Multi-lingual fonts. I’m dying for a couple of good cross-writing sans serifs. I’m working on a lot of cyrillic texts these days, and I can’t find a whole lot of decent cyrillic sans serifs, that work well with my latin sans serifs.

FontLab Robotic - to reduce the labour costs of type designers:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060307220709.htm

P.S.
It will be released when it is ready :)

New trend: Pirate Type.
New Release: ITC Avant Garde Gothic Super Pro Oblique II

photo fonts

Screen reading for most books, letterpress for the rest.

Yeah, photo fonts... they’re going to be one-offs (not robust systems) for quick and dirty concepts, posters, sites, etc. Because they’ll be one-offs they’ll also be cheaper.

“what would you WANT to be the next big thing in typography?”

Me!

Joking. I would like to see typography & typographer’s taken much more seriously, like doctors for example. And the decay of arbitrary typesetting rules proposed in places like The Chicago Manual of Style.

—K

Photo Fonts:
’Give a round of applause to the winner of the logo contest.’

Whos’ the winner?

Until there is an easy way to make photofonts read as actual text for search engines, they’ll never become the norm for web design.

>FontLab Robotic

there is Robofab Fontlab... it rocks...magic since we’ve been waiting for a fraction maker for 20 years... and it’s here, python baby!

Blackletter is making a comeback.

Dunno about what will be the next big thing...

However, I have some strong feelings about what should be the last big thing. And principal amongst these is the total disregard / lack of acknowledgement for the skills of the typographer.

This comes from two desperate experiences:

i) When asked what I do for a living and answering ’I’m a Typographer’, being confronted with the reply ’What does that mean’ or worse, ’so you do DTP’... jeez...

ii) Overhearing two 16 year-old chav secretaries debating whether Times New Roman or Verdana was the ’better looking’ font.

If I’d had a length of rope, I’d have hanged them. Or, if they were too quick for me, I’d have hanged myself... :-)

Flairs are the next big thing, its over due. I can see The Sans (flair)

3D holigraphic type… able to be recognized at 360°…

i can’t imagine photofonts being anything but a novelty at best. if they’re based on pixels, i assume they’ll be relegated to a certain size and well, that’s pretty pointless.

personally, to answer my own question, i’d like to see typefaces, particularly ones for text, becoming more random in that each letter might have a handful of small variations, and when you use it it’ll randomize it and make the text feel more alive, like it did with the older manual printing techniques. it used to be more imperfect, but that’s also what made it much more alive. i know the technology is getting there with randomization of letters, but as far as i know there aren’t any typefaces (or programs) that have this.. it may not be the perfect solution to making the printed letter feel more living, but at least it’d be a step towards the right direction.

Letterror has produced a few fonts with shifting anchor points. Maybe not exactly what claes meant, but close I think. I’m almost positive I read an article last year regarding another typeface that used shifting points to give letters a more unique feel.

Also the OT version of Ed Interlock has multiple characters included for a greater selection it also includes almost 1,400 ligatures and will auto-jumble the selection on the fly.

i’d like to see typefaces, particularly ones for text, becoming more random...there aren’t any typefaces (or programs) that have this.

Random Feature

true, this kind of thing is more desireable in script fonts moreso than text fonts. However, when I was putting together Franklin Caslon, I put together a quick font that although not really random simulated this kind of effect. (althought i’m sure i could make it more random with a bit more work). Here’s a screen grab just for fun with some text set out of the box with my beta font. You can see that the supersmudged letters happen too regularly to make this really convincing.

“I would like to see typography & typographer’s taken much more seriously”

amen brother.

I would like to see typography & typographer’s taken much more seriously

well then you better mind your stray apostrophes!

I have been having some fun with your Franklin Caslon Paul.

ChrisL

“well then you better mind your stray apostrophes!”

I nevrt said I could riite! That s best lef tto the editr!

