project demonstrating how it could all have been very very different. Talk about alternative truths! £15 entry for the general public, a tenner if you're a TypoCircle member or £7.50 if you're a student.
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<br />As mentioned in the last edition, Typographer.org is opening its doors to new contributors from all over the world. The first digests written by someone other than me will be published from next month, but we would still like to hear from those who would like to contribute. However, the first change to happen is the addition of our "Bald Condensed" column, written by everyone's favourite rock n roll typographer, Yves Peters. Each digest, Yves will be taking a critical look over the most recent typeface releases from around the world in the way that only a chocolate-munching beer-swilling Belgian can. Or indeed Yves.
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<br />So, without further comment, here is the man himself...
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<br /><span class="headings">Bald Condensed</span>
<br /><span class="credits">by Yves Peters</span><p><span class="bodytext">Last week, <a href= "http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/index.html" target="new">Mário Feliciano</a> announced the release of two new type families - FTF Flama and FTF Garda Titling, both available exclusively from the designer. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Please note my judgement is based on the splash pages featured on the website, as there are no PDFs available for download.)</span>
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<br /><a href="http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/catalogue/FTFgarda00.htm" target="new">FTF Garda Titling</a> is an all-capital typeface which revives the spirit of inscriptional lettering. It's a nifty little titling system, taking the Trajan cliché into less travelled territories. <a href="http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/catalogue/FTFgarda01.htm" target="new">Number One</a> follows the rule book pretty religiously, with serifs that have a soft, more organic quality. <a href="http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/catalogue/FTFgarda02.htm" target="new">Number Two</a> offers an interesting flare serif variant, and conjures up images of Parisian fashion brands and stone inscriptions on Italian villas. Number Two is halfway in between Number One and <a href="http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/catalogue/FTFgarda03.htm" target="new">Number Three</a> which is a sans serif, opening up even more options. There are <a href="http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/catalogue/FTFgarda04.htm" target="new">a few nice alternates</a>, both subtle (the alternate S) and striking (a gorgeous alternate R in Number Two and Three), as well as a (limited) number of ligatures.
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<br />When I read that <a href="http://www.secretonix.pt/ftf/catalogue/FTFflama00.htm" target="new">FTF Flama</a> was being described as a <span style="font-style: italic;">"neutral" sans serif</span>, I grew a bit weary. Unlike Mário, I believe there are more than enough of those around, so he'd better have a damn good reason - and a design to match - to unleash yet another one of those on an unsuspecting crowd of goatee stroking art directors and architects. Surprisingly, when I headed to the website, it turned out to be about the most fun I ever had discovering a typeface.
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<br />What makes FTF Flama so enjoyable is that it is the typographic equivalent of a "supergroup" - you know, members of different legendary music bands form a new group. The type family wears its influences on its sleeve, but does that so well it's a delight when those influences reveal themselves across the several weights.
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<br />FTF Flama is a straight-sided sans. The light weight clearly shows it is influenced by the technical DIN model, especially the capitals and the lowercase <span style="font-style: italic;">e, g</span> & <span style="font-style: italic;">l</span>. The sturdy serifs on the capital <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> are a nice touch. When you look closely though, the subtle stroke modulation lends it a grotesque feel. This gets more pronounced in the middle weights, which are more akin European grotesques, specifically Akzidenz Grotesque. The heaviest weight then veers towards American gothics like Franklin Gothic for the capitals and Bell Gothic for the lowercase - check the <span style="font-style: italic;">d, e, s</span> and definitely the <span style="font-style: italic;">g</span>.
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<br />But it doesn't stop there. One can also find references to wood type models like H&FJ Knockout and FB Rhode - for example in the numerals - and even a wink to Rotis Sans: the lowercase <span style="font-style: italic;">c</span> shows how it <span style="font-style: italic;">should</span> be done. And the family doesn't disappoint in the italics, where a couple of design quirks get the opportunity to really shine.
