I for one will read what you write.

It's a great idea and you'd do a great job at it.

James, if you end up tackling this, be sure to pick up a copy of Printer’s Type in the Twentieth Century: Manufacturing and Design Methods by Richard Southall [New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 2005] — if you don’t already have a copy. The later chapters should provide a good resource.

James, as well as Printer's Type, there are sections in the big Frutiger book on "Printing Technology" which are really good: brief but well written, with good illustrations and in depth.

Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story By Pamela Pfiffner is quite informative.

This does sound quite fascinating! I'm particularly interested by earlier systems that ended up not getting adopted by the mainstream. The influence of TeX can't be overstated, but for some of the others, see:

@techreport{Ruggles83,
author = "Lynn Ruggles",
title = "Letterform Design Systems",
year = 1983,
number = "STAN-CS-83-971",
institution = "Stanford University",
url = "ftp://reports.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/83/971/CS-TR-83-971.pdf"
}

I'm reluctant to commit time, but I might be able to review a draft for technical points - happily, I'm now able to use my 20% time at Google for font related projects now.

>Inside the Publishing Revolution: The Adobe Story By Pamela Pfiffner is quite informative.

I suppose works of fiction can be informative. ;-)

I would go with chapter 11, "the font wars", in Accidental Empires.

Well yes, The Pfiffner work is published by Adobe, so some puffery is to be expected.

This is an excellent idea, James. Fiona Ross' The printed Bengali character and its evolution has some good material on early digital type for non-Latin scripts, to which more attention should be paid than is generally the case. Just as the needs of ‘complex scripts’ drove the development of OpenType, one can argue that these scripts provided much of the impetus to intelligent layout via digital software in the earlier period.

This is an excellent idea, James.

Well, it seems like an excellent idea. But then I look at the list of interviewees I need to talk to just to scratch the surface and it seems like lunacy. But if I weren’t crazy I wouldn’t spend to many times nitpicking at beziers…

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. Feel free to post or email suggestions about anything or anyone who deserves attention. I’m especially interested in important stuff that got swept aside like computer-driven phototype, CRT type, and TrueType GX.

Some people to interview:

David Berlow
Chuck Bigelow
Matthew Carter
Greg Hitchcock
Peter Karow
Donald Knuth
David Lemon
Dave Opstad
Mike Parker
Fiona Ross
Richard Southall
Sumner Stone
Gerard Unger

Go for it, James!

Look for early editions of "Production for the Graphic Designer" by Craig as it contains material on early systems.

Thanks Bob!

Some people to interview…

And this is why you were already on list of people to interview to find out who else I need to interview. Unfortunately that list is already two columns long—I think I’m going to have to get a video camera for Typecon and just schedule people for sittings or something.

Also remember Veronika Elsner, who after some discussion introduced herself to me as 'the first woman to ever digitize type.'

I'd like to see screenshots of pre-Fontographer font development software.
ATF Type designer, Ikarus. I think vinyl-sign cutters used something called Flex . . . not sure.

Some people to interview

This is gonna getting interesting.
Who is defining the Who’s who list ;-) ?

I find the sex of persons who ‘first digitized type’ a rather weak criterion. However, I recommend not to forget M. Everson for an interview.

Some people you may have not heard of to interview:)

Cherie Cone
Dan Mills
Larry Oppenberg
Elizabeth Bond
Jonathan Seybold
Sampo Kassila
Kathryn Weisberg
Mike Reed
Eliezer & Beat
and Robert Slimbach

I wrote my experiences up to 1989 once, then a client or something happened, I forget.

My experience in reading Wikipedia entries on this period, as collected there, is that the real history has been overwritten by marketing firms, or fans. Good luck!

Cheers!

I find the sex of persons who ‘first digitized type’ a rather weak criterion.

I promise that I will avoid being one of those annoying design writers who treats Licko like a token female. But the story of the German housewives digitizing fonts is a very good one.

On which perspective would you like to approach the subject?
I assume it's mostly technical, anyway you should find also Eye magazine n.7, from 1992, and the other issue of Eye including the interview with Matthew Carter (n.7 already includes an interview with Rudy Vanderlans, besides the article by Robin Kinross which is the most interesting part).
Also, there is a book which deals mostly with graphic design, "Designers on Mac", which touches the subject in many interviews. And Neville Brody also speaks, partly touching technical issues, in the second of his two books.

