Me: Some people do. But for many, I think it’s beside the point.
Mimi: Huh. (Then silence, which brings us right back to canonical response number one.)
29-December 2002
well, what do you talk about?
Husband: New Smithsonian’s on the table. Seems they finally made a decision.
Wife: About what?
Husband: Well, y’know how it used to be just Village and Caecilia –
Village for text and Caecilia for captions. And then they put
Helvetica on the cover that month, and then Relay, and then
Hoefler Text. Really screwed around....
Wife: Well, what are they using now?
Husband: Been completely Hoeflerized. Or make that Hoefler-Frere-Jonesed.
Here – the new AD proclaims, “I am a fan of classic, clean typefaces,”
but he doesn’t mention them or their designers by name. Typical.
Wife: Hoeflerized...? Is that a bad thing?
Husband. Good God, look at this.
Once again – fake small caps and no ligatures....
What’s so frickin’ hard about ligatures?
Wife: That's your business, dear. But again, this
“Hoeflerization” – is this a bad thing?
Husband: Well...not in the case of the
sans – Gotham. Apparently a distinctly “American”
face. When Tobias spoke at the Walker, he talked
about wandering around New York City and taking
pictures of signage, and then basing a face on
the letters he saw. He said it was like birdwatching,
and then Jonathan added, “but less geeky.”
Wife: Hmmm...maybe more geeky. But what about the
other font? Why isn’t it American? Anyway, there is no
“American style” of typography yet, is there?
Husband: It’s just sooo European....
Wife: Well isn’t Hoefler American? That should be close enough....
Husband: They’re using Hoefler Text, which looks kinda like a cross between
Caslon and Janson. Or Kis – I guess we’re supposed to be calling
it Kis. “Commerce has no conscience,” after all.
Wife: Thanks Bob. So why isn’t that appropriate for Smithsonian?
Husband: Shouldn’t Smithsonian in this new millennium be forward-thinking,
forward-looking? Why regress to a European, 18th century look? Why couldn’t
they have called Font Bureau and just ordered up something new like everyone
else seems to do?
Wife: But isn’t Smithsonian about the American heritage, which essentially
began in the 18th century? And isn’t it often about the world’s heritage?
What could be more appropriate for Smithsonian in the new millennium
than a relatively new typeface by a young American designer? Besides,
James Smithson was of European heritage – I don’t know much about his
motives and methods, but The Smithsonian is a museum of America in
all of its times and forms in the context of the rest of the world.
I can understand your point, but I don’t see how it’s a bad choice.
If Hoefler developed a typeface that captures the essence of Smithson’s
original intent, then jeez, quit bitchin’ about it and go with it.
(Flipping thru magazine) I mean, look, it’s beautiful. Lately, the
articles have been kinda sucky, though. They should be writing
pieces on the sort of thing Martha is writing about.
Husband: You mean like, “The integral role of matching blue
enamelware in the explorations of Lewis and Clark,” brought to
you by the Hoefler Type Foundry and Smithsonian?
Wife: Don’t be an ass. That’s not what I meant and you know it.
Husband: Good thing we get both magazines....
27-December 2002
bandolino angel...
Her name, oddly enough, was Michelle.
Pretty name for a pretty French girl...the name of a young,
blonde Homecoming Queen in the American 1980s, perhaps...but not for her.
Michelle was no one’s queen, and her high school days – if
indeed she had any – came two decades earlier.
She was punctual and predictable. Each morning, as the front
gate of the shoe store was lifted, Michelle materialized, feet first.
Once-black shoes, reinforced with electrical tape, then loose,
torn nylons, then cherry-red polyester pants. Tightly folded hands,
a shirt that matched pants in hue and fabric, and didn't quite
cover her vigorously rocking torso. Her wide, tense smile in the
middle of a round face, framed by peppery, greasy hair.
Gate fully open, Michelle fully revealed, she gave me a ceremonious
nod, rose from her bench, and began to pace. Normally ten laps
across the main floor of Calhoun Square. A surprisingly sprightly,
proud, erect gait for a borderline obese woman in her mid 40s.
Walk completed, she entered the store, and I began the ritual.
Bandolinos. Sensible, two-inch pumps, size nine. Red...of course.
Though I had shoes in hand, she invariably went to the shelf,
pointed, and giggled softly, “Those.”
Shoes on both feet, back and forth, back and forth across
the carpet. And then she handed them back without a word,
and I’d thank her for coming in.
This went on for the better part of a year. Michelle rocking,
pacing, trying on the red Bandolinos. And as she got more
comfortable with me, she requested additional pairs, never
extending her monologue past “those.” Sometimes five or ten
pairs in a sitting. I never minded, though. Her toenails were
easily the longest I had ever seen; her body odor was, at times,
unbearable; she undoubtedly suffered from schizophrenia. But
she, unlike so many of my patrons, was constant in her softness
and pleasantness.
Some of my best patrons, you see, were also my rudest. One, upon
finding she could not return a pair of worn, year-old open-toes,
actually called mall security on me. From my phone. Another
hurled a stiletto at me from across the store just to get my
attention. And a third – the wife of a prominent, Minneapolis
attorney – had me hold her poodle (a fashion accessory, no
doubt) while she tried on the metallics of the season.
But Michelle and I had a relationship of mutual respect.
She knew that I would bring out the shoes and place them
on her feet, and I knew that she would always be gracious
and thankful in return.
Rumor had it she lived in a halfway house three blocks south of
the mall. She was undoubtedly without work, but she must have
had some source of income. I’d see her occasionally downing a
can of Coke or devouring a Baby Ruth. But the unchanged shirt,
pants, and shoes she wore summer and winter told me that there
must not have been much in the bank.
Twelve months in, retail was taking its toll; the commissions were
nice, but the work served no more purpose than to get me through
college, and so I gave notice. I had landed a research position
at the U of M that would teach me something useful as well as
provide income. It wouldn’t hurt my graduate school chances, either.
So I quit selling shoes, knowing I’d soon miss the crowds of beautiful
people with money, the smells of the restaurants, and the stores to
visit and patronize on break. Half vacant now, the mall was much different, then.
About a week before I left, the unthinkable happened. Michelle and I
did the customary Bandolino dance, but this time, instead of asking
to see another pair or leaving, she walked to the counter, smiling
wider than usual. Coins of every denomination, along with a few
crumpled bills, were pulled from her pockets. Over the course of
ten minutes I counted as she watched attentively. The shoes cost
$55, and she had the exact amount. She wore them home.
It was THE story for the rest of that Saturday. “Can you fucking
believe it? She actually bought them.” A great victory had been
won – for her of course; for me and my coworkers as well.
I wasn’t at all surprised when she returned the very next day, set
the shoes back on the counter, and shook her head. It wasn’t
policy to give cash back on returns; I did. It wasn’t policy
to take back obviously worn shoes; I did. Michelle couldn’t
afford them, and it would have been wrong for me to do anything else.
She was far from pretty, young, or
queenly; she was anything but a commission-generating customer.
She was but one of thousands of de-institutionalized schizophrenics
whom life and law had dealt a poor hand. Yet she was a sweet
distraction who, paradoxically, brought sanity to my often
insane, retail-riddled world.
What gave rise to Michelle’s demeanor? Was it conscious
action on her part, or was it just delivered blindly from
deep within her brain? It didn’t really matter. The point
is not her “goodness.” Rather, it is simply that she existed.
She struck me, during my tenure at the shoe store, as the epitome of a
walking paradox. But was she? She had the same wants as the sea of wealthy
shoppers who kept my store afloat. And in the end, she
bought shoes, just like my best customers; and in the end, she returned
shoes, just like my best customers.
Michelle wanted to be them – the proud, who spent
money, who spent their time in Calhoun Square, who wore red.
