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Digital Iridium -- any good?
Posted by lindenhayn in
17 Feb 2013 — 2:30am
17 Feb 2013 — 2:30am
I recently came across a book, c. 1990, typeset in A. Frutiger's Iridium (Linotronic 500), and realized what a beautiful typeface Iridium is. Like a happier Walbaum, a more humane Bodoni, a better-crafted New Caledonia...
As the Linotype specimen sheet, as always, isn't too helpful -- has anyone has ever used the digital version, or seen a book typeset in it?
thanks in advance!
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17 Feb 2013 — 2:33am
I tried to add two links, but they made my post get caught in the spam filter:
(1) Linotype's specimen: image.linotype.com/samples/hirespdf/48731.pdf
(2) The only book I found set in (probably digital) Iridium, a pretty low-res scan. I'll be able to get it via interlibrary loan, but I'll appreciate more thoughts on Iridium nevertheless.
http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521088893&...
19 Feb 2013 — 8:38am
{duplicate post removed}
17 Feb 2013 — 6:53am
You're right, it looks both sensitive and solid. Although at least on MyFonts the spacing seems too loose.
hhp
17 Feb 2013 — 7:02am
If you’re in Berlin or in Mainz, you can probably find a copy of »Adrian Frutiger – Schriften. Das Gesamtwerk«. It contains a sample of the digital Iridium (p. 241). For my taste the hairlines are a tiny bit too thin in < 10 pt. Depending on your printer it might work though.
17 Feb 2013 — 9:42am
@lindenhayn,
Strangely enough, Iridium LT was included in Linotype's GoldEdition 1.7, so I created this simple comparison using: Iridium LT, Walbaum MT, and Waldorf TL. No effort was made to adjust or manually kern the text... just a straight comparison.
http://ge.tt/7VAbQiY/v/0?c
19 Feb 2013 — 8:46am
@Jens, @Michael: thanks! There is a copy of that book near my place, I'll go check it out later this week. Looking at the comparison, I'm getting an idea of what a great font this could be if the spacing were corrected -- and if it came with the small caps and text figures that the original had. Even the »Pro« (!) version comes without them :(
19 Feb 2013 — 8:52am
Nils, respacing is my middle name. :-) If you have a budget, the spacing, the smallcaps, all that can be fixed. Of course there are others here who can also do that sort of thing for you.
hhp
19 Feb 2013 — 8:54am
by the way, there's second typeface that Iridium looks like a better version of: Slimbach's Kepler, which for some reason never really appealed to me (despite several chances I gave it over the past few years). Maybe one could borrow the smcps and osfs from there...
19 Feb 2013 — 8:58am
That's possible (especially if the MM version of Kepler were used to generate just the right matching instance) and it would certainly save time/money. But everybody involved would need to own a license to all the fonts in the mix. And I'd have to check Iridium's EULA, but in the worst case I can get permission from Linotype (I've been with them since 1998, and have some friends there).
hhp