Typophile - How related are members of Type Families? - Comments

Thanks for the response,

auricfuzz — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:31:08 -0700

Thanks for the response, Nick. I should have actually made my specific interest a bit clearer: I’m especially looking for type families in which the component typefaces are definitely not based upon the same structure but are still made to complement each other. Despite my ambiguity, your Modern Suite and the Brown/Worldwide/Walburn combo are actually examples of what I’d like to see: disparate types that go together (intentionally). This stems from my very early thinking about how to mate a handwriting script with a serif, so the farther apart the typefaces are while still working together, the more they fit my criteria.

Regarding how to combine different typefaces, you write in the Modern Suite PDF that Scotch Modern and Figgins share cap height, italic angle, x-height, extender height, and color (in Figgins regular).

Two questions: 1) Is matching these proportions and color the entirety of what you did within the Modern Suite and Brown/Worldwide, or did you work with other aspects to harmonize the components (maybe creating more similar letterforms than each would have on its own, etc.)?

2) What was your rationale for making Scotch Modern’s proportions match those of Figgins Bold instead of Regular? Was it because you envision Scotch and Figgins Bold being combined on a page more often than Scotch and the Regular?

And, Kris, the idea of relation because of a single creator is heartening; I’ll bestow the same traits on my typefaces and they’ll automatically be sympathetic! I have to imagine that Gill knew that Joanna looked a lot like Gill Sans but considered those forms to be near-ideal, similar to how I imagine Unger and Spiekermann going about some of their types.

I am looking for type

kris — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:05:21 -0700

I am looking for type families which are related not simply by one or more varying formal parameters (width, weight, optical scale) but by some other attributes.

I think the one specific attribute that makes disparate typefaces a related “family” is the designer’s hand. For example, Joanna & Gill Sans were not (to my knowledge) specifically designed to work together, but they do because they came from the one hand. I have just finished a sans & serif that work together quite nicely, even though they were not originally designed to do so. I think that they play nicely together because they both came from my hand.

Peter, you may also find this of interest. I recently read it in the Cycles specimen:

“Print has been fertile. Parent not only of Cycles in its various sizes, but also the imperiale Arepo, and together with Cycles has given life to SFPL, a multi-purpose petit romain.”

Of interest because it obliquely referenced the idea of geneology—the DNA of Print finding it’s way into other types via the hand of Stone.

—K

I’ve done several: Brown

Nick Shinn — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 13:51:23 -0700

I’ve done several:
Brown and Worldwide/Walburn.
The Modern Suite, first fonts released by the end of the year.
The Globe and Mail types.

Well, I’m not sure if

auricfuzz — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:16:11 -0700

Well, I’m not sure if Peter’s still using this thread for his research, but I’ve found it to be quite useful for my own thinking about type. In that spirit, I’ll add another interesting case of typefaces related in a non-standard manner — from Storm, in fact. This type is Antique, which, as far as I can tell from the description on the site, combines three Baroque faces of the same period from Paris, Vienna, and Prague. They are united by a common x-height and color, a revival that does not smooth out the rough and slightly awkward areas, and a similar style/contrast, but all three are quite distinct entities. The italics are even more divergent. Since at text sizes these would all be far too similar to provide contrast within text, it seems like they function more like the grades in certain newspaper types (e.g. H&FJ’s Mercury Text), with the goal of allowing the designer to root around in very similar variations until the ideal one is found. I’d really like to know how Storm sees them being used in tandem.

Storm also has Lexon Gothic, in which the bold weights are nearly sans-serifs.

If anyone else is reading this, I’m personally eager to find more information on very distinct typefaces that were designed to work together. I haven’t come across any examples other than Storm’s Splendid Quartet (and perhaps now Antique) and Kai Bernau’s Lyon. Does anyone know of any others?

Peter, I am interested to

Eben Sorkin — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:25:45 -0700

Peter, I am interested to hear if any portion of this thread was useful to you and what your take on the subject is now. Thanks!

Sorry for the silence, I

peter bilak — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:45:19 -0700

Sorry for the silence, I just returned from holidays without the internet connection. I will need time to read your comments more carefully to respond to them. Thanks everyone so far.

And this, Kai Bernau’s

T. — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 07:05:58 -0700

And this, Kai Bernau’s Graduation project:

http://www.kaibernau.de/lyon.php

Just wanted to add this

Jan — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:14:26 -0700

Just wanted to add this here. It’s the typequiz on fontshop.be moderated by Yves.

Thanks Paul!

Eben Sorkin — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:47:08 -0700

Thanks Paul!

Eben, you should have got a

paul d hunt — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:31:33 -0700

Eben, you should have got a nice printed sample of Greta in your TypeCon goodie bag. She’s quite beautiful!

