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Fonts for Inkjet Printing?
I've recently been thinking about printing technology and was wondering if inkjet output (especially on uncoated paper) "needs" lighter outlines than a font for laser or imagesetter output might need. Certainly metal fonts were designed with ink spread in mind, so do computer fonts need the same kind of adjustment or is inkjet inkspread not that big a deal? As a side question, does the fact that inkjets have some spread that other output techs don't mean that fonts like the original digitizations of Centaur and Bembo which were always "too thin" in offset and laser output might actually be "right" when printed on an inkjet?
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14 Feb 2011 — 1:54pm
Harry or Mike Parker from Font Bureau would be a good people to ask.
14 Feb 2011 — 1:54pm
The surface of the paper has a lot to control the weight of the type. I use laser for smooth paper and delicate type. I use the inkjet for vellum or textured surfaces.
14 Feb 2011 — 2:04pm
Harry or Mike Parker from Font Bureau would be good people to ask. If you get the chance to speak with Mike, be sure to ask him to tell you the story of Starling. And set aside at least 30 minutes. Well worth it.
15 Feb 2011 — 1:33pm
I think the question is too general. There is so much variation between printers and, of course, paper. It's not a question of inkjet vs. laser, for example. A good inkjet printer using a good quality inkjet paper has negligible ink spread.
15 Feb 2011 — 8:55pm
Also, while the very earliest inkjet printers were crude dot-matrix printers, current ones print at resolutions similar to those of laser printers. As a result, the droplets of ink involved are small ones.
As well, given that the printer converts font outlines to dots, normally if corrections for ink spread are required, dealing with them appropriately is more the responsibility of the printer designer than the font designer. One certainly can, by choice of typefaces, deal with any remaining uncorrected ink spread, just as people did in the letterpress era. But that's choosing faces with greater stroke contrast and lighter lines - not detailed adjustments to typeface outlines.
There are just too many kinds of paper, and models of printer, out there for the font designer to effectively deal with this the way the designers of the newspaper legibility faces could deal with the technical problems of their era.
And laser printer resolution, on the other hand, keeps going up... so designers have the freedom of treating printers as if they're magical devices, able to put exactly what is specified on the paper. This is great - once that problem is dealt with, type designers still have plenty of other things to worry about.
16 Feb 2011 — 1:29pm
Thanks for your answers. I guess the upshot of it all is that using an inkjet printer doesn't "fix" the thinness of early fonts and that if I want a decent Bembo or Centaur, I'll need to shell out for a newer digitization rather than relying ink spread to make the late-80s Type 1 versions I have on old 3.5" disks look better.