Don;t get me started on capitals…

—K

’Never Mind the Full Stops’

BBC4 makes quirky version of Buzzcocks
Geoff White
21 March 2006 09:08

BBC4 is making its answer to Never Mind The Buzzcocks - a highbrow panel show based on spelling and grammatical mistakes called Never Mind The Full Stops.

Presented by Julian Fellowes, each week the quiz show will feature four celebrity wordsmiths looking at the quirks of the English language, with rounds on bad grammar and bad spelling.

Fellowes starred in BBC1’s long-running drama Monarch of the Glen and recently presented Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder for BBC1.He also wrote the screenplay to feature film Gosford Park, for which he won an Oscar, and wrote the best-selling novel Snobs.

Commissioned by BBC entertainment commissioning controller Jon Beazley and executive editor for comedy entertainment Katie Taylor, the 10 x 30-minute series is due for broadcast in May. It is produced by Jo Street.

Never Mind The Buzzcocks is a BBC2 show.

Source:broadcastnow.co.uk

To contact Broadcast with a news story please call 020 7505 8040 or send an email to broadcastnews@emap.com

“what would you WANT to be the next big thing in typography?”

Money.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Photofonts appear to require an ActiveX control to be viewed on a webpage, so can only be seen by MSIE users who have chosen to install that plugin. Given that limitation I can’t see widespread adoption.

“what would you WANT to be the next big thing in typography?”

Why do you ask, isn’t it big enough, I don’t think a quantitative is the answer you look for.

“Money”.

Chur.

—K

HRANT might just have the answer:

“with OpenType, and with some sophisticated linguistic analysis, a font could very well ramp up readability by intelligently varying glyphs depending on context.” (from another discussion)

I could see that being a genuinely novel and feasible movement forward. Something like “contextual” adjustments to glyph shape, kerning, letterspacing, etc., to the point that, say, whole words or phrases could be helped into line “just so.” Not to “automate” the art of the typographer, but to help and to open up possibilities (that’s what technology is for, right?).

In any case, hasn’t the whole “randomness” thing been done? I forget the specifics (ain’t that the truth), but I recall a burst of enthusiasm for fonts that packed in some kind of algorithm that would cause the typesetting apparatus to produce randomly-varied letters.

Let’s learn from others’ mistakes— such as the “postmodern” typefaces that fused two or more fonts into a “hybrid” or “pastiche” (a favorite word of 1990s pomo theory). Nice theory, hideous type. Please no more of that.

font companies selling stock photos?

SAY NO TO STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

don’t by fonts from companies selling Stock Photography!!!!

^
what about Veer?

Should we veer away from them Vincent? :-)

ChrisL

paul d hunt wrote:

“true, this kind of thing is more desireable in script fonts moreso than text fonts. However, when I was putting together Franklin Caslon, I put together a quick font that although not really random simulated this kind of effect. (althought i’m sure i could make it more random with a bit more work). Here’s a screen grab just for fun with some text set out of the box with my beta font. You can see that the supersmudged letters happen too regularly to make this really convincing.”

your image looks similar to what i was thinking about, although naturally the typefaces wouldn’t have to look as well-used as your sample image does.. but yes, that’s similar to what i was thinking. if some printers/punch-cutters had a dozen variations on many letters back then, and those printings are considered superior to what’s done today then maybe having fonts with slightly varied letters through a randomizing function would be a way to try and emulate it.

how did you make that anyway? i thought it wasn’t really possible to make Opentype fonts randomize (or rather, it’s possible, just not supported)..?

This may be naive, but when I suggested they make more than one “undo” in Photoshop, I was bombarded by the experts, and told that it was not possible and that if I was good I wouldn’t need more than one undo. That being said, here is my latest inanity:

Open Type has positions for multiple characters, so why not put alternates in the font, and get someone at Adobe (a can-do kind of person) to design a randomizing feature into some preset character spaces in In Design?