These are mostly things less centered around the evolution of the type tecnology "stricly speaking", but they give a true perspective on how digital type was heavily influenced by its use, and cannot be separated from the avant-gardes of the early nineties, a perspective which was valued by Carter, the most intelligent designer which understood the true scope of the changes taking place.

Ah, and you *must* interview Sumner Stone.
And in-depth… trying to grasp his deepest thoughts about OpenType. ;)

I find the sex of persons who ‘first digitized type’ a rather weak criterion.

Because you’re male.
Hey, it’s International Women’s Day after all!

On which perspective would you like to approach the subject?

Probably from the perspective of design professionals and students interested in understanding how all of this stuff connects. For example, I think that one reason many people have trouble with H&J settings is because many people don’t even have a clue who created digital H&J, what is was supposed to do, and how it’s changed in the years since. Or how some of the limits and capabilities of type formats have had a lot to do with non-Latin languages. And I expect I will need to work from the specialized perspective of designers just to keep the work manageable. If I start writing about every word processing app and low-end printer I’ll never get done.

>But the story of the German housewives digitizing fonts is a very good one.

Well, while Ms. Elsner does have children, I think that she digitized her first typefaces about a decade before she became a mother. And I am not sure that someone who has run a business for 20+ years counts as a housewife. But perhaps you were talking about someone else…

During the 1980s, I think that many of the German drawing office employees were women. For instance, there is a 1986 film from Berthold (in German) long circulating on the Internet. Aside from GGL, most of the people in the drawing office seem to be young women. Perhaps some of these women became housewives later in their lives (although at least one of them went on to become a tenured professor of typography at a German university…), but if they were working full-time digitizing type they were something else: type designers. Or at least font production specialists. But really, several of them should count as type designers by anybody's reckoning. Hopefully, they won't be overlooked in the History of Digital Type. We would not have so many digital fonts to set with without them.

Look at photos of the Linotype UK drawing office staff from the 1980s… there are many women there. Adobe also had other women in the type group besides Carol Twombly. Then there are the various Monotype offices, and Compugraphic, too. I'm sure that I am leaving dozens of women off this list…

It was several years ago (probably over beers one evening at the Monotype conference in Cambridge in the 1990s), but Patricia Saunders and her husband David reminisced about her letter-drawing days at the Monotype Printing Works in Salford. I got the impression there were quite a few women there, most of them working somewhat anonymously. I think she retired a decade (or more) ago, but she worked with Robin Nicholas, who is still around.

… German housewives digitizing fonts

– gorgeous phrase!!
(has some groovy hitlerizing smack to it, doesn’t it?)

think of:
– Wall street brokers digitizing fonts
– African peasants digitizing fonts
– Japanese Geishas digitizing fonts
– Italian Mamas …
!!!
I will LOVE to read it.

…a rather weak criterion./ Because you’re male.

No. because it doesn’t matter.
I’m the first male who ever produced gilded bookmark butterflies. – Where is the point?

By the way, I know V. Elsner and I appreciate her. ;-)

@ Ray Larabie,

Flexi? As a font design package? Could be...

There is a sign design/manufacturing application today called FlexiSIGN. As I recall, Flexi was a product of either ScanVec or Amiable until those two companies amalgamated. One of the two companies made an rival signage CAD/CAM software called, Inspire, which was discontinued after many of it's features were incorporated into FlexiSIGN.

I think that for early digital sign making equipment, fonts had to be produced with paths the plotters could follow. For example, on early Roland plotters and Gerber Scientific's IVB could not cut curves. A circle was made up of 100 or so straight line segments. Fonts on the Gerber IVB were stored on cards which plugged into the machine's motherboard. One font per card.

In addition, Gerber's version of Helvetica was adjusted in some small ways to make it feel more familiar to sign painters (any skilled sign painter would have been able to paint commonly used fonts like Helvetica from memory).

But perhaps you were talking about someone else…

I was referring to some history Veronika told me about at Typecon a few years ago, not about Veronika specifically.

Can't believe no one has mentioned Steve Jobs. Without Steve there would probably be no digital type on computers.