And so she was.
16-December 2002
nine for the year, randomly
1 Decomposed Subsonic - Gradients
Deep deutsch house; the transcendent Etoile bleue, with vocals
by Olivia Steyaert, makes you smile and moves your body.
2 Swayzak - Dirty dancing
Paraphrasing F Scott Fitzgerald, the very cool are different
from you and me; Make up your mind is their current theme song.
3 Various - Disco not disco 2
White horse and Problemes d'amour back to back...? You tell me.
4 DJ Hell - Electronicbody-housemusic
Mix of the year. Double CD
that digs deep: multiple tracks by
Front 242 and the underrated Nitzer Ebb on the one, and the
best of Underground Resistance and Metro Area on the other.
5 The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi battles the pink robots
On everyone’s list and should be; camped out in my player for a
month. Gorgeous; our generation’s Rumours (in the best sense)?
6 Timo Maas - Loud
Kelis and MC Chickaboo over incredible trance. Help me,
Manga, and Shifter are standouts.
7 Various - Soundtrack: 24 hour party people
Reminisce and reenjoy the title track and Voodoo ray;
Here to stay is a pleasant if somewhat banal surprise.
8 Various - Digital disco
Buy; any one of Data 80’s Baby I can forgive, Mathias Schaffhauser’s
Musik ohne bass, or Metro Area’s Miura is worth the price.
9 ATB - Dedicated
Sanitized trance from Mr Tanneberger. Current retro single:
You’re not alone. Favorite: Halcyon.
13-December 2002
words on...music?
The first was a $100 Casio two-octave monophonic. The second –
another Casio – took one-second samples and provided four pads on which
to play them. But these were toys, and therefore I could not be
taken seriously.
Any attempt at “seriously” meant synthesizers, drum machines,
effects processors, and lots of cables to MIDI everything together.
Which meant a huge investment of time and money.
I began to shop where Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and even
Prince shopped; I listened to an interminable stream of
sales pitches; I pressed the keys on just about everything.
Thus, the third was a Roland Juno-106: Rows of knobs and
levers – even something called a “bender” – could be
configured to produce phat analog sounds. Very acid
house, although I didn’t know it at the time. An Ensoniq
SQ-80, along with said drum and reverb boxes, completed
the picture.
The mixer. Um, actually, no. No mixer. My strategy curiously
channeled $3000 worth of equipment into a $59 Panasonic stereo.
Adapter into adapter into plug and onto cassette tape for posterity.
I recorded hundreds of “songs” in my
bedroom studio from 1989–1992. Here is one;
here is another.
11-December 2002
so where’d he go?
I want things.
And I want them when I want them. Which is usually now.
My desire to live for the moment – for instant gratification –
somehow keeps me from attaining my long-term goals, one of which
was to organize this poorly tailored fat man of a blog.
See, I took this little test at work; the results showed me to be a
creator. So of course, that’s what I am. Not an advancer, not a
refiner, not an executor. I just get the ball moving; let someone else guide its path.
Children live for the moment, too. They’re just not into
maintenance. They create, and they absorb; that’s their job, really.
They build and draw, and then demolish and erase moments later.
They see and hear everything, even when they appear to be asleep.
They soak in, and oh yes, they spit back out. Needless to say, I’ve
had to curb my language more than a bit for fear of my son dropping an
exclamatory “Goddammit!” during Sunday School.
Little sponges that attract sights, sounds, and...germs, too. Those who
ascribe to the tabula rasa theory may be interested to find that it
holds for the toddlerian immune system as well. Children catch – and
transmit – all viruses and bacterial infections. In the last month,
I have contracted – from my son and daughter – two colds, the stomach
flu, and pinkeye. Remember pinkeye? During the night, your eyes become
glued – snotted – shut, and during the day you simply appear to have
smoked massive, bad geef.
Not well, and hence, no posts.
But on the comeback trail, I decided to do something about
maintenance. The site was hard to read and navigate –
poor leading among other things – and for the longest time,
I could not get myself to read anything on cascading style
sheets (CSS). But there is a point between sick and well at
which your consciousness is best applied in reading. So I
read a little here, and copied a little there. All the while,
the voice of Stephen Coles (which I have never actually heard),
who kindly suggested that I look into CSS, was spurring me on.
And then I wrote a little external file, cleaned up the html a
slight bit, and now we have leading as well as links to each post.
I feel some embarrassment in reporting that maintenance feels
good. But I’d still rather have had someone just do it for me when I wasn’t looking...
09-December 2002
todas las palabras...
Posts spanning June–November
here.
08-December 2002
columbus: 13 of 20
Beautiful text faces are released each
year. Some of these survive and prosper, basking in their uniqueness
and usefulness. They appear in newspapers, magazines, and books, on
logotypes and signage, and even on the sides of city buses. Others
– inexplicably – fall rapidly into obscurity.
Underrated type almost deserves extra
attention, primarily because it is good type, and secondarily because
it is – curiously – unseen and unused. I’ve compiled
a list of underrated faces, and at the top rests Columbus,
designed by Patricia Saunders and issued by Monotype in 1993.
Slightly heavy yet well-honed, Columbus
is a hybrid of cultures and centuries, in that the Roman appears to
derive from Venetian types of the late 1400s, whereas the italic (at
least in the lower case) seems more a descendant of French letterforms
of the early 16th century. But the mix is harmonious; the interplay
among roman, italic, small caps, and numerals is exceptionally fluid.
Moreover, full sets of ligatures are supplied, as are text and lining
numerals as well as borders and fleurons.
This begs the obvious question: Why,
a decade after its release, is Columbus so little known and so rarely
seen? Several factors could contribute: Like another Monotype digitization
of the 1990s – Pastonchi – it is under-marketed; unlike
other Monotype faces, it has not been given away as a part of an operating
system; maybe most people do not find it as beautiful or useful as
I do.
At the very least, Columbus is well-made,
thoughtfully equipped, and relatively inexpensive to license. Surely
all typefaces should boast as much.
16-November 2002
tex ramblings 3: from tex to typography (a tutorial on using postscript
typefaces with latex)
So now that you have it installed and can process documents, you find yourself getting
impatient. After all, you are a typographer, no? Computer Modern,
which is Knuth’s interpretation of Monotype Modern No. 8a, is
beautiful and versatile, but it only takes you so far. Simply put,
you want to use other fonts. Specifically, you want to see the PostScript
typefaces for which you shelled out hard-earned cash come to life
within TeX.
Well, you can, and the purpose of this entry is to show you how. I’ll focus
on LaTeX, actually, and I’ll begin with the PostScript faces
freely available with TeX. Then, I’ll take you through an easy
installation of Adobe Garamond (with the expert set) using pre-built
files. Finally, I’ll show how the same face can be installed
“from scratch” and how text numerals can be used.
Before launching in, however, I should say that the best print references
for using PostScript fonts with TeX are (1) Goosens, Rahtz, and Mittelbach,
The LaTeX Graphics Companion; and (2) Hoenig, TeX Unbound;
this post is no substitute. I’ll add that everything below applies
to TeX (MiKTeX) running under Microsoft Windows.
Part 1
Using the standard PostScript typefaces
There is a wonderful command for loading LaTeX
packages, whether they be packages that call typefaces, specify leading
or character spacing, or load graphics. It is called
\usepackage,
and it is placed somewhere between
\documentclass{...}
and \begin{document}.
Open the file called sample2e.tex and
place the command \usepackage{times}
on the line above \begin{document}.
Process, and view the result using YAP (Yet Another Previewer), GSView,
or Acrobat Reader. See what happened? The typeface, with the exception of
the mathematics, was changed from Computer Modern to Times Roman.
