Akzidenz Grotesk Figure Failure
When tabular figures go bad:
Was reading the otherwise beautifully typeset “Drosscape” the other day and then — whoops — it looks like some versions of Akzidenz Grotesk have a kerned ’7’ when I assume they meant the figures to be tabular. At least I think that’s what went wrong. Any other theories?
20.Jun.2006 12.41am
oh right, I see.
Perhaps amendments at print time?
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Paul Ducco
Solid Creative
Communication Design, Melbourne
20.Jun.2006 3.36am
It appears that only the Adobe version, Akzidenz Grotesk BE, has this problem, the BQ version seems to have perfect tabular figures. As I don’t have the fonts, I can’t confirm other than what I see in MyFonts.
So I guess that Berthold recognised the error and corrected it?
20.Jun.2006 8.51am
Yeah, I found the same Geoff. Why not correct it in the BE version? Where’s Günter for quality control?
20.Jun.2006 9.01am
Eek.
20.Jun.2006 9.06am
It’s also interesting that when you go to the BE page and the BQ page and type in “7,” into the sample text area, and then move your cursor over the image, in the BE sample text, the alt tag “Preview Image (kerned)” shows up. In the BE page, only “Preview Image” shows up.
20.Jun.2006 5.49pm
Sorry to be dumb about it, but hasn’t the “BE” (read: Adobe) versions of Berthold’s fonts been off the market for quite some time?
Many of those BE fonts were the only really good thing I found about buying Adobe Illustrator 4.0 back in the early 1990s.
I would agree the column spacing of those numerals appears odd. But being a sign designer I usually have to respace numerals out of that anyway. Phone numbers and numerical addresses on signs are so extremely useless....
20.Jun.2006 10.12pm
> Sorry to be dumb about it, but hasn’t the “BE” (read: Adobe) versions of Berthold’s fonts been off the market for quite some time?
BE fonts are still on sale on Berthold’s website and MyFonts. I’m not sure why they’re still on sale, curiously the FAQ basically states that BE versions are dumbened down BQ fonts with the same outlines but different metrics and kerning, less language support and incomplete character sets.
The drop in quality is intentional so it seems. Utterly pointless as both font packages are sold at the same price point.