Looking for Mrs Eaves alternative
Hi All,
We’re setting a book dealing with sexuality and the publisher liked the looks of Mrs Eaves. It’s likely target audience is going to be female. But everything I’ve read here suggests that the poor spacing in the font makes it less than desirable to work with for a full book. Does anyone have suggestions for another font that might have the same sort of character or liveliness of Eaves without the wonky spacing. I suggested Jenson and that was almost accepted but now they want to go back to Eaves.
And am I correct in assuming that the OTF version has the same spacing problems? I have the postscript version and ended up using optical kerning in InDesign with tracking applied in the sample we were playing with.
Thanks in advance for all suggestions.
John
1.Jul.2008 4.56pm
Odile and Eplica would make lovely choices!
1.Jul.2008 5.41pm
FF Atma, my favorite alternative to Mrs. Eaves, was just released in OpenType. It has much of the vintage Transitional character of Mrs. Eaves and similar features like three sizes of caps along with corresponding punctuation.
1.Jul.2008 5.47pm
Another beautiful book face with a lot of old-school charm is FF Clifford just released in FontFont’s OpenType Pro format with 3 cuts for small, text, and headline settings. Read more about Clifford from the designer Akira Kobayashi himself.
1.Jul.2008 11.45pm
I have been waiting so long for FF Clifford OpenType!!!
I HEART AKIRA!!
Mikey is super elated
Ohhh and Stephen is right about Atma!!!
:-)
2.Jul.2008 2.28am
also have a look a the affordable DSTypes.com fonts
there are a few fonts that might fit the bill
2.Jul.2008 4.58pm
Many thanks for all the comments but I couldn’t convince them (read: get them to spend the money for something new) so it’s MrsEaves in the end.
I guess I’ll have to spend the money on Typetool and practice my kerning skills.
2.Jul.2008 10.01pm
You could also use the Quark XPress Kern Table Editor.
3.Jul.2008 12.59am
But then you’d have to use QuarkXPress.
3.Jul.2008 8.54am
I know there is an extension for InDesign that adds kerning table capabilities similar to Quark’s but the last time I checked they were selling it on a yearly subscription basis which seemed really odd to me. I refused to buy it just on principal.
I have a very old version of Fontlab and had not upgraded to Typetool because I had not really needed it. Maybe I’ll buy it now.
Or maybe I should just buy a new font instead...
3.Jul.2008 1.09pm
It seems to me it would make more sense to buy Atma than to spend a lot of time (and some money) fixing Mrs. Eaves.
(Unless, of course, you need the money and your client is willing to pay you for the time it takes to kern it.)
8.Jul.2008 1.22am
FF Tibere is another one that makes me think Mrs. Eaves.
8.Jul.2008 10.39am
But then you’d have to use QuarkXPress.
So use QuarkXpress then! God I hate the anti-Quark bias on this forum. InDesign is a great app and easier to use and master than Quark but until it has kerning tables I have to say that for typesetting Quark still rules.
I love Atma! It’s on my wishlist (has been for awhile). Just waiting for the right project for it.
8.Jul.2008 11.00am
But then you’d have to use QuarkXPress.
.~
8.Jul.2008 12.53pm
Is that a wink, Nick, or pissing?
8.Jul.2008 1.04pm
Dude, that’s the irony mark!
(You were being ironic?)
8.Jul.2008 1.09pm
Ah! I forgot.
8.Jul.2008 1.26pm
I guess it didn’t stick.
8.Jul.2008 2.26pm
Well, I also like that QuarkXPress allows vertical kerning tables, something Indesign CS3 still didn’t add.
And Quark 8 now adds customizable hanging characters (margin alignments). That I prefer very much over Adobe’s one-click-stop (well, two) computation. I guess for Adobe typography isn’t the No. 1 priority maybe.
-Futura
8.Jul.2008 2.37pm
It’s nice to hear Quark is adding those niceties, but that’s really only two Quark advantages in contrast to many more, and arguably larger, advantages on InDesign’s side, not the least of which are Optical Spacing, deeper control of style sheets, and the Multiline Composer.
8.Jul.2008 2.57pm
Paradigm Pro Light
8.Jul.2008 3.20pm
It is actually already three not two if you count correctly. ;-)
Sure Indesign has nice features, Quark has not (and vice versa).
However I did NOT want to count features and which has more.
My point is that Indesign adds features which are production driven (nested styles, multiline composer, margin alignments) and computated by Indesign;
whereas Quark seems to concentrate more on customizable typography which has to be set by the designer.
I prefer latter, as I do not trust computed typography, not even by Adobe.
-Futura
8.Jul.2008 5.54pm
I hear you. We all have personal preferences. Just thought this statement was way off:
“for Adobe typography isn’t the No. 1 priority maybe.”
The Adobe Originals fonts, OpenType, and InDesign proved that typography is core to much of what Adobe makes.
8.Jul.2008 8.57pm
For Apple we know typography is not No. 1
8.Jul.2008 9.51pm
Their current missions—
Adobe: Revolutionizing how the world engages with ideas and information.
Apple: Spearheading the digital media revolution.
Quark: Revolutionizing publishing. Again.
No typography, plenty of revolution.
**
Microsoft: To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.
Awwww, that’s nice.
**
Shinntype: Original font solutions by Nick Shinn - retail and custom.
A little too prosaic?
Perhaps I should join the revolution and make the world a better place.