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<br />To conclude, FTF Flama is a highly enjoyable family peppered with "typographical citations", with lovely true italics, and available in a comfortable amount of weights. So next time I'll read about yet another new "neutral" sans, I'll wisely shut up and check it out before passing judgement.</span><BR><BR><span class="credits">BTW, As I don't drink any alcohol, let's consider the "beer-swilling" as creative license by the esteemed Mister Earls.</span></p>David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1105705759176234292005-01-14T04:03:00.000-08:002005-01-14T04:48:50.060-08:00Typographer.org (and.com) have been going for about five or so years now, and its time for a change of format once again.
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<br />But rather than a new design, or a change in content, I've decided it might be fun to move the site away from my ramblings into a wider community. As last year proved graphically, I no longer have the time to maintain the website as I originally intended to, but I still feel that the site can offer a worthwhile alternative to the other typography sites out there. But in order to keep the site current, and bring on some much needed diversity, I need a hand.
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<br />What I would like to achieve is to get a group of interested (and interesting) people to take it in turns to write a regular weekly digest. Ideally, you'll be known in the type community in some way, and have experience or interest in writing on matters type. I'd like to maintain the digest format, but I would also be interested in having longer, subject-specific works (such as the typography for on-screen usage article I wrote last year) integrated into the site more often.
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<br />So then, this is a call for submissions for those interested in contributing to the website. If there is interest, we can move forward and start to bring quality and worthwhile content to the type community once more. If not, well, so be it!
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<br />If you would like to be considered for a regular digest slot, please get in contact with me. I am thinking that 4 different voices including my own, taking weekly turns at the digest, would make for a jolly site. I'm also interested in those of you who would like to help write the longer subject-specific articles, and even those just interested in "filling in" from time to time with guest slots.
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<br />As people who appreciate the history of this site will know, it has always been a non-commercial site that has never featured advertising, advertorials or any other form of direct support from the commercial world. This means that, along with journalistic integrity, comes only the reward of contributing to our community. Thats a long way of saying that I can't afford to pay you, I dont make any money either, but neither will we need to temper our words for fear of commercial reprisal! The only thank you I can offer regular contributors is a voice on the site and a funky typographer.org email address (with a POP3 account) of your choice.
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<br />Interested parties, or those with comments on the idea in general, should email in at the address in the footer of this page.
<br />David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1102679962417599332004-12-10T03:29:00.000-08:002004-12-15T09:04:45.353-08:00Blimey. Must be Christmas.
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<br />Over at Typographica, <a href="http://typographi.com/000943.php#000943" target="new">Yves Peters reports</a> on the award for Europe’s Best Designed Newspaper to Flemish paper <a href="http://www.demorgen.be/algemeen/bestdesign.html" target="new">De Morgen</a>. Previous winners include The Guardian here in the UK, and Corriere della Sera, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Trouw and just across the radioactive waters, The Irish Times.
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<br />It is very hard to judge a paper's design based on low resolution images, especially a broadsheet, so my comments are aesthetically-weighted and based on the overall layout, rather than on its readability down at body level. Personally, I wasn't impressed with them - while some of the special sections appeared to be attractively laid out in their own right, breaking from the norm and giving a sense of personality, the same cannot be said of the mainstays. The front page appeared cluttered and comes complete with an unfortunate Guardian-esque masthead that has none of the finesse of its apparent progenitor. Throughout, the inconsistent use of type (Swift and ITC Conduit) is jarring, and this would seem entirely consistent and the inevitable consequence with the "organic" approach taken to the paper's design. Maybe I am behind the times, but I would have suspected that a newspaper needs a holistic approach to its design rather than a piecemeal one.
