Typophile - Joy Division Closer Font - Comments

@Jens Kutilek: Anyway,

James Arboghast — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:32:27 -0700

@Jens Kutilek: Anyway, typeface designs are not protected by copyright in most countries. And most surely not if they are just an accurate rendition of something conceived 2000 years ago.

Dude, it’s a matter of ethical conduct and moral obligation to respect the design work of others, especially your contemporaries. Just because typeface designs are not protected by copyright in most countries does not make distributing a copy of an existing type design right. Dan has copied the work of contemporary designers who based their typeface on Roman letters from 200 years ago. The Joy Divison Closer type is not an accurate rendition of something conceived 2000 years ago.

You really, really piss me off man (Jens). Don’t come here and tell falsehoods or misconstrue the letter of the law. I will drive you away. You need lessons in ethics. You need to wake up to yourself and your misanthropy.

Why is it so often Germans who harp on technicalities? Because they’re a technically-minded people. That’s not a racist comment or a personal attack. It’s an accurate observation with no overtones or negative implication. All you get me on this one is the straight dope.

j a m e s

Thanks for the resources.

DanGayle — Sun, 8 Jun 2008 22:08:39 -0700

Thanks for the resources. I’ll be sure to look them up :)

Tom Perkins – a letter

Gary Lonergan — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:28:34 -0700

Tom Perkins – a letter carver based in England and whose fluency in drawn lettering is second to none – has written at length about the geometry of Roman Lettering in the book “Font” published by The Ditchling Museum and the Edward Johnston Foundation. It inludes his own drawings of the Trajan letters. His book “The Art of Letter Carving in Stone’ as well as being a sumptous record of lettercarving today again has detailed drawing of the Trajan letters. All the best with your project.

Ugh, my front-page SiFR

eeblet — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:38:08 -0800

Ugh, my front-page SiFR links had stopped working, even though I hadn’t changed anything - did a quick and very ugly short-term fix! Thanks. :)

“(Disclaimer - I am

DanGayle — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:22:49 -0800

“(Disclaimer - I am typographically ignorant!)”

Bla. What kind of thing to say is that? You obviously have an eye for something, because you are on the mark for your critiques. The eye is the final arbiter of taste.

I’ll work on some of the things you’ve mentioned.

(By the way, the links on your home page don’t work. JFYI)

Nice! I think offering

eeblet — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:08:18 -0800

Nice! I think offering alternates for some of the the letters would make this more widely useable - J, V, and B, maybe others.

For the Greek: the pi looks a bit odd - the left stem seems unnecessarily angled. The gamma, phi, xi, and theta all seem a but anemic to me. The sigma seems top-heavy to me. The psi seems fruity. ;)

I think in general the Roman letters look stronger than the Greek - the Greek might need to be thickened up to compensate for the less rectilinear letterforms.

(Disclaimer - I am typographically ignorant!)

Ok, I’ve fixed the missing

DanGayle — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:15:32 -0800

Ok, I’ve fixed the missing letters according to the link from Mr Barns (Thanks!)

I’ve also added Greek capitals. That’s hard stuff! Let me know what you think of the letterforms of the Greek. I have tweaking I need to do, and no spacing has been done yet.

Thanks!

Check with the creators /

Jens Kutilek — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:32:19 -0800

Check with the creators / owners of the original typeface first. They’re the best people to ask.

Well, according to this image Mr Barnes linked to, the typeface is a Roman Lapidary from the first century AD, so asking the creators may become the hardest part in producing this font ;)

Anyway, typeface designs are not protected by copyright in most countries. And most surely not if they are just an accurate rendition of something conceived 2000 years ago.

Cheers,
Jens.

I would think that without

DanGayle — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:42:48 -0800

I would think that without the permission of Meier you could not make it available commercially.

He’s still alive, so maybe you’re right. Not in a legalistic way, but perhaps in a moral way. Couldn’t hurt to give Otmar Hoefer over at Linotype a ring. He’d be able to find Mr. Meier for me.

Given how often Trajan is

James Arboghast — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:32:20 -0800

Given how often Trajan is used and how few good alternates (let alone alternates with a bit more character)

Meow-miow! Trajan is a major cliché. The Trajan inscription may be the finest example of Roman inscriptional capitals, but it is far from representative of the vast bulk of carved lettering left behind by the Romans. It’s stereotypical only.

I’ve seen some recent TV documentaries with pictures of incriptional capitals left by the Romans in Northern Africa, and the forms are quite different to the Trajan things. The Northern African inscriptions are remarkably close to Bodoni/Didone capitals, but with angled stressing instead of Bodoni’s vertical stressing. I’m not kidding. Fat strokes and stems with hairline serifs. The hairline serifs aren’t hairline as we know it, but somehow they managed to carve quite thin lines in stone. ’mazing.

Perhaps some of that fancy Roman Numeral opentype coding that is oft rumored?

Yes, do it dude. Roman numerals are a bitch for maths, but they’re fun to contemplate. A real blast from the past. I’m impressed by your grasp of ancient history Dan.

So here’s a question, do you think if I fixed it up nice and pretty I could sell it? Or, is it just the kind of thing that I should just mark up to “practice” and give it away?

Check with the creators / owners of the original typeface first. They’re the best people to ask. Certainly you can chalk this one up to practice, but don’t give it away for zero cash outlay without first ascertaining if the people who matter have any objections. Play it safe.

j a m e s

I would think that without

Mr Barnes — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:05:03 -0800

I would think that without the permission of Meier you could not make it available commercially.

No lowercase! See This

DanGayle — Fri, 8 Feb 2008 08:17:32 -0800

No lowercase! See This Thread

And design the lowercase

Pieter van Rosmalen — Fri, 8 Feb 2008 04:14:57 -0800

And design the lowercase glyphs and the figures to complete the font?

Pieter

Just did a little counting

DanGayle — Thu, 7 Feb 2008 17:59:39 -0800

Just did a little counting in the ole’ Fontlab, and I guess I’m only needing ten characters for UC Greek. Cool. That should be fun and instructional. Let’s see about Cyrillic...

Ahhh. Has a bit more letters to create, but they all seem to be basic constructions that can be hashed together using current parts. Sweet!

Good thoughts. Perhaps some

DanGayle — Thu, 7 Feb 2008 17:45:45 -0800

Good thoughts. Perhaps some of that fancy Roman Numeral opentype coding that is oft rumored?

Cyrillic and Greek? I hadn’t thought about it. I’d like to flesh out the Western European UC character set before I even consider designing those badboys. (Now that I think about it, Greek Inscriptionals aren’t too far removed from the Roman, are they? Perhaps it’s something I should look into.)

Joy Division Closer Font

DanGayle — Sat, 2 Feb 2008 23:26:54 -0800

A long time ago I tried to get the font from the cover of Joy Division’s Closer album identified. See This thread

There were no positives, so I decided to digitize it myself. It was missing three letters that I had to make myself. Can you guess which ones?

My first font, too.