Cheers, Si

or that wonderful Jobs-Warnock confrontation at Siebold years ago ;-)

...that's covered in the Accidental Empires chapter mentioned earlier, as well as Pamela Pfiffner's screenplay. I think Ed Mendelson covered this a bit in his TypeCon talk.

Susan Kare.

Don't forget to interview John Warnock and Fred Brady. I hope you don't rely strictly on TypeCon/ATypI interviews, as so many people involved in those early days are no longer involved in type. Carol Twombly, Dan Mills, and Fred have essentially "dropped out" of the type world, for example.

"...or that wonderful Jobs-Warnock confrontation at Siebold years ago"

@Christopher: I was not referring to a TypeCon or AtypI interview. I was there at that Seybold and saw it myself.

I do wish Carol Twombly and others would speak to their experience on the subject of digital type first-hand, though.

BTW, Roger Black was also at that Seybold where he gave a presentation, partially on his frightening (to me) practice called "Jamming" where he and his clients would all gather around his computer and collectively design a magazine cover! Jamming seems fine for jazz musicians but maddening for a work process ;-)

@russell Flexi, that's the one. Perhaps it's not a font design tool, maybe just a method of digitizing/exporting. There might be some something worth investigating in the early development of vinyl sign cutting.

Can't believe no one has mentioned Steve Jobs.

That one is kind of obvious.

I hope you don't rely strictly on TypeCon/ATypI interviews…

Given how many interviews will be required to get the facts straight I expect most of the interviews will be done via email using a boilerplate interview with further interviews to corroborate everything.

I do wish Carol Twombly and others would speak to their experience on the subject of digital type first-hand, though.

I’m not planning to write about the personal experiences of designers so much as to focus on events and products of historical significance.

There might be some something worth investigating in the early development of vinyl sign cutting.

Digital signage systems are on the list of topics because it was such a huge shift of how type could be used and the extent to which a company could apply brand standards. And of course it connects to highly legible signage type. Very important stuff.

> Hey, it’s International Women’s Day after all!

yes it is! let's hear it for the estrogen! rock on, women!

-bowerbird

>or that wonderful Jobs-Warnock confrontation at Siebold years ago ;-)

> I was there at that Seybold and saw it myself

Dez, the pepsi guy was president of apple then. The confrontation occurred in an apple conference room, and what you saw at Seybold was a shower after the storm.

> Jamming seems fine for jazz musicians but maddening for a work process ;-)
oh. i'd tell him to stop, 'ept pdf did it for me... do you remember what is was like to PS publish before pdf?;)

Cheers!

Yes! You had to worry that the PS output fit on a floppy disk--what monster files they were, eegads! And the photos were fpo's.

@ James< Digital signage systems are on the list of topics because it was such a huge shift of how type could be used and the extent to which a company could apply brand standards. And of course it connects to highly legible signage type. Very important stuff.

… And, since anyone who could afford a computer and a plotter could open up a sign shop, without the bother of learning anything about lettering and craft, it was the opening of a whole new world of cheap and ugly signs. :o)

Tracking

Re. digital plotters and vinyl signs.

Many years ago, c. 1996, a design journalist contacted me with a question he was asking numerous type designers and typographers: ‘Is there any typeface for which you can conceive of no appropriate use?’ I played along and responded ‘Revue’.

That same morning, walking to the office, I passed the ‘church’ of Scientology, and saw their new vinyl-on-board sidewalk sign, encouraging passersby to come in for a free personality test. It was set in Revue, alternately stretched and compressed to make all the lines the same length: a laughable typographic mess. Which just goes to show that there is no typeface for which there is not at least one appropriate use.

"...a laughable typographic mess."

Never overestimate the ability of an untrained type user, John :-)

Off topic, but I wonder what are the most common fonts for shop signs. Souvenir, Revue, University Roman, Papyrus, Hobo, and of course Helvetica and Arial have to be up high on the list. Makes me wonder...

Add Cooper Black to your list, Bill. Heavy fonts with all curves are easier on the plotter to cut out of vinyl.

>a laughable typographic mess

are you talking about the use of the font or is this the analysis of your personality?

Si, ask Tom Cruise;-)

Computer History Museum:

http://ow.ly/1gzM2

How's it coming James, are you almost finished yet?