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<br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/pixels/twopapers.jpg">
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<br />Judge for yourselves. I decided to compare the handpicked thumbnails of De Morgen on the link above to today's Guardian. Here are a series of images, fairly randomly chosen, to contrast:
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<br /><a href="http://www.typographer.org/pixels/g1.jpg">Guardian Cover</a>
<br /><a href="http://www.typographer.org/pixels/g2.jpg">Guardian Sport section (inside)</a>
<br /><a href="http://www.typographer.org/pixels/g3.jpg">Guardian Comment & Analysis section</a>
<br /><a href="http://www.typographer.org/pixels/g4.jpg">Guardian Business section</a>
<br /><a href="http://www.typographer.org/pixels/g5.jpg">Guardian G2 tabloid section cover</a>
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<br />On to other news. Lets get the new fonts out of the way, with links to Baseline's <a href="http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/baselinefonts/maxime/" target="new">Maxime</a>, and Chank's <a href="http://www.chank.com/font_detail.php?sku=5519" target="new">Santa Script</a>.
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<br />TDC reminds you that you have until 10 January 2005 to enter submissions for their eponymous type design competition. Details <a href="http://www.tdc.org/calls/tdc22005/index.html" target="new">here</a> for those brave and talented enough. If you've created a custom font for a client here in fashionable Europe, you may also be interested in entering the Les Trophée d'Or taking place in Paris. More details <a href="http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/72/55104.html?1102098633" target="new">here</a>.
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<br />On the web, John Berry has <a href="http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/22253.html" target="new">published his take</a> on the Japanese mag <a href="http://www.idea-mag.com/cgi-bin/book/catalog.cgi?language=en&item=305" target="new">Idea's Type Design</a> special issue, covering the articles on or by Fred Smeijers, Jean-François Porchez, Robin Kinross, Akira Kobayashi, André Baldinger, Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum, François Rappo, and Matthew Carter. Impressive. Elsewhere online, meneer Peters also gives a <a href="http://typographi.com/000944.php#000944" target="new">brief rundown</a> of Process' Klavika, and there's a new typography website to visit over at <a href="http://usabletype.com/" target="new">Usabletype.com</a>.
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<br />And finally, do you find SMS shorthand annoying? <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/09/sms_shorthand_annoying/" target="new">Apparently, we Brits do.</a>
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<br />Enough for this week. Just in case I don't get an opportunity to post, I hope everyone has a great holiday and a fantastic New Year. 2005 - more than 4 posts, honest!
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<br /><span class="credits">Sources: MS Typo, Typophile, The Guardian, FontLover.com, The Register. Thanks to Yves for pointing out my inability to spell "Flemmish".<BR><BR>Please note the change of email address for press release and news submissions has changed. See the site footer for more details.</span>David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1101987166047102562004-12-02T23:21:00.000-08:002004-12-06T03:01:34.826-08:00I'm back properly now, and just to prove it there is even an Atom newsfeed, so lets get on with it...
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<br />Linotype has announced TypoTechnica 2005, which this year will be held at St Bride Printing Library here in London, UK.
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<br />Running from Thursday 17th til Saturday 19th 2005, events will include font development forums, extensive workshops (using FontLab, not that <i>other</i> thing), and lectures, topped off on Saturday with a tour of St Bride itself. As Linotype are coming to the UK, it'll all be in English this time round, with additional German support available in the Computer Lab. Sadly, it will be UK English, so the North Americans may wish to borrow a few extra Us and pack a few less Zs before leaving.
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<br />Not including VAT (which is, oddly, at the German rate not the UK rate), it'll set you back 300 euros, with entry to all the sessions, two lunches, 4 snacks, an "evening event" and the tour of St Bride. If I had the full 348 euros, I'd definately come along to this.
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<br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/pixels/spottednov04.jpg" />
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<br />This week sees the news that Reading University, home of the world-famous Typography department, has switched across to renewable energy. In Wednesday's Guardian, Tom Chance, coordinator of the Go Green campaign at Reading, said "After two years of campaigning for the university to go green, we are ecstatic it has made this huge step to helping the environment." Well I am too.
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<br />How about this for a dreamy yet scary job. <a href="http://www.typography.com" target="new">Hoefler & Frere-Jones</a> are seeking a typeface designer. Strictly located in New York, if you think you're up to the challenge (and lets face it, its going to be), check out the press release <a href="http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/72/54771.html?1101841042" target="new">over here</a> at Typophile.