Admittedly I am beyond what I know anything about, but that usually doesn’t stop me.
: )

how did you make that anyway? i thought it wasn’t really possible to make Opentype fonts randomize (or rather, it’s possible, just not supported)..?

the link in my previous post points to a thread that explains more on this. here’s the link in case you missed it:
http://typophile.com/node/17177
but the short answer is code hacking.

if some printers/punch-cutters had a dozen variations on many letters back then...

believe it or not, but type design is quite time consuming. even designing a handful of alternates for each character may be more tedium than most designers want to deal with. and then start mutliplying alternates with smallcaps, extended language support, typographic niceties and you quickly get an infinate range of possiblities that is easy to get lost in. I know i for one am not ready for that yet.

to answer your initial question. my hope is that general pc (used in the personal computer sense not pc vs mac sense) users become more typographically aware once more programs begin to offer opentype support. but i’m afraid this is just a dream...

SAY NO TO STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

But saturating the market with bundled fonts is OK?

…just for the record, there are multiple “undos” in photoshop:

[OPTION]+[APPLE]+Z

There are now, but there wasn’t when I brought it up. That was my point.

Also, can someone explain to me what is wrong with stock photography? I am not in the biz, so it seems like a strange thing to say.

believe it or not, but type design is quite time consuming. even designing a handful of alternates for each character may be more tedium than most designers want to deal with. and then start mutliplying alternates with smallcaps, extended language support, typographic niceties and you quickly get an infinate range of possiblities that is easy to get lost in. I know i for one am not ready for that yet.

oh, i know it takes time having dabbled with fontmaking (though never really on the pro level). i don’t really mean that the additional variations would have to be completely new letterforms though.. it could be simpler variations, smaller ones. just little differences that might make the printed word look more living.

speaking of code hacking and randomizing, i’m completely lost on that part.. i.e. i really need to learn Opentype. there just don’t seem to be any good books (or websites) available for the completely newbie who knows absolutely nothing.. or at least i haven’t found any.

anyway, thanks for the good replies!

> SAY NO TO STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

> don’t by fonts from companies selling Stock Photography!!!!

Why? Adobe or Veer? And what about illustration - stock art?

Vincent is a photographer incase you did not know. :-)

ChrisL

that’s like telling photographers to boycott online font retailers so that they can only buy custom type designs directly from type designers…

This may be naive, but when I suggested they make more than one “undo” in Photoshop, I was bombarded by the experts, and told that it was not possible and that if I was good I wouldn’t need more than one undo

Just in case this hasn’t come up already: use the History palette. Forget undo’s. Everything you do is listed in the History. Just click back to the point you want to go.

vincent, why so vehement versus veer for vending visuals?

LOL!!!

Very vell voiced Paul :-)

ChrisL

Late to the party again... but didn’t miss the buffet. Nice one, Paul.

For the record... I’m a photographer, a type designer, and I work for Veer. I wonder where that mix of apparent contradiction places me on Vincent’s list?

Back on topic for a moment:

What I’d like to see happen in the world of typography is to have fewer type designers undervalue their work. So many good typefaces are being given away by their creators. Price them and license them accordingly. They’re worth it.

stock photos are the visual equivalent of Helvetica

> stock photos are the visual equivalent of Helvetica

I have seen some killer “stock” photos. Does this mean that Helvetica is really, really good?
: )
I guess you are a proponent of having a great photographer on staff?

> What I’d like to see happen in the world of typography is to have fewer
> type designers undervalue their work. So many good typefaces are being
> given away by their creators. Price them and license them accordingly.
> They’re worth it.

Speaking as someone who doesn’t have a lot of *extra* money lying around, and who can’t write off *any* of this addiction, I am glad those people exist. Bless their hearts.

The random stuff is in the OpenType spec, but not supported.

I have posted code examples for a couple of different kinds of pseudo-random effects, over on the Adobe FDK User forum.

http://www.adobeforums.com/OpenType%20Font%20Developers%27%20Kit%20(FDK)/160

(Not sure if that URL will survive posting here - if not go to the forums and then select the OpenType FDK forum)

T

Does this mean that Helvetica is really, really good?