Times is one of “the 35 PostScript fonts” you may have heard about. These
fonts were distributed with the Apple LaserWriter Plus in the mid-1980’s
and are standard issue with TeX. Eight typefaces comprise these 35
variants, which are: Times Roman, Palatino, New Century Schoolbook,
AvantGarde, Bookman, Helvetica, Courier, and Zapf Chancery.
Now try Palatino; voila, you get Palatino. This seems easy; let’s try New Century
Schoolbook. What? “LaTeX Error: File ‘NewCenturySchoolbook.sty’
not found.”
Well, sometimes the font name is abbreviated. But abbreviated to what? How would you
know? Take a look in /tex/latex/psnfss; you find times.sty. Scrolling
back to the n section, you find newcent.sty; and sure enough,
\usepackage{newcent}
works! But you look deeper, and you find .sty files for a wide variety
of typefaces: Apollo, Imprint, and Octavian, just to name a few. In
fact, you find .sty files for many more than the 35 basic fonts.
A confession: When I was new to TeX, and before I knew anything about type, I tried
for hours in vain to get the face Apollo to appear in my document.
I hadn’t yet realized that the distribution was helpful in providing
some of the architecture to make Apollo work, but not so helpful that
it would hand over the actual typeface for me. I had to license typefaces
to get them to work. Who knew?
Now, these 35 PostScript fonts are resident, and by specifying the typefaces that
comprise them with the \usepackage command, you will call them whether
you process your file with YAP, dvips, or pdfLaTeX. But when you wish
to reach beyond these fonts – and you will – things become
more complicated, albeit not much more so. Let’s install Adobe
Garamond, replete with expert characters, using the files and formats
already supplied for us, and let’s make it work such that you
can view the output with GSView and Acrobat Reader.
Part 2
Using other PostScript typefaces with LaTeX: Pre-assembled files
So what does the call to \usepackage actually do? In order to answer this question,
you’ll have to start looking at some files. Let’s begin
with xagaramon.sty; it may be found within tex/latex/psnfss. And if
not, you’ll get it shortly. There’s really not much to
this file: four lines that specify something called “padx”
as the default roman face. Yes, to make matters a bit confusing, PostScript
faces are not called by their real names. Rather, they are given three-
or sometimes four-letter abbreviations. The first letter represents
the supplier; p is Adobe’s designation. The following two letters
denote the typeface: ad is Adobe’s version of Garamond. And
the x stands for expert.
But how do you get from padx to the actual font file to output in Adobe Garamond?
Well, by the time you call xagaramon in your LaTeX file, you have
to make sure that all the supporting files – as well as the
fonts themselves – are in their correct places. Let’s
begin with the fonts that constitute Adobe Garamond; take a look at
the names of your font binary (.pfb) files. Three, four, or five letters,
followed by some underscores, to make a total of eight characters.
Unfortunately, these names just won’t do where LaTeX is concerned.
You’ll have to change them; go to /fontname/adobe.map. Scroll
down to faces 100 and 101; these numbers refer to the basic and the
expert sets, respectively. You’ll notice that the first entry
is AGaramond-Bold; this is Adobe’s font name. And whereas its
Windows name is gdb_____, its TeX name is padb8a. Select this section
and print it, and then proceed to copy all of your Adobe Garamond
.pfb files to /fonts/type1/adobe and place in a folder called xagaramon.
Now, rename them (e.g., change gdb_____.pfb to padb8a and so on).
You’re actually much of the way there! But there are several more files you need to
have in place before you’re good to go. The first of these is
a font definition (.fd) file, which links the font name to the encoding
to the style (roman, italic, etc.). Then there are the virtual font
(.vf) files, which are read by the driver and often contain information
on remapping characters in a font, as well as the TeX font metric
(.tfm) files, which specify each character’s dimensions. Finally,
there is the .map file, with which you’ve already dealt. Not
only do you need this for renaming your .pfb files, but you need to
make sure that the section of the .map file pertaining to your typeface
– in this case, Adobe Garamond – is present in the driver
files.
Fortunately, all of these files have been pre-assembled for Adobe Garamond as well
as for fonts from several other vendors and are freely available via
the CTAN page (or one of its mirrors) on the Internet. Go to http://ctan.tug.org
and then navigate to /fonts/psfonts/xadobe/agaramon/. The x in xadobe
denotes “expert” (note that most of the TeX files for
Adobe faces are found in the plain adobe directory). You will see
four subdirectories: dvips, tex, tfm, and vf. Copy the .fd and .sty
files from the tex subdirectory to your psnfss folder (under /tex/latex).
Next, copy all of the .tfm files from the tfm subdirectory to /fonts/tfm/adobe/xagaramon
(you will have to create the new folder, xagaramon). Similarly, copy
all of the .vf files from the vf subdirectory to /fonts/vf/adobe/xagaramon.
Finally, in order to process your file using dvips as well as pdfLaTeX,
copy the text from the .map file, which is in the dvips subdirectory,
anywhere into /dvips/config/ psfonts.map as well as into /pdftex/config/ psfonts.map,
if this text is not already there. You will notice that some of the
.map code specifies a SlantFont option; if used, a slanted, upright
form of the face is printed. Why in God’s name anyone would
want to do this is beyond me, although Knuth makes substantial use
of slanted Computer Modern. So, to summarize, perform the following
operations to use Adobe Garamond with LaTeX:
1. Copy .pfb files to type1 folder; rename
2. Copy .fd files and the .sty file to the psnfss folder
3. Copy .tfm files to tfm folder
4. Copy .vf files to vf folder
5. Copy applicable section of .map file to psfonts.map folders
Be sure to refresh your filename database, and then run LaTeX on sample2e.tex,
with \usepackage{xagaramon}.
Then, process using dvips and view with GSView, or process using pdfLaTeX
and view with Acrobat Reader. You should see your text in Adobe Garamond.
Although the math remains in Computer Modern, the ligatures are there,
and if you set off a word or phrase in small caps,
using \textsc{...},
you have small caps. Life is good!
But wait, what’s that – all lining figures? There must be an easy way to switch
to text or oldstyle numerals – some simple command, right? Wrong.
You can access the text figure, seven, for example, by calling the
package textcomp (available on CTAN) and then by using the command
\textsevenoldstyle. But using text numerals by default requires a
different set of LaTeX files. These are not supplied; you must generate
them anew, and this is the topic of the next section.
Part 3
Using other PostScript typefaces with LaTeX: Generating your own LaTeX files
This is a bit more laborious, but oh-so-gratifying, once you see the final
result. You will use a program called fontinst, along with two others,
pltotf and vptovf, to generate the .fd, .tfm, and .vf files. If the
fontinst directory is not part of your LaTeX package, copy it to /tex/latex.
To make things easier, copy the pltotf and vptovf executables from
/bin to /tex/latex/ fontinst/inputs/ tex. To generate the TeX font
metric information yourself, you will need to use Adobe Garamond’s
.afm files. Copy these also to /tex/latex/ fontinst/inputs/tex. Just
as you changed the names of your .pfb files, you will have to change
the designators of the .afm files to make them LaTeX-readable. Thus,
gdb_____.afm becomes padb8a.afm and so on.
Now comes the file generation part. Copy fontinst.sty and fontinst.ini to the same
folder and then run LaTeX on fontinst.sty. At the asterisk prompt,
type \latinfamily{padj}{} \bye.
The \latinfamily command is a simple
way to turn .afm files into the required LaTeX files; the j appended
to pad specifies text figures. The program runs for more than a few
seconds, and after completing, you’ll notice that you now have
a collection of .fd, .mtx, .pl, and .vpl files. The .pl and .vpl files
are simply the .tfm and .vf files in readable form. You will use the
programs pltotf and vptovf to convert the .pl and .vpl files into
binary format. Running these programs in a DOS window, you will type,
for example, pltotf padb9c.pl padb9c.tfm
for one of the .pl to .tfm
conversions and vptovf padb9c.vpl padb9c.vf padb9c.tfm for one of
the .vpl to .vf conversions. Yes, you will run this on each of the
.pl and .vpl files, one by one! I know that this operation can be
batch processed in other systems, and I’m sure it can be in
Windows; I just don’t know how.