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<br />New fonts? There are some <a href="http://www.stonetypefoundry.com/html_pages/MagmaOverview.html" target="new">here</a>, <a href="http://www.itcfonts.com/about/prdisplay.asp?year=2004&pr=233" target="new">here</a>, <a href="http://www.processtypefoundry.com/typefaces/klavika/index.html" target="new">here</a>, <a href="http://www.t26.com/fonts/display.php?f_id=830" target="new">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.pizzadude.dk/vegacute.php" target="new">here</a>.
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<br />And finally, Jean François Porchez has posted <a href="http://www.porchez.com/article/250/typelife-dubai-by-night-and-day-final" target="new">a series of images</a> from his trip to Dubai. Three pages worth, covering bi-lingual signage. Definately worth a peek.
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<br /><span class="credits">Sources: Linotype Press Release, MS Typo, Typophile, The Guardian, FontLover.com<BR><BR>Please note the change of email address for press release and news submissions has changed. See the site footer for more details.</span>David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1078576925972827072004-03-06T04:37:00.000-08:002004-11-12T04:04:29.606-08:00<span class="credits">November 12, 2004: Typographer.org has been on a break for the last few months. New articles are in the pipeline and will be posted soon.</span>
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<br />Designing graphics for television is what I do during daylight hours here in London. But television provides very specific challenges (and, of course, opportunities) for setting type. Designers are increasingly working across multiple media, and those coming from a print background especially may have a culture shock and need to learn some new rules. Hopefully, the following will help!
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<br /><i>History explains all</i>
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<br />Firstly, lets look at the technology, its history, and its inherent problems - feel free to skip this part if your eyes start glazing over by all means, but it relates directly to the advice given later, and gives the context of <i>why</i> the advice works.
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<br />Television is actually a pretty old technology, and many of the issues I deal with daily are as a result of that fact. The basic standards are PAL, NTSC and SECAM. SECAM was developed by the French in a political decision to protect its manufacturing base. Interestingly, many eastern block countries adopted SECAM for political motives - NTSC is an American system, and PAL was an improved derivative of it. What better way to delay cultural imperialism than using an incompatible television system? :) For our purposes, if you are designing for SECAM, treat it as PAL.
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<br />Why the different standards? Well, its all originally to do with electricity supplies - in most cases, you'll find NTSC used in countries with a 60Hz power supply, and PAL in those with a 50Hz power supply. It made things easier for the electrical engineers in a time when analogue was king - the power supply frequency was basically used as a clock, allowing the engineers to time when the next frame of video should be displayed.
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<br />As a result, we have different frame rates across the globe. PAL displays a higher resolution image (with superior colour) at 25fps (frames per second) and its lesser parent NTSC works at 30fps (well, 29.97 actually, since colour was introduced). What does differing frame rates across the world got to do with typography? This is all important, trust me.
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<br />So, why does a 60Hz screen create a 30fps image and not 60fps? Well, television screens are, for the most part, interlaced screens. That means that an image is made up of two passes, called fields. So for example, if an image is made up of, say, 20 lines, then it might be that firstly all the odd line numbers are show, then all the even numbers. This has two positive effects - field-based video and animations can take advantage of the slight time delay to make fast movement appear smoother to the eye, and secondly, a higher resolution image can be displayed on a low resolution screen, fooling the eye still further.
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<br />The downside is that certain types of image will flicker. Think about it - if you had a pattern made up of alternate white and black lines (like oh so many trendy websites in the 90s), then on a television, it would display as a frame of white, followed by a frame of black. This is why edges of high contrast can flicker (buzz or vibrate, as we like to call it in the industry) on screen.