Yes, Helvetica is a really, really good typeface.

>Yes, Helvetica is a really, really good typeface.

Good for what, when? Helvetica is a good display face if not rendered stale by its presence everywhere—as is in fact the case now. It was always bad as a text face.

Helvetica is a good multi-purpose family. There are three separate Helvetica families: Helvetica, Neue Helvetica, and the newer, smaller (just four fonts) Helvetica World. Helvetica World is good display family for global companies, as it has an enormous character set.

Both Helvetica and Neue Helvetica allow users to mix and match weights, widths, and styles in a way that few other families allow. Of course there are other alternatives, but Helvetica has built up such worldwide recognition and respect that there will always be jobs for which it is suitable.

It is the best typeface for every application? Absolutely not! No typeface can or should be all things for all people. But Helvetica is one of the biggest success stories in the history of typography. If it didn’t have its own stylistic advantages, it wouldn’t have been able to get so big.

>Both Helvetica and Neue Helvetica allow users to mix and match weights, widths, and styles in a way that few other families allow.

Helvetica and Univers may have been alone in these capacities when they first appeared. But I think that many of the typefaces done for newspapers and magazines now have these capacities. Look at the catalogues of Font Bureau and Hoefler & Frere-Jones—leading suppliers of these fonts—for many, many examples. The Fontfont catalogue has many also, like Meta.

When you say ’multi-purpose’ are you saying that Helvetica is a good text font for extended text in small sizes in print? I really don’t think it is. Where did I read that Paul Rand told an employee of his not to set text in Helvetica? When the employee asked ’Why?’ he said, ’Because it looks like dog sh*t in text.’

I know I have repeated too many times that the combination of wide counters and tight spacing hurts readablility, but I haven’t seen any counter-examples yet.

When you say ‘multi-purpose’ are you saying that Helvetica is a good text font for extended text in small sizes in print?

No. There are multiple uses for typefaces in typography. Setting long, extended tracks of text is just one of the application for fonts. There are better typefaces for that than Helvetica. I think that that is pretty clear.

> So many good typefaces are being given away by their creators.
> Price them and license them accordingly. They’re worth it.

One more thought from a different view point: I personally have found that with the hobbies I have, once I start taking money for doing something, it takes a lot of the fun out if it, and puts more pressure on me. For free I can simply do my best and the people have got their money’s worth. I am flute player (with electronic effects) and play for the fun of it. But I am able to fool people into thinking I am pretty good. And was recently making $8,000 a year playing a couple nights a week (coincidentally this was about the last time I could regularly afford to buy fonts). But I noticed that I was never satisfied with how I did, whereas *before* money was involved I’d do just as well and think: Yeah! That was fun!

But when I play for free there are musicians that get mad at me for taking the job away from a “pro” musician. Fact is I have never seen another musician do what I do anyway. Should I never get to do what I love to do because I don’t want money for it?

Same thing happens when someone asks me to help them with a graphics kind of thing. I am never satisfied and fiddle with it for so long there is no way anyone could possibly pay me for my time.

Perhaps if I felt I knew what I was doing, it would help, but I am almost always winging it. It is, perhaps, the story of my life.

I wish one of my typefaces had so much success that it was thought of as overused. I am so jealous of Helvetica even though I have always preferred Univers to it since I first saw them both in the early 60s. I guess it is like people who hate the NY Yankees. It bugs them that they win so much but everyone envies their success.

ChrisL

I wish one of my typefaces had so much success that it was thought of as overused.

Well, we hafta know where we can license them first, Dez!

Point well taken Paul :-(

ChrisL

so what’s the answer, chris? where can we license your fine types?

So, the next big thing in Typography is Helvetica?

I would hope that the next big thing would be more programs being able to access the extended characters in OT fonts. Otherwise it could be like MM fonts. I thought that was a great idea, but it never caught on with the masses and died. At least that’s how it appeared to me.