When you’ve finished the conversions, move the newly-created .tfm and .vf files
to their respective folders in the fonts directory; move the .fd files
to the psnfss folder as well. You may delete the .pl, .vpl, and .mtx
files. Create a new .sty file by saving xagaramon.sty as xagaramonj.sty
and changing the contents to read {padj} instead of {padx}. Again,
refresh the filename database, and run LaTeX on sample2e.tex, this
time using your xagaramonj package. You should now see text figures
as default.
It will not be as straightforward as described; some tinkering will undoubtedly
be necessary. It helps to know a TeX-pert, too. I am not one, myself;
I have come this far only through much trial and error, and with a
great deal of banging my head against the wall. But I hope that this
short tutorial will be of some use to those of you who want to try
to use your PostScript typefaces with LaTeX; the journey may be arduous,
but the reward is great!
12-November 2002
alpha to omega, with stops in-between
So, who uses Greek fonts, anyway?
Well, there are the people who read and write in Greek for starters: approximately
10.6 million in Greece and thousands more around the world. Then there
are the classicists: scholars who read ancient Greek and
who study myth, language, and literature. Finally, there are the mathematicians,
statisticians, and scientists, who use Greek letters as symbols that
denote particular constants or variables.
The recent rise in the production and the increase in quality of Greek typefaces
gives all three groups reason to rejoice; with relatively new releases
by Adobe, Bitstream, and FontShop International, there is unprecedented
flexibility in typesetting Greek. The exercise of matching Greek and
Latin faces (see Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style,
2nd ed, pp106–113) is gradually approaching obsolescence.
The first “really good Greek font with accents” (Updike, Printing
Types: Their History, Forms & Use, 3rd ed, p191) appeared
in 1528 and was the work of the French printer, Simon de Colines.
But perhaps the most well-known, early Greek faces were those of Claude
Garamond: les grecs du roi – literally, the royal types
– which were produced under the guidance of Robert Estienne
and modeled on the hand of the scribe to Francois I, about a decade
after the type of Colines. The grecs du roi were cast in three sizes
(from largest to smallest, the gros-parangon, the gros-romain, and
the Cicero) and were first used in 1544 in an edition of the Præparatio
Evangelica of Eusebius (see Updike, pp234–239 for a detailed
description and samples; see also Chappell and Bringhurst, A Short
History of the Printed Word, p113).
Greek types produced in the last century continued to be based largely on
– or at least were designed to be compatible with – existing
letterforms: Matthew Carter’s Optima Greek on Hermann Zapf’s
Optima, Zapf’s Attika on Wilhelm Pischner’s Neuzeit, Adrian
Frutiger’s Univers Greek on his own Univers, and so on (see
Livingston, “Sidenote on Greek Type” in Fine Print on Type,
pp114–116).
Two of the most beautiful of the 20th century Greek types were those of the
book and type designer, Jan van Krimpen. Antigone (1928), designed
for compatibility with van Krimpen’s Lutetia (produced four years
earlier) was intended for use in mathematical texts, but its calligraphic
nature led Walter Tracy to conclude that “it is better suited
to literary...texts” (Tracy, Letters of Credit,
pp105–106).
Van Krimpen later designed a Greek companion to his Romulus (originally released
in 1936; now produced by the Dutch Type Library). This design was
based on van Krimpen’s belief that “there should be as
little differentiation [between Roman and Greek] forms as possible”
(Tracy, p112). Some of the serifed as well as unfamiliar features led Tracy
to suggest that van Krimpen “allow[ed] theory to overset practical
sense” and to conclude that “Romulus Greek mixed with Romulus
Roman does not harmonize with it; it becomes confused with it”
(p113). I disagree with Tracy’s analysis and feel that, in
the example shown on p113, roman and Greek are ideally compatible.
But then I am admittedly rather poor at mixing roman and Greek and
have nothing like Tracy’s expertise.
A renaissance in the production of Greek types began in the 1970s, when Mergenthaler
Linotype, at the urging of Costas Chryssochoides, produced Baskerville,
Century Schoolbook, Helvetica, Optima, Souvenir, and Times Roman Greeks
(Livingston, p114). A look at Precision Type’s Font Reference
Guide (v5), issued in 1995, shows that, sadly, this selection
had not appreciably expanded for nearly 25 years. But in the mid-to-late
1990s, with the implementation of the expanded character set prescribed
by Unicode, perhaps coupled with a desire of some vendors to produce
high-quality, Greek fonts that were compatible with existing Romans,
yet another Renaissance would occur. TrueType faces with Greek characters
would include Georgia, Tahoma, Trebuchet, and Verdana. And PostScript
Greek fonts included, among many others, the digital version of Chris
Brand’s Albertina, Robert Slimbach’s Minion (issued as
a component of Minion’s OpenType variant) and Warnock, Bitstream’s
digitization of Antique Olive, Optima, and Univers, as well as several
others.
The company that currently seems to emphasize
the production of Greek faces to the largest extent is FSI.
Recently, under the FontFont imprint, it has released Greek versions of
Celeste, DIN, Isonorm, Meta, and Providence; and as part of the “Instant
Types” family of Just van Rossum, it has issued Greek variants of Confidential,
Dynamoe, Flightcase, Karton, and Stamp Gothic. And with release 31 of the
FontFont library, Greek types are now available in all weights of Meta,
as well as for Alega and Elementa.
All of the Greek fonts issued by FontFont, as well as most by Bitstream and
others, are monotonic – literally, of single pitch – but
meaning that the vowels in the Greek alphabet are accompanied by few
diacritical marks. Indeed, practically speaking, modern Greek does
not use them, but classical Greek does. Greek alphabets
that include them are referred to as polytonic; the aforementioned
TrueType faces include the polytonic variants, as do several of the Linotype faces adapted
in the 1970s.
To be more specific, and perhaps more clear, these polytonic faces are distinguished
by their diacritical marks, which may be classified into four groups:
1. accents: acute, circumflex, and grave
2. breathing marks: rough and smooth
3. the iota subscript
4. the diaersis
The polytonic alphabet also may include special characters, such as the lunate and
final sigma.
One vendor deserves special mention in conjunction with polytonic faces, and
that is the Greek Font Society, based in Athens. It has recently issued
polytonic variants of Bodoni and Didot as well as the more commonly
known Porson Greek and New (or Neo) Hellenic. Porson Greek –
an elegant, sloped Greek face – was actually designed in the
early 19th century by the classicist, Richard Porson. In the 20th
century it became associated with the texts of the Loeb Classical
Library, the Oxford Classical Texts series, and the Greek texts of
St. Martin’s Press, to name a few. Victor Scholderer’s
subtly serifed New Hellenic is the standard face of the Cambridge
Classics series. For more detailed descriptions and samples of these
latter two faces in text, see Bringhurst, pp108–109, 256–261.
I should add that some versions of Greek Font Society faces are designed
specifically for use with a specialized typesetting program for scholars,
called GreekKeys.
In the digital age, the purview of type design has expanded to include mathematicians
and computer scientists. Twenty years ago, Donald Knuth produced a
sloped Greek face as a part of his Computer Modern family for use
with TeX (see Knuth, The TeXbook; see also Knuth’s Digital
Typography, 1999). Knuth also collaborated with Hermann Zapf
to produce AMS Euler, a calligraphic Greek commissioned by the American
Mathematical Society, and designed to be compatible with Knuth’s
Concrete Roman (see Knuth, Digital Typography, pp339–365
for an interesting account of this collaboration).