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<br />Next up, safe guides. I am typing this on my boyfriend's iBook - its perfect LCD is sharp as nails from edge to edge, and I can see every single bit of the image. Televisions don't work in the same way, unfortunately. Firstly, there is the issue of overscanning. Televisions, to completely fill the screen no matter what, deliberately display images that go just beyond the edge of the visible screen. This is called overscanning (duh!) and needs to be taken into consideration for anyone working with television output. The area of the screen that is generally regarded to be safe for an image is called Action Safe - any critical action within a television signal that must be seen by the viewer is kept within this action safe area.
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<br />Next up, televisions, being clunky old CRTs, are not consistently sharp like LCD and other newer display technologies - at the edges, CRTs lose focus and definition. This is very important for typography as type that otherwise is perfectly readable on screen can blur into an unreadable nonsense. Therefore, within the action safe area, there is another, smaller area called Title Safe, where it is generally regarded to be safe from loss of focus.
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<br />We've talked about different resolutions, we've discussed interlacing and fields, and how different countries use different standards with different frame rates, along with overscanning and safe zones, but no word of type...
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<br />
<br /><i>On with the type</i>
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<br />1: Love it or hate it, all type on television should be anti-aliased, with no exceptions. If it is not, the contrast between the type and the backdrop will cause flickering due to interlacing.
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<br />2: Avoid fonts with thin horizontal lines - again, they will flicker like crazy on a television screen due to interlacing, even when anti-aliased and softened. Try and choose fonts that have at very least two pixels depth on any horizonal lines.
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<br />3: (Assuming a nominal resolution of 72pt) Dont use a font smaller than 18pt ever ever, and try and keep to above 21pt as much as possible. Besides the issues mentioned in points 1 and 2, remember the context in which television images are displayed. You are probably less than a metre (3 feet) from your computer monitor, but you’re likely to be quite a bit further away when watching Friends or Newsnight. The only possible exception to this is porn, of course.
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<br />4: Pick fonts with a large x-height - that will allow you to experiment with smaller sizes (below 28pt) but remain readable.
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<br />5: Don’t use finely seriffed fonts - the serifs will break down on screen unless they're set very large indeed. Slab or wedge serifs are often good alternatives for television though - experiment, but always check on a broadcast monitor or television before committing.
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<br />6: If you are designing for a 16:9 ratio widescreen television, remember that the end design will be anamorphic (squished) and will lose some effective vertical resolution. Try not to choose overly thin, narrow typefaces as they may disintegrate at smaller sizes. Not the arena to be playing with movie poster fonts! While we are on the subject, if your widescreen design is shown on a 4:3 ratio normal television letterboxed (reduced in size so there is a black bar on the top and bottom, rather than having the sides cut off), bear in mind that type will be smaller and potentially less readable. You may want to compensate for this.
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<br />7: For static screens or overlays, Gaussian blur the end screen by "0.3" in Photoshop (or whatever you use): this will help with flickering by reducing the contrast between the background and the type.
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<br />8: Be careful of red type, especially if its highly saturated and for use on NTSC systems. It has a tendency to bleed. View your designs on a television or a broadcast monitor to be sure if you use red extensively in your designs.
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<br />9: This is where people may disagree with me: Be wary of very chunky (Impact springs to mind) fonts at smaller sizes, they can appear to fill in a little, much like print on newspaper, especially when you soften the type a little to cut back on flickering.
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<br />10: When animating type, experiment with frame blending and motion blur, which can give a smoother result. Be careful though, as it can hinder readability while in motion, especially below 36pt.
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<br />11: Where possible, recomposite animated type for the system you are using. For example, if you design for NTSC and need to reversion it for PAL (this happens a lot), the standards conversion process has to interpolate frames from about 30fps to 25, or indeed vice versa - this can cause a ghosting / after image effect from frame to frame. On typography, as it its inevitably high contrast, this can be very noticable. Secondly, because the resolutions used are different, a converted design will need to interpolate missing pixels - a small loss in quality. Its more work, for sure, but the results will be smoother and higher quality if you create two versions at the right frame rates and resolutions to begin with.
