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P22 Underground webfont (typekit, myfonts...)
Hi Everyone,
First post here, I hope you can help me.
I am a graphic designer and front-end developer working on a project where I want to use P22 Underground. Unfortunately the hinting on Typekits version is pretty shitty on Mac and even worse on Windows. You can do some browser sampling here: https://typekit.com/fonts/p22-underground
Therefore I wanted to know if anyone have had experience with P22 underground from myfonts? http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/p22/underground-pro/
Or if anyone have some ideas for great alternatives? I've been looking at ITC Johnston from fonts.com as one.
Thank you very much in advance,
Nilas
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16 Mar 2012 — 7:08am
The hinting on Typekits version is pretty shitty on Mac …
I think the term you are looking for is “rendering”. The Mac doesn’t use the hinting included in the font files — it comes up with it’s own interpretation of the curves as pixels. From what I can tell it looks like it struggles with the complex g and the light weights. These kind of issue will be there in all fonts.
… and even worse on Windows.
Look at the difference between IE8 and Firefox in Win 7. Something is definitely wrong here. I suspect the browser samples are to blame.
Are you planning on using this for text sizes?
16 Mar 2012 — 7:59pm
I suspect the browser samples are to blame.
Agreed. From the Firefox samples, it appears the font is autohinted, which means the horizontal stems like on the top and bottom of the "z" would be grid fit. But in IE8, it shows those stems as disappearing at 18, which shouldn't happen, even under cleartype, if there are Y direction instructions.
Jason C
19 Mar 2012 — 5:55am
Ah okay thanks, I'm not an expert on the subject.
The issues you're talking about I definitely see with some fonts, like this one. But I've used fontdeck and typekit before and have had great results. Specially with Apercu. So is not possible that the myfonts or fonts.com version is better rendered?
19 Mar 2012 — 7:14am
Have you tried P22 Underground on your site, or only looked at screenshots? Most of these services offer trials.
19 Mar 2012 — 5:30pm
> So is not possible that the myfonts or fonts.com version is better rendered?
No, not on Mac, as all the Mac cares about are the outlines, and these are the same between the different vendors. They may render differently on Windows, however.
19 Mar 2012 — 6:36pm
I don't know if this is the issue for you, but Underground, both the original and the P22 digital version, has relatively thick joins on the lower case. If that is what is bothering you, you might want to look at Gill Sans, which is a related design, but with the joins thinned more.
20 Mar 2012 — 12:24am
Take a look at Cabin, too.
8 Apr 2012 — 9:48pm
Unfortunately I did not know what I know now about hinting when I did P22 Underderground. Also there were no web fonts then so I didn’t spend too much time on TTF hinting. I can’t make any promises, but let me see what I can do to see if this can be improved.