The MathTime face, a collection of Greek characters and mathematical symbols, was
issued in the early 1990s by Y&Y and was designed to work with
Linotype Times in the typesetting systems TeX or LaTeX. Mathematicians
have used MathTime with other Roman faces as well (see Hoenig, TeX
Unbound, pp316–344 for examples). I have found that MathTime
works particularly well, requiring few necessary adjustments, with
Linotype Janson Text and Linotype Sabon. And Lucida Greek, designed
by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes (see Holmes, “Designing a
New Greek Type” in Fine Print on Type, p130) is available
in TrueType format in standard issue as well as in PostScript format
from Y&Y and has provided mathematical typographers a bolder alternative
to Computer Modern or MathTime. More adventurous mathematicians can
also use faces such as FF Celeste, DIN, or Meta, for mathematical
typography that gets noticed.
I have not described the Cyrillic alphabet, which has enjoyed similar renaissances,
and is perhaps available in an even wider variety of faces than Greek.
This is only because I have some experience with the Greek alphabet
and none with the Cyrillic. But whether it be a Moscow-based daily
newspaper, a Greek scholar’s dissertation, or a statistician’s
monograph, the rapidly evolving world of digital type, with its room
for expanded character sets, is providing for easier, more flexible,
and ever-clearer written communication.
02-November 2002
loire: 12 of 20
I wish I knew more about Jean Lochu and his work, for he created, in my opinion,
two of the more elegant, well-designed faces of the late 1990s. His
Selune,
in which the influences of Grandjean and Firmin Didot appear to shine
through, was developed in 1998 and is replete with Greek and Cyrillic
versions. And Loire, released
in the previous year, conveys the spirit of two other French printers
and punchcutters – that of Fournier in the Roman and Granjon
in the italic.
But Lochu is no mere interpreter of his predecessors, nor does he intend to
be. That he is a calligrapher by training is apparent in Loire; the
highly drawn, hybrid numerals, the extended, abrupt serifs, and the
unusually high dots on i and j are just a few of the features that
distinguish it. Loire and Selune are both available through
Agfa-Monotype.
25-October 2002
tex 2: slightly more concrete ramblings
But I didn’t tell you where to get it or how to install it and actually
produce documents, did I? Nope.
First, go to the site of CTAN
(The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network). It is everything TeX, and
if it’s your first visit, you will need some direction.
- Click on “Look through,” which will take you to the
root directory.
- Scroll down to “systems” and click. Amiga? Atari? Yes, no one
is left out. Windows users will click on win32, the last entry,
and Mac users will stop at, well, mac.
From here on, I can only write with some knowledge about Windows. Five
percent of you? Less? Is this where you hit the back button on your
browser?
(Yes, it all happened long ago, and under duress. I’ll see you back on the
other side before long, however. I know nothing about using TeX/LaTeX
on a Mac but this: OzTeX installs very easily and is a breeze to use
(on CTAN under systems/mac), and Textures
is appealing largely because of its on-the-fly DVI processing. Request
the demo.)
So, now that we’re a much smaller group – oh, it’s just you?
- Click on win32, then click on miktex, which is, as the caption states,
“a free [and very complete] TeX distribution for MS-Windows32.”
This has evolved over the years into an amazing package. Christian
Schenk should get some kind of damn big prize for his continual
expansion and improvement of it.
- Click on setup. Oh, by the way, are you an instruction-reader? (What is
your Myers-Briggs profile?) If so, read install.html or install.pdf;
if not, proceed directly to setup.exe and save to disk.
- Select the “Download only” radio button, hit next, and then
select “Small.” It ain’t so small, really. Here,
small is pretty huge, but the world of TeX has grown so incredibly
over the past few years that “Large” is simply freaking
incomprehensible.
- Proceed onward and pick a country. Yes, your own. Finally, pick a folder
to which you will download.
- Let the setupwiz application take you where it will.
At this point, you are good to go – that is, if you are content to use
Wordpad or Notepad as a text editor. If you want something more –
something with a customizable interface that is tailored to TeX –
you may wish to try WinEdt. It’s a shareware program; if you
like it and want to keep using it, you pay $30–$70 after the
31-day trial period has elapsed. The “customizable” part
has a steep learning curve, but I view the application as indispensable.
You may download here
or from CTAN under /systems/winedt.
Delay no longer; set some text. Within miktex/tex/latex/base is a file called
sample2e.tex. Process it using LaTeX, and then view the result using
YAP (or, if using WinEdt, hit the DVI or PDFLaTeX buttons). You’re
well on your way.
Finally, you’ll need a book. The one to which I invariably return is
Lamport’s LaTeX:
A Document Preparation System (2nd ed.). Slim but dense;
doesn’t include all of the latest refinements, but serves as
an excellent base. If you want to use PostScript fonts right away,
seek out Alan Hoenig’s TeX
Unbound or The
LaTeX Graphics Companion, by Goosens, Rahtz, and Mittelbach.
22-October 2002
month, date, and type...
I was getting a little anxious.
Suddenly it was October – time to tear down the previous month and to
wonder once again whether I should fold carefully and archive, and
to lament once again the fact that I didn’t order two.
Just ITC New Baskerville, Walker, and Bodoni Poster left, and then what?
Would my conversation piece – my sole on-the-job connection
to typography – leave a permanent lacuna?
No! A new one is on its way, courtesy of Kit Hinrichs at Pentagram.
But why should I get so excited about a calendar?
Well, in a discipline in which control, restraint, and subtlety have their
rightful place, something that shouts and celebrates is a welcome
addition. And nothing quite sings the praises of typography like Pentagram’s
Typographic Calendar. The 2003 version – Hinrichs’s third
– is on sale soon at Crate
& Barrel, SFMOMA,
and Design Within Reach,
and is available for the first time in large and small sizes.
You can have your times and your eternities, too.... Buy one for the moment;
save one for posterity.
17-October 2002
interesting...
A few weeks back, I wrote that the lower case, roman a is the most useful
letter in the alphabet when attempting to identify a typeface; I justified
this on the basis that it is “the most visually interesting
and complex letter...”
Huh?
Had my 11th grade English teacher read this post, she would have printed
it off, circled offending, unsubstantiated claim in broad, red, felt-tip
ink, and screamed, “SO WHAT?” And so I’ll try again;
call this a second draft. Or at least an attempt at a clarifying footnote.
Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style begins with a “historical
synopsis” – four pages in which eight typefaces, each
of which is representative of a time and genre, are dissected into
their constituent characteristics. Bringhurst focuses on five:
(1) aperture: the openings in letters such as a, e, and s
(2) axis (or stress): the angle of the pen
(3) contrast: the ratio of stroke thickness to thinness
(4) serif: the stroke that may be added to a stem, arm, or tail
(5) terminal: the ending of the arm in letters such as a, f, and r
Taken together, these five features aid us in attempting to identify typefaces;
I propose here that of the letters in the roman lower case, only the
letter a can potentially provide information about all five. This
is certainly not true of all typefaces; indeed, it perhaps holds only
for some serifed faces.
Let’s try an experiment. I show here,
in the roman lower case of Christopher Burke’s FF Celeste, all
five of these characteristics in the letter a. I also attempt to show
if, and in what number, they are present in the other letters. For
example, three of them are present in b: axis, contrast, and serif.
And only one characterizes l: serif.
The point I wish to reinforce is that, while there are types of characters
(think Plato: versions of b, of k, and so on), the roman lower case
a, from an information-content standpoint, best illustrates the character
of the type. It is the face of the alphabetic corpus, the richest
source of each font’s physiognomy. And perhaps of each font’s
personality, too; but personality is a topic for another time, another
post.