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<br />12: View your work! How it looks on your computer screen in your design or composition application will not match how it looks on television. Check it, ideally from a distance.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1074716686437456112004-01-21T12:20:00.000-08:002004-01-21T12:34:00.873-08:00This Saturday past, Stephen Coles over at Typographica posted his review of FontZone, Clive Bruton’s subscription-based typography magazine.
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<br />Clive’s site has amused me now for some time, and I certainly dont mean that in a condescending way. His coverage of typography news in highlight form is of a similar level to that of MS Typo, with fresh, moderately timely, free and informative articles. The real meat and potatoes of the site, however, lies in its excellent editorial base of articles, for which Clive reasonably asks for a yearly subscription. Judging from the responses just a couple of days later to Stephen’s brief review, it appears that many have problems with subscription sites - a viewpoint I had also held in the past. What is slightly more of concern though is the disdain for the site’s occasional partiality.
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<br />I thought it would be useful to add another perspective to the debate, as Mr Coles, Bruton and I all share a love of typography and appreciation of independent web publishing. A common root, if you will. For a couple of years, Typographer ran an almost daily news feed on typographic and graphic design. As I was not constrained by an employer, subscriber or sponsors, I was free to add an editorial slant where I felt appropriate. Many of my then readers emailed in to say that they appreciated this partisanship in the writing (and, naturally, others thought different, to the point of extreme offense a couple of times). Overall though, I never felt that impartiality was necessary or even desirable. This is perhaps a cultural thing - while we here in the UK feel that impartiality can be a good thing, and many of us hope to maintain such a valuable editorial stance within the media (I’m thinking primarily of the BBC’s output across television, radio and the web here), we also feel it important to have a balanced view within the media. Balance, by its very nature, requires a diversity of opinion, rather than mere desolate reporting.
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<br />We are all political animals, to exist within our respective cultures makes us so, no matter how hard we protest otherwise. Our diversity in thoughts and deed is surely what makes living rich, and our chosen fields so much fun. Without it, communication, whether it be verbal written or graphical in its nature, would become sterile - Imagine a world where all graphical communication was handled by Wolff Olins - no matter what your opinion of their work (it appeals to me, but then I am no longer young and hip), and I hope many of you would agree that it would be a world far less interesting, if rather better kerned. The world needs the occasional rant [or should that be Hrant?], and I applaud Clive for having the courage of his convictions enough to publish his beliefs a commercial setting.
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<br />Moving on to monetary considerations. Why have I changed my mind about Clive’s subscription scheme? Well, its simple really. I spend about an hour a day, every day for about two years working on Typographer.com’s now long gone news feed. It taught me much, and I hope that it taught others a thing or two in the process too. I hope that once in a while the site provided people with a new way of looking at this little niche which we all love so dearly, and if that meant speaking my mind, then so be it.
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<br />But short (some might say mouthy) news articles are one thing - to collate and edit longer pieces is considerably more difficult. These longer pieces are not simple affairs to produce, and when you have to fit it in with a busy workload designing websites, brochures, typefaces, or whatever else, it can be an exhausting process. Typographer.com occasionally ran larger pieces, but they were much to do with the generosity of others willing to contribute without recompense. To set aside considerably longer periods to work on a website of a more serious stature (that I believe Fontzone is, despite the moderatly naff name) requires the authors and editors to take time away from their paid life. While I would love to live in a world full of lofty idealistic artisans, the cruel hand of capitalism is fast removing any hope of that particular utopia. Put simply, for those who go beyond the hobbyist website to create sites that push the medium further, and help to educate, not just entertain, they need to be rewarded financially, even if moderately, not through greed, but through pure practicalities. Websites are difficuly to maintain - the one you are reading here costs hundreds of pounds a year just to host, and if I worked out a commercial hourly rate for its content, it’d be thousands.
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<br />For me, its fun. For Clive, it is in part his livelihood, and he can only continue if others respect and support that.
