Seria Sans from FontFont only has regular and bold but it is really pretty.
Meta also FontFont
Today Sans

Seems like a lot of these are FontFont.

Too late at night to think of more...

Jeremy Tankard's Bliss is gorgeous, but it'll cost you at 125 GBP per weight (though each 'weight' includes small caps, all kinds of figures you could think of, superscripts, subscripts, et al. for both roman and italic).

Also, some vendors sell SC/OSF versions of traditional sans faces: Neufville Futura has SC/OSF for Light, Book, Medium, Bold, and several condensed weights. URW also sells several Futura SC/OSF weights for cheaper, along with Franklin Gothic, and even their clone of Helvetica Neue!

Of course House's Neutraface has all the trimmings.

Another cool one is Storm's John [as in Baskerville] Sans, very reasonably priced and with 140 (!) different styles and variations for display and text.

http://www.typofonderie.com/alphabets/view/LeMondeSans
http://www.typofonderie.com/alphabets/view/Parisine
http://www.typofonderie.com/alphabets/view/ParisinePlus

Seems like a lot of these are FontFont.

Quite so. I started this trend with FF Meta back in 1989, and now most of FontFont

Don't forget James Montalbano's Giacomo. Also, if you've got the cash, Optima Nova and Syntax from Linotype.

Eric Olsen's new Klavika has the works.

You can get a closer look at the FontFonts at FontShop.com.

With all due respect to Mr. Spiekermann, it seems a few other designers perhaps anticipated his trend:

Praxis (1977) - Gerard Unger
Flora (1980) - Gerard Unger
ITC Stone Sans (1984) - Sumner Stone
ITC Symbol (1987) - Aldo Novarese (yes, it's often classed as a serif font, but at most point sizes they are not apparent).

These were gleaned from "Modern Encyclopedia of Typefaces 1960-90" by Lawrence W. Wallis

Also, a quick flip through Mac McGrew's "American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century" shows an ATF version of Bernhard Gothic medium from the mid 30's with both LF and OSF numerals.

Admittedly, this hardly constitutes a 'trend'.

Mike, I know what you mean, but I think Erik Spiekermann mention a "trend" and not and innovation. And from my modest point of view this is true.

Just have a look to printed design before FontShop (in the 70s and 80s) and it's really hard to see true small caps or OsF sans serifed type.

Original Paul Renner's Futura had OsF, but they were buried by font technologies until Neufville Digital resurrected them some years ago.

Maybe the point is on what we mean with the word "trend".

It would be nice if someone at Hoefler was reading this thread and got inspired to do a small caps set for the lovely Gotham...

With both HTF Gotham and Avenir there are enough weights that it's possible to use all caps, at a smaller size and incrementally heavier weight to simulate small caps and fractions rather than using Quark's work-around.

But it would be nice to have the real thing.

Erik Spiekermann mention a "trend" and not and innovation

Exactly. I would never claim having designed the first Sans with both O/S figures and Small Caps. Futura did have those figures back in 1927, and quite a few other faces did. Small Caps, however, were more unusual and still are. As a lot of Sans faces had larger x-heights than their Serif peers, one could more easily fake caps by setting them half a point or so smaller, something I often did in photosetting. Nowadays, I expect Sans faces to have all possible sorts of figures, tabulating, Old Style, lining (kerned full size) and perhaps even tabular figures with slight descenders and ascenders, as we did with FF Unit and actually ITC Officina which ITC didn't publish in the first release back in 1990.

The reason FF Meta (which was first designed in 1985) got all the works was that I wanted to point out that it was really a Serif face, except those little strokes remained virtual.

PS:

looking at my early sketch (from 15 January 1985) I remember now that it was probably Just van Rossum who had the idea for the

Question, Erik: why don't the keystroke for ligatures and fractions in the FF fonts conform to the Adobe ligature/fraction keystrokes? It gets very confusing.

Also it would be nice to get a full set of fractions (including the 1/8ths) or if not, then a complete set of fraction uppers and lowers (don't know the technical name for these), like The Sans or Emigre's Mrs. Eaves and Filosofia. Sorry to sound demanding but I design cookbooks and art books both of which contain measurements so I'm constantly dealing with fractions. And I'm a ligature freak. Truly complete fonts are greatly appreciated.

Question, Erik: why don't the keystroke for ligatures and fractions in the FF fonts conform to the Adobe ligature/fraction keystrokes?

On my keyboard (Mac OSX), I get the fi ligature for all PS fonts with alt-command-5. Is it different on a PC? We used to have our own encoding for the FontFont library (which gave us more individual glyphs) but went to Adobe Standard 10 years ago, I think. Perhaps you bought (!) FF Meta before that?

The same goes for fractions. Standard encoding doesn

I'm still using Mac OS 9 and there's no alt key on my keyboard. I use shift-W for the fi ligature for Adobe and Emigre fonts, whereas in the FF fonts it's shift-I. I don't mind using an expert set, since I can set up a style sheet for it in Quark. It just gets confusing when I'm working on several projects simultaneously and they all have fractions. I end up using PopChar to grab the ligature out of frustration.

The date on my Meta seems to be 1993.