I guess this would be the group that would know if my cynical side has any grounds in surmising that some group figured out that one font would replace gigantic set sales of things like Helvetica, so this must be killed.

Yeah: get OT support into MS Office. Hidden away somewhere where you need to write your own VBA code to use it would be fine (possibly preferable, to stop the plebs going “ooh, these ligatures and swash alternates look cool, let’s switch them ALL on for EVERYTHING!”), just so long as it’s there. LOL!

(Has anybody emailed mswish?)

Oh, and better typographical support in HTML (or at least in CSS): I want some well-supported CSS styles for decimal alignment, at least! (sorry but my job sees me looking at web versions of articles that started off in print and the tables in ’em frequently look ’orrible)
________________________________________________
Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.

The next big thing will be Segoe UI when Windows Vista is published!! :)

“can someone explain to me what is wrong with stock photography? I am not in the biz, so it seems like a strange thing to say.”

I am glad someone said it. Reading through this thread I see some asking for typographers and type designers to be recognised as quality professionals and asking for more money and yet supporting the use of stock houses.
What is wrong with stock photography?

Perhaps the following article written by world respected illustrator Brad Holland can answer that question better than I can.

Give Us Your Work and We’ll Take Your Clients
by Brad Holland

The Gospel according to stock is that the bulk of stock house business comes from sales to clients who have previously used photography. There’s no proof for this. We’re supposed to take their word for it. But it’s crucial to the stockman that illustrators believe it. We all know they’re getting clients from somewhere. And if they’re not taking them from photographers, they’re taking them from us. That’s why they claim they’re “expanding” the market for illustration. How many of us would pay them to take pictures on consignment if they said, “Give us your work and we’ll take your clients?”

But read an interview published in the September 1997 issue of Photo District News. There, you’ll get a frank explanation of how a stockman works. In it, the CEO of a major stock photo house explains how they successfully lured clients away from freelancers. According to Henry Scanlon of the Comstock photo agency, their “goal” was to convince art directors to use stock for commercial assignments. To do this they had to persuade them to call the stock house instead of photographers when they needed work.

Using direct mail, they “hammered away at the market.” They flooded clients with catalogues. And, “after a long struggle,” they created a “position” for stock that, he frankly admits, “decimated” the ranks of assignment photographers.

This particular CEO can afford to be blunt now. He’s branched out from stock into clip photos. And like other clip art sellers, he knows he’s no longer dependent on photographers. A clip-art-man, he says, will “have no trouble” finding hungry photographers willing to “flood the market with cliches.”

And what about the photographers he lured out of assignment work?
Well, now he can say it: They were hacks, “mere technicians,” in his words, willing to do nothing more than copy the work of other photographers. And just as stock “decimated” assignment photography, now royalty free photos will “decimate” them.
As for stock photographers, he suggests they “go to night school” and find a new line of work. And good riddance, too. Disposing of the hacks, he says, will open up room at the top for “real photographers”. The stockman sees himself as a cat that is ridding the house of mice.
The stockmeisters of illustration will say this happened in stock photography. They’ll say it won’t happen here. You’re welcome to believe them if you like. But can you doubt they’re following a similar strategy?

If stock illustration houses “decimate” the ranks of artists, it will surely leave room at the top for “real illustrators.” Those with superior talent, and resourcefulness and those who enjoy name recognition will no doubt continue as elite craftsmen. But what business can consider itself healthy that has room at the top for only a handful of well-paid professionals and room at the bottom for a gypsy workforce of grunt laborers, desperate enough to do whatever work a stockman doles out.

We can’t presume to read the minds of the stock merchants who are now soliciting work from artists. We can’t know how sincere they are when they contact you to say that they’ve been following your career and they think you’re ready for stock. Credit them, if you like, with the best of intentions. But remember that when you give a stock house your pictures, you give them your clients. And there’s nothing in the contract you sign that says they ever have to give your clients back.

Helvetica is predominant everywhere; so of course Helvetica sucks. When something is everywhere it becomes, like Walmart: generic.