15-October 2002
homage...
So, I finally got my act together the other night and made some time for
24
Hour Party People. It was my Forrest Gump; a big-time
nostalgia trip through my Anglophilic, particularly Mancunian, musical
past (save Happy Mondays). While Billy Squier, David Lee Roth, and
Steve Perry inexplicably touched the hearts and minds of my peers,
they had nothing to say to me. But Ian Curtis – and Bernard
Sumner, in Curtis’s wake – did.
But it wasn’t just the words or the music of Joy Division and New
Order; it was the whole package. You see, what I felt upon opening
a new Factory records release can only inadequately be described as
a kind of Gestalt, visuotactile adrenalin surge. Carefully working
through layers of plastic, cardboard, and adhesive, the sacred, Schliemannian
ritual began with the removal of transparent tape from the clear,
plastic sleeve (the sure badge of an import) that enveloped said cardboard.
Separation of plastic and paper yielded only another, inner layer
of plastic – this one semi-opaque – that was the static-charged
conduit to the grooves themselves.
Label was checked for proper turntable rate, and that having been set, needle
hit vinyl. Oh yes, back then, an album or dance single meant a record
– a 12-inch, vinyl disc – and the cardboard encasement
therefore provided a large canvas for cover art.
This canvas was what one looked at, admired, and interpreted while listening
to the music. Of the three senses that Joy Division and New Order
could conceivably penetrate, one was affected through words and music;
the other two, through sight and touch. And the person responsible
for shaping what we saw and felt, for defining and honing the Factory
image, is a designer named Peter Saville.
Saville (his character, that is) has a small part in the on-screen account,
but those who followed the Factory saga know that his real role was
an essential one; image was tantamount to music according to the Wilsonian
credo. Indeed, every Factory action, whether it be a New Order release,
the Hacienda opening, or the Hannett settlement, was enumerated, and
a Saville creation accompanied most of these.
But what was it about Saville’s work for Factory that is worth remembering?
During a period of cover design that embraced the spacey (think Boston),
the silly (think Devo), the hokey (think Supertramp), the otherworldly
(think anything 4AD), Saville simply chose the thoughtful and the
beautiful.
As an example of the former, consider the cover of New Order’s
1984 single, Confusion.
The importance of the numeric index was writ large and in violet;
eight-inch high Gill Sans figures told those in the know that this
was release 93. But it was reiterated subtly; the color strip on the
upper right edge spells “FAC93” in a code created by Saville
(see the back of the previous year’s Power,
Corruption & Lies for the decoder wheel). And the bitmapped
title was, well, confusing indeed. The C could just as well be an
O or an N; the O might be a B; the N approached H or W; and so on.
And as for the latter, the design of the aforementioned album was a risky
departure: a still-life painting by Henri Fantin-Latour. Said Saville
in a 1995 Eye interview, “In 1983, when I put flowers
on the cover of Power, Corruption & Lies, we hadn’t seen
flowers in pop culture since the 1960s. But fashion designer Scott
Crolla was buying Sanderson fabric and Georgina Godley was running
it up into dresses and there was this buzz about Flower Power coming
back.”
There is a resurgence of interest in Saville; he is enjoying what Neil Tennant
might call a second “imperial” phase: The movie, a forthcoming
book by Emily King, and a recent article in The New York Times.
The floral metaphor of annuals and perennials has been extended to typefaces
(see Michael Twyman’s quote in King’s
dissertation), and so too may it apply more generally to graphic
design. The work of Peter Saville reminds us, perennially, of the
powerful role design plays in our lives.
Other links:
(1) Eye
interview with Rick Poynor
(2) Dennis
Remmer’s Factory Records Discography
(3) New
York Times article by Horacio Silva
08-October 2002
themix: 11 of 20
I brake for Aveda
ads. No, it’s not the thought of having an auto-aromatherapeutic experience.
No, it’s not the flow, shape, or color of the coiffures. Rather, it’s
the type, which happens to be...TheMix.
A third of the Thesis
triumvirate – halfway between TheSans and TheSerif – TheMix
remains spanking-fresh and vital eight years after its release. The
version shown is TheMix Office, which includes normal and bold weights
as well as hybrid figures. Designed by Luc(as) de Groot and available
through his LucasFonts.com.
07-October 2002
eureka: 10 of 20
Released by FSI in 1998,
Peter
Bilak’s FF Eureka is
the abruptly-serifed cornerstone of a font family that also comprises
sans, sans condensed, monospaced, and monospaced condensed variants.
Top prize winner at the 19th International Biennale of Graphic Design,
this excellent, economical face is reminiscent of typewritten letterforms
yet contains elements of Venetian and Garalde oldstyles. See also
the designer’s rapidly expanding Fedra
family.
02-October 2002
interview with jessica helfand
The topic of notable book jackets came and went on TYPO-L a few months
back, and I regret that I did not cast my vote for the work of Jessica
Helfand and William Drenttel on Econometrics,
by Fumio Hayashi. It’s certainly my favorite jacket in my home
library, whether the subject be statistics/econometrics, design, or
otherwise.
I recently asked Ms Helfand about the design of Econometrics,
as well as about her new book, Reinventing
the Wheel. My questions and her answers follow:
JC: At what point did you realize that the author’s name –
Fumio Hayashi – and the title – Econometrics
– had the same number of characters (and that O was
the fifth letter), and that you could incorporate this into
the design?
JH: It is, I think, fairly typical for designers to engage in an exploratory
sketching process when beginning to imagine a potential design solution,
and this is exactly what happened here. As my knowledge of economics
is fairly limited, I thought it best to try and work with what I had:
a long title and byline can sometimes be untenable, but in this case
it was fortuitous.
JC: What is it about the design – specifically, the colors, the
type, the fine grid around the title and author’s name – that
might be linked to the field of econometrics?
JH: Let me be the first to admit that my knowledge of mathematics and
statistics is rather limited. However, to the extent that design can
approximate an idea, the justified alignments were thought to loosely
represent something quantifiable and resolved – as opposed to, say, chaos theory.
JC: How did you come to choose the typeface –
FF
Marten?
JH: FF Marten was designed by Martin Wenzel, a German type designer who studied in the Netherlands.
It’s very geometric and elegant, yet quite readable as well. “Less
is more,” explains Wenzel in decribing his formal intentions
with this typeface. “Use it for ‘Loud and Clear.’” I thought
it provided a good balance between pragmatism and expressiveness,
a slightly more decorative take on the practical.
JC: Could you describe your choice of the colors of the letters
in the title – mint, peach, and bronze – and their interplay?
JH: The use of color in Japan is quite different than in the west, and
colors there have strong and specific connotations. While Hayashi’s
book is in English, I felt that the fact that he is Japanese needed to somehow
be reflected on the cover. So the colors are, I suppose, an attempt
to create a harmonious palette that combines both Eastern and Western sensibilities.
I have to confess, though, that the author and his wife are close
personal friends of mine: knowing them as I do, I had a sense that
they would like these color choices.
JC: I’m enjoying your new book, Reinventing the Wheel,
and I especially like the cover illustration, which is derived from
“The Wheel of Life,” on p 8. I also like your choice of
typefaces (Knockout,
by Jonathan
Hoefler, and Hightower,
by Tobias
Frere-Jones). What led you to use them?
JH: In our studio we are big fans of Jonathan and of Tobias, who teaches
with me at Yale. (Let me take this opportunity to say that Jonathan
Hoefler’s new typeface, Requiem,
is nothing short of perfection. I would be perfectly happy to use
it for everything I ever design the rest of my life. Period.) Knockout
was originally designed for Sports Illustrated, and included
a suite of weights that were intended for editorial display. These
fonts condense beautifully, and although the average viewer wouldn’t
know it, they are identified by qualifying titles wittily adapted
from the boxing ring (Welterweight, Heavyweight, etc.). We felt that
Knockout contrasted well with the quiet elegance of Hightower, which
was originally developed, as I understand it, for the American Institute
of Graphic Arts and named for its former director, Carolyn Hightower.