I am going to have to go

Eben Sorkin — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 12:16:44 -0700

I am going to have to go look at Greta!

Sales and use are different

Nick Shinn — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:26:06 -0700

Sales and use are different issues.
Way more people have fonts with optical sizes — provided by Adobe — than have specifically bought (licences for) such optically scaled fonts. There is no way of knowing what percentage of this group uses the feature, but it seems reasonable to suppose that if someone decides to use, say, Minion, and the application sub-menu then offers a choice involving optical sizes, they will make a typographically informed selection.

The independent foundries which earn their entire income from fonts (notwithstanding the odd piece of “merch”) must justify their investment in product development with related sales. So even without seeing the sales figures, one must assume that the practice of producing optical sizes is market-driven. I’ve designed two versions of Jenson, and Nicholas (display) sells better than Goodchild (text), although Goodchild’s lack of small caps etc. may have something to do with that. As a matter of course, I produce text and display versions of most of my serifed typefaces (even Fontesque), and I suspect a large number of independent foundries do the same.

And if on the one hand there are hordes of graphic artists with many optically scaled fonts they never use, on the other hand there are a few optically scaled fonts that are read by hordes — namely newspaper readers, for the use of special headline fonts is widespread. And some papers, quite often the ones with the largest circulation, go so far as to use variants for several different sizes.

The idea of size-specific font selection being done automatically by the OS or app (in a similar manner to Quark’s implementation of size-specific tracking via a “tracking table”) is intriguing, but not a priority with application developers, although I did discuss it with one at TypeCon recently, and he seemed to think it was viable.

To return the thread to its originator, Peter’s Greta presents an interesting resolution to the problem of scale, fit, and press gain.
Greta has four axes: weight (4 instances), size (3 instances), horizontal scale (two instances, at the smallest size instance only) and grade (3 instances, at the smallest size instance only). That sums up the state of the art.

The peculiar economy of the font business, skewed by app and OS bundling, has shifted the dynamic of independent font development towards scripts on the one hand, and custom news and publication design on the other, neither of these markets being addressed by Apple, Microsoft, or Adobe. That’s cool, because there are extremes of size usage in editorial design (far more than one sees in advertising these days). The independent foundries are following the money, and this is driving the innovative development of size-specific typography.

I’ll believe optical size

billtroop — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 02:34:41 -0700

I’ll believe optical size series are selling substantially when I see the sales figures.

In the meantime, for the vast majority users, even of ’graphic designers’ I fear correct optical sizes will only be used when there is an automatic selection system in place. Sooner or later this will happen, i.e. when apps and os’s run out of anything else to sell.

I really like the idea of a

typovar — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:59:31 -0700

I really like the idea of a sad typeface, I have never heard anyone put it that way before. What on earth _do_ you use for a condolence note? Well, I know, your best handwriting, black ink of course. But Dante, for example, is not really a happy typeface, is it? Today Sans is a happy typeface. Sumner Stone’s Cycles is a happy typeface. What are the sad ones? I think most are in the middle of course.

Here’s the opposite. A bit off-topic, but still related to “the voice of a typeface”. I hope I don’t get kicked off this forum by posting this image.
I don’t think Vincent Connare ever ment this to happen:

Is anyone besides Sumner

Eben Sorkin — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 13:28:16 -0700

Is anyone besides Sumner Stone doing type in a real optical series?

Dude! Totally. Also, the ’boutiques’ are where much of the action is now. Adobe isn’t looking to publish new designers’ stuff anyway.

I would like to answer your question...

Actually you did answer it. I wanted to know where your ideas about optical sizes not selling came from.

I will admit that it’s a specialized audience they are likely to sell to & the work involved makes that seem like a natural/inevitable fit. I say this having not actually built one myself but having eyeballed what’s happening in them with keen interest.

Thanks for the additional History!

How related are members of Type Families?

peter bilak — Sun, 5 Aug 2007 07:23:41 -0700

I am writing an article on type families; and for this purpose I am looking for type families which are related not simply by one or more varying formal parameters (width, weight, optical scale) but by some other attributes.

I thought of something like Storm’s Splendid, but there I cannot trace what is it that links these four separate fonts into one family.
http://www.stormtype.com/typefaces-fonts-shop/families-45-splendid

I know of many students’ projects which play with an idea of ’character’ or ’humour’ of typefaces as a parameter that connects separate typefaces into one, but I haven’t seen any published typefaces doing this in an intelligent way. Do you happen to know any published examples?

A separate question: Do you know when the term type family was coined, and first instance when it was used?

Yours, Peter Bilak