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<br />Good luck Clive, and keep up the good work.David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1073302783309276482004-01-05T03:39:00.000-08:002004-01-05T12:43:02.110-08:00Happy New Year to you all. Typographer is gently ramping back up after its break with a small collection of new year news.
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<br />Firstly, its a sad (or not?) goodbye to Adobe PageMaker. Adobe has announced that having InDesign, FrameMaker and PageMaker may be one DTP package too many for its product portfolio. And can you guess what they are going to do to for PageMaker users left out in the cold? Not hard is it... they also <a href="http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200401/010504INDESIGNPAGEMAKER.html" target="new">announced</a> a set of plugins for InDesign, along with a special <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/pm_ind.html" target="new">crossgrade edition of InDesign</a> for a fairly resonable price. Bye bye PageMaker, and thank you for introducing me to the world of graphic design in my teenage years.
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<br />Being a vegan, the release of <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/asagoo/tofu/" target="new">Tofu</a>, a new reader application for MacOS X, naturally caught my eye. The reader differs in that it mimics newspaper multi-column layouts, making for a more efficient use of most computer's landscape format screen. An interesting and simple idea that, given it is free, is certainly worth investigating further.
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<br />ATypI 2004 is set for Eastern Europe, with the announcement that this year's <a href="http://www.atypi.org/40_conferences" target="new">conference</a> being held in Prague, between 30th September and 4th October. There is barely more news of its major rival (well, sort of), <a href="http://www.typecon2004.com/" target="new">TypeCon2004</a>. This year its being held in the gay capital of the western world, San Francisco between 22nd and 25th July. Handlebar moustaches and/or tight tees at the ready then.
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<br />Other news, digested into pulp: <a href="http://www.typofonderie.com/" target="new">Porchez Typofonderie</a> has released an all new site which blows the previous effort out of the water - finally a site worthy of the foundry's output. T26 has also relaunched its <a href="http://www.t26.com/" target="new">website</a> with a neater, more contemporary design, <a href="http://www.fontzone.com/" target="new">FontZone</a> publishes Typographic Circle's Circular publication (for between 1994 and 1997), and Typophile has extended the <a href="http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/72/23068.html?1072728760" target="new">deadline for submissions</a> to its DIY 2004 calendar till 15th January in a bid for more submissions.
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<br />Good luck with your new year resolutions!David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1068462993981639322003-11-10T03:16:00.000-08:002003-11-14T00:27:10.263-08:00On a temporary break... back soonish. Drop a line to the email address below if you want to be informed of when the site is back to normal.
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<br />In the meantime, may I recommend <a href="http://www.typophile.com/forums/" target="new">Typophile</a>, <a href="http://www.www.typographi.ca/" target="new">Typographi.ca</a> and <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/default.asp" target="new">MS Typo news</a>. Native French speakers may want to explore <a href="http://www.typographe.com/" target="new">Typographe.com</a>.
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<br />And, just before I go, one for you bargain hunters. FontLab is giving away ScanFont 3.2.1 (for MacOS Classic) on the cover of MacUser magazine here in the UK. It works a treat with TypeTool and FontLab, even under MacOS X (see quick and dirty example of the two working together below). Plus, they are offering a special deal on ScanFont 4 with either TypeTool or the full FontLab for $129 and $599 respectively.
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<br /><img src="http://www.typographer.org/scanfont2.gif">
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<br />Again, back fairly soon!David Earlsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3844108.post-1064924200856823152003-09-30T05:16:00.000-07:002003-09-30T05:18:28.476-07:00Just a short one this week. ATypI 2003 over in Vancouver looks like it was a resounding success, with plenty of <a href="http://www.atypi.org/40_conferences/28_Vancouver/50_conference_news" target="new">interesting things announced</a>. 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 <i>et al</i> from now on). CS? Creative Suite, of course!
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<br />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.
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<br />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?
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<br />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.
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<br />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!
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<br />Who bought my book in the auction, by the way?David Earlsnoreply@blogger.com