It’s one of my favorites.
JC: Many of the wheels serve to provide objective, quantitative
answers to discrete questions. Others, such as Arnold Palmer’s
“Dial Your Problem” Golf Fixer (p 132)
or the Handwriting Analysis Wheel (p 134), provide
more nebulous, speculative solutions to qualitative questions. In
your experience, do you find that design questions or problems can
sometimes be reduced to formulaic solutions such as those that a wheel
might offer, or is there simply no wheel big enough?
JH: In spite of the fact that all designers strive to resolve ideas to
the best of their abilities, I can’t say that design solutions operate
on the basis of finding a formula to arrive at a solution. In fact, formulaic solutions
to design problems tend to restrict the kind of original thinking
that makes design worth doing in the first place. While design can and does benefit
from certain kinds of strategic thinking – the modular systems
that Le Corbusier introduced in his post-war architecture come to mind, patterns
of modules that repeated yet through variation and permutation, allowed
for different domestic needs to be met – I wouldn’t liken this to
the kind of finite, quantifiable evidence represented in information
wheels, or volvelles. But I still love them.
27-September 2002
type spotlight: ff avance
While new typefaces appear with ever-increasing frequency, few are truly
novel. I consider Evert Bloemsma’s FF
Avance to be a pathbreaking typeface, due in large part to the
asymmetrical placement of the serifs, and I find his theory and motivation
behind it – as described on the FontFont
site – to be most compelling.
I recently asked Mr Bloemsma a few questions about Avance and about his approach
to type design via email. My questions, and his answers to them, follow:
JC: The information piece about Avance on the FontFont site is unique
in that it presents a mini-theory of (serifed) type design. But what
was your primary goal with Avance? To investigate the possibilities
of a new serifed roman? Or more generally, to produce a distinctive
text face?
EB: My primary goal was to design a typeface suited for long texts, containing
small details like serifs for the eye to hold, and with a fine/detailed
visual appearance as serifed type usually has. This is what I wrote
about it: “First I hesitated drawing serifs. The serif has many
purposes and possible origins, and it took some months before I felt
ready to handle this item. The serif may carry a burden of outdated
conventions, so applying serifs is risky when trying to avoid the
swamp of traditions. An expression of static monumentality and ornament/decoration
should be avoided in contemporary type design.”
JC: Gerrit Noordzij writes “There is no essential difference between
typography and handwriting.” Fred Smeijers, on the other hand,
states: ”Writing, lettering, and typography have in fact very
little in common with each other, except that all three processes
use the signs that we call letters.” Do you see Avance as an
abstraction of an unusually written face, or as more of a drawn face,
relatively unconnected with handwriting?
EB: I see it as relatively unconnected with handwriting. The shape and direction
of the serifs goes beyond the actual origin of handwriting.
JC: There are some similarities between Avance and your earlier sans-serif
face, Balance; for example, the ratio of cap height to x-height, the
unique form of the roman s, which seems wider at the top than at the
bottom, and the relatively large aperatures. Was Avance in any sense
intended to serve as a serifed companion to Balance?
EB: No, this must be due to my “personal style”. The roman s of
FF Avance is not really wider at the top as it is with Balance; it
may look like it but that is just because our perception is very conditioned
by conventions.
JC: Under whom did you train in type design, and where?
EB: Jan Vermeulen taught us some writing with the broad nib and Alexander
Verberne inspired me although I did not participate in his lessons.
All together I discovered most aspects of type design myself. I studied
the Art Academy in Arnhem, The Netherlands, from 1976 to 1981.
JC: What tools do you use in type design?
EB: Fontographer.
JC: What are you working on now?
EB: Several special assignments concerning type design and one new idea for a
display typeface; it looks quite commercial I must say; something
I did not expect.
JC: What is your ideal project?
EB: To establish a whole new contemporary typographical expression leaving
all conventions behind but still self-evident and “natural”;
a freedom like the modernist architects created/discovered in the
early 1900s.
On a related point, Bloemsma also has this to say: “Desktop publishing
(DTP) has lifted type to the meta-level of digital media. Type is
now cut off from its physical origins, the roots that determined its
shapes: handwriting and letterpress. The return of features like ligatures
and ‘old-style’ figures, the revival of monospaced fonts, and the
use of ‘rough’ types like Interstate and Bell Gothic for text demonstrate
our emotional desire for tradition, rooted in limitations and a certain
characteristic imperfection. Paradoxically, DTP intended to liberate
us from all this. These contradictions present a dilemma in which
contemporary type design has to find its way.”
FF Avance is available in two weights (regular and bold), and comes equipped
with small caps and both text and lining figures. Bloemsma has also
designed the aforementioned FF
Balance and has recently expanded his FF
Cocon typeface.
25-September 2002
typeface identification: it begins – and ends – with the letter a
Take this quiz: Of the b’s shown in this
palette, how many do you know? If you’re a true typophile,
you fared respectably.
But when attempting to identify a typeface, is the b the Rosetta stone that
links feature to name? Probably not. While the lower case f and g
say a lot, the a tells the whole story; but why so?
I would simply suggest that the lower case a is the most visually interesting
and complex letter in the alphabet. There is so much room for variation
in the overhang and bowl; indeed, while one can do only so much with
the strokes of the other letters, it seems that those of the a can
assume myriad forms.
In Counterpunch,
Fred Smeijers begins with some support for this idea: “Why would
the punchcutter make three [a’s]? Maybe because this is a weak
punch that breaks easily? I do not think so...I think the reason
could be this: the punchcutter just liked to make these a’s.
Just as these days a young type designer might love to draw an a in
idle moments....”
Take the quiz again; same typefaces,
same order. How’d you do this time?
Answers (left to right):
Avenir
ITC New Baskerville
Berling
Centaur
Century Schoolbook
Courier New
Dante
Ehrhardt
Simoncini Garamond
Gill Sans
Linotype Janson Text
Joanna
Linotype Syntax
Meta
Minion
PMN Caecilia
Perpetua
Linotype Sabon
Scala Sans
Times New Roman
20-September 2002
meta: 9 of 20
Meta
is everywhere, and why not? The highly readable “Helvetica of
the 1990s” is available in normal and condensed widths in five
weights, and over an eight-year span, has been expanded to include
CE, Turkish, Baltic, Greek, and Cyrillic versions. Designed by Erik
Spiekermann; see also his Officina
Sans and (with Ole Schaefer) Info.
16-September 2002
tex ramblings...
Didn’t really think about type until 1994. Due to graduate studies, I was
accumulating statistics books – mostly small and green (Chapman
and Hall), big and yellow (Springer). Varied colors and sizes, but
just one type. Light, clean, and nowhere on my PC. What was it?
The copyright page provided a clue: “Camera-ready copy from the author’s
TeX files.” I naively and impulsively got VTeX and embarked on
an odyssey of trial and error. Much error, and so I bought two books:
Arvind Borde’s TeX by Example and Donald Knuth’s The
TeXBook. The first was exactly what I needed – a guidebook
containing code of varied complexity and length. Copy, change to suit,
and correct. The second book – by the program’s author –
made me laugh, left me awestruck, and provided a glimpse into the
world of typography.
I learned that there were different flavors – plain TeX, LaTeX –
and that it didn’t need to be bought. Right there for free on CTAN.
With MiKTeX on the back end and WinEdt on the front, I could produce
clean, mathematical copy. For me, at that time, TeX was more about
logic and practicality than about typography.
Turned out I didn't yet know what typography was. But four summers later
– hot and sleepless – my newborn son David needed to be
held 24 hours a day. And I needed something to read during his intermittent
slumber. It was Bringhurst; I read and reread, and learned about the
art of typography. Much more than the mechanics of getting the right
letter to appear on the page. To this day, my only truly dog-eared
book. Own two copies.
Marrying Bringhurst and Knuth wasn’t easy. Transcending Computer Modern and
incorporating PostScript fonts required Alan Hoenig’s TeX Unbound.
Fontinst, pltotf, and vptovf, and I was using MathTime with everything
from Adobe Garamond (the La Boheme of type?) to Scala. Incorporated
text figures (j-option) and ligatures. Tried – and failed miserably
– at Hoenig’s MathInst; cheated by simply changing the style
file. But I had moved from typing to setting type.
All in all, I used TeX to set 10 papers in the neurosciences, several
more in Devanagari and Greek with my wife for her work in the humanities,
and countless variations on cover letters and resumes as I ventured
out into the “real world.”
I still use TeX at work a little, but not so much any more at home; InDesign
has made it all too easy. But when I have time, I try new bits of
code. There is such power and economy to TeX – small, device-independent
files, and not an extra penny to Mr Gates. Amazing things can be done
with it – take a look at Don Hosek's work on Serif.
Have you thought about getting TeX going on your system? If so, but unsure
of where to start, drop me a line. I’d be happy to help.
07-September 2002
he cried his eyes out
I worked with Linotype Janson Text and Linotype Sabon yesterday. Doubleheader,
and I went two for two. What a privilege to set type using a couple
of the most beautiful text faces in existence! No pretense, no eccentricities
– just regal strength. And a strength that was preserved and
even reinforced in the transition from metal to bits.
What a letdown I had today, then, to use another Linotype digitization.
Electra – in metal – is one of my favorite book faces of all.
Somehow so distinctive and so transparent. Pick up a few American
books of the 50s and you’ll find Electra and will feel the force of
it. A pioneering design, and one of the few original faces of the
20th century. But surely Dwiggins is rolling now, and for good reason.
For his first serifed face became emaciated upon digitization and
there is little hope of it fattening up anytime soon.
Bringhurst writes of digital translations that are too faithful to the originals.
The translation of Electra is perhaps faithful to the metal matrices,
but not to the impression of ink into paper.
But never mind that. Eager to build your type library, you recall the
letterpress-induced robustness of it in your parents’ college texts,
you see the anti-aliased gifs of its digitized version at 72 pt, and
then...the music begins to play. One of the strangest medleys
you’ve ever heard, too: A bizarre mix of “God Bless America,”
“Misty,” and “Feelin’ Massachusetts.” Swooning
and dizzy, you license.
You fire up InDesign (and wait...and wait a little more) and proceed
to set some text. You print at increasingly large sizes. Twelve point
isn’t quite dark enough; neither are 14 or 16 or 18. You attempt to
diagnose; where is the problem? Do you need a new ink cartridge? Were
you using some kind of light weight that you didn't know about? After
fifteen minutes of fretting, fussing, and unsuccessful fixing, you
begin your procession through the five stages of grief.
1. Denial: “I didn’t really just...did I? No, couldn't have. I’m sure
I cancelled at the last minute again. Logged right off, I did. Yup.”
2. Anger: “Goddammit, who the hell digitized this? If I spoke even a shred
of intelligible German, I would call up Linotype right now and give
them a piece of my mind, I would...!”
3. Bargaining: “Dear God, if I take a little coffee break and my new font looks
heavier when I come back, I’ll start going to church again.”
4. Depression: “Just...just screw this whole typography thing. Nobody really
notices this stuff anyway, do they? Real small caps, fake small caps...lining
numerals, old style numerals...hyphens, en dashes...who cares?
Besides, Times New Roman isn’t all that bad.”
5. Acceptance: “Yes, I bought versions 1 and 2. Display type included, along
with those Caravan border thingies. Oh well, it’s a piece of history,
right?”
Don’t get me started on Granjon.
01-September 2002
deja vu...all over again
daidala archives in pdf format here.
29-August 2002
bit behind, i am...
FontFont
2002 catalogue arrived in the mail on Friday. Um, yeah...you’ve
had yours for half a year now. Truth is, I wrote in to request a copy
of font
002 and the catalogue tagged along. This is a good thing;
looking at the fonts online is nice, but seeing them on paper is a
necessity. You’ve already formulated your thoughts; here are a few
of mine.
The first thing I noticed is that the catalogue is thicker (no surprise),
expanding from 144 to 192 pages. The second is that it’s roomier;
more white space, and some of the stock samples are now large enough
to be useful.
Third, the categories – once a bit arbitrary – have been reduced
in number from nine to six. Gone are Geometric, Intelligent, and Destructive,
and several of the faces formerly therein have found their way into
Typographic. One could still make some arguments for misidentification
(Why aren’t Hardcase, Maverick, Karbid, and Schulbuch typographic?),
but overall, the arrangement makes sense.
Fourth, larger font families are now supplemented with matrices of weight
by style, providing for a quick read on the combinations available.
Fifth, and finally, the notes are now in Mike Abbink’s Kievit
(2001), replacing Spiekermann and Schaefer’s Info.
I’ve developed a new appreciation for this open, unserifed face. Kievit
might conjure up Myriad
or Frutiger,
though it is not as restrained as either. It’s available in six weights
and includes text figures and expert characters. It is just one of
the several new faces issued semiannually by FSI that make the FontFont
2002 catalogue a necessary part of one’s specimen book library and
the FontFont collection the most comprehensive – and perhaps
the most important – series of new types today.
19-August 2002
mrs eaves: 8 of 20
Of course; it’s ubiquitous, after all. Plant yourself anywhere in a Barnes and
Noble, swivel, and you’ll spot this
Baskerville revival/parody gracing a cover or two. You won’t likely
find it on the pages, however; it’s a face that demands attention,
rather than one that invites reading.
The crown jewel of the Emigre empire – and IMHO, one
of the outstanding offerings of the 90s – is now available
in OpenType format. Those 213 ligatures should be easier to implement
than ever before.
19-August 2002
a whole slew of 'em
A few weeks ago, I wrote that the new Linotype Syntax, with its added weights,
small caps, and text figures, was the best
deal in type. A close second must be Bitstream’s
Cambridge Collection. For under $200US you get, among others,
Bitstream Amerigo, Arrus, Charter, and Iowan Old Style, 18 weights/widths
of Futura, Oranda, Serifa, and Venetian 301 (Centaur). Alas, no expert
sets here; you’ll have to supplement as needed. (Parenthetical double
alas: Bitstream apparently no longer sells its 500 Font CD, which
I obtained two years ago for a ridiculously low price.) Nonetheless,
if you want to want to get your hands on a few styles of two of the
most underrated typefaces in recent memory – yes, Arrus and
Iowan Old Style (both recently expanded) – and then some, this
is the CD (dual platform) for you.
14-August 2002
comparing typefaces 2: seria and scala
Template Gothic was not the face of the 1990s (see Blackwell, p144); Scala was. Designed and expanded throughout the decade by
Martin Majoor, Scala is a cohesive Joanna – a fresh, elegant
slab-serif face that is deservedly well-used.
I had used Scala and its unserifed companion successfully in several text
applications in the late 1990s, and so when I opened my FontFont 2000
catalog to find a new face from Majoor – called Seria –
I did not hesitate to download and start setting text.
I quickly realized that Seria was a beautiful, complex typeface, yet I was unsatisfied
with the printed output and didn’t quite know why. And to this day
– still somewhat puzzled – I have yet to find the “right”