I'm in the process of upgrading to OSX so maybe this will sort itself out. In the meantime I just need to keep track of which set of keystrokes to use with each job.

Thanks for the lovely fonts, though. Kudos.

PS:

Here are screenshots of Meta Normal and Meta Normal Expert character sets. They

Is there a separate Expert set for Meta? I only have regular and caps for the various weights. I realize I can't find the fractions at all.

You really need to get a newer version. They all have Expert Sets (because of Adobe Standard Encoding) and different figures and they

Patricia, also shed Quark and change to InDesign. You can view the entire glyphs in a font easily. They have a pallet just for that.

I'm getting InDesign along with my OS X upgrade but I need to use Quark (and currently OS 9) because that's what the clients want. Publishers seem to be the very last to switch over and it's really held me back.

I've heard from a lot of my book design fonts that while InDesign is much better in almost every way, it still isn't quite up to Quark's standards either for type or for elements like master page and style sheets which are essential to book design. Best used for smaller documents. I am looking forward to learning it though.

Patricia, download an InDesign demo and see for yourself. InDesign's style sheet features blow Quark's out of the water, especially with the CS version's addition of nested styles.

You say you want all of your chapter openers to have a drop cap in a separate font and color from the body, followed by three words set in small caps, tracked just so? InD can do all of that with a single style sheet.

I used Quark for magazine design for 10 years before switching to InDesign 2 years ago, and I couldn't be happier.

Quark's standards either for type or for elements like master page and style sheets

Having worked with InDesign for about 18 months now (after Quark for 15 years), I strongly disagree. InDesign is far superior in all aspects of type and has great stylesheets (even nested styles). I

Hehe, when anything else fails, read the frickin' manual.

In InDesign, text boxes on master pages are linked from left
page to right page, contrary to QX where you had to link them
from the "incoming text link" icon in the top left of each master
page.

After importing your text, hold down the "shift" key before
clicking the first linked text box if you want to automatically
generate new pages as the text flows into the text boxes.
Easy as pie, but it also took me a while to find that out.

Does that solve your problem, Erik?

BTW I've become quite the InDesign-meister, so if anyone
needs to know anything, don't worry about asking me. And
yes I realize I sound like a pedantic arrogant bastard now.
Just trying to be helpful ...

Oh yeah, Patricia - switch to inDesign. Your sources obviously
were misinformed. Once you get rid of the QX automatisms and
short-cuts, you won't want to use anything else, I guarantee you.
It's a dream come true for typographers and graphic designers.

Why pedantic arrogant?

Veritas NOS liberabit, you know ;)

2ble post; sorry the server seems to be too slooooow now.

Well I got my OS X upgrade today, including InDesign, and am settling in for the evening to teach myself as much as I can. I don't think I'll be using it for books right away since my clients all use Quark for the time being, but I think that's likely to change over time.

And Yves, you may live to regret your offer of help, as I'd rather get advice on the software from a typophile than anybody else.

But as a female, I don't mind reading manuals.

Patricia,

You don't even need the printed manual, because the "in line" help that comes with Indy is very good, very comprehensive.
Just last week I had to use Quark (v 4.1 -- in Classic) to correct someones botched up design, and I was all thumbs; could not remember the shortcuts, where menu items were supposed to be, etcetera. And that for someone who lived Quark for years, ever since version 2 (that did not work, of course, had to wait for 2.11...).
There is no comparison between Quark and Indy, IMHO.
Enjoy!

Although this thread has taken on a life of its own (which has been an interesting outgrowth), I just wanted to say thanks for the suggestions above.

An additional issue in my search has been finding a sans w/ OSF & SC that also happens to be OpenType, so I especially appreciated those suggestions that were OT.

Part of the reason for my search is the OT issue, which I've brought up in another thread (http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/4101/55911.html?1103011776).

Thanks again for the input, both in the search and on the sans OSF/SC front in general...

FF Nexus is available in OpenType (gotta call for OT, online soon).

The following sans serif families are available in OpenType
(with SC, OsF, Alt, Lig, Fract and whatnot)

House Industries
Neutraface
Chalet Book (no OsF tho)

Jeremy Tankard Typopgraphy
Bliss

Porchez Typofonderie
Costa PTF

Process Type Foundry
Klavika

Thirstype
GalaxiePolaris

Typotheque
TPTQ Fedra Sans
TPTQ Fedra Sans Alt
TPTQ Fedra Sans Cond
TPTQ Fedra Sans Cond Alt

Hey Stephen, do you think there's any danger Martin Majoor is going to be accused, like Goudy was, of designing the same typeface over and over again? Nexus sure looks like its siblings, Seria Sans and Scala Sans.

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quote:

Is there a separate Expert set for Meta? I only have regular and caps for the various weights. I realize I can't find the fractions at all.

---

Patricia - call us at FontShop. With a proof of purchase we can
provide the latest version of Meta for a nominal service charge.

Yeah, I remember asking the same question a long time ago. But this thread's got way more suggestions though. Great thread! Gonna bookmark you!

I've just licensed Linotype's Textra, a nice, clean, slightly condensed sans serif with SC/OSF, for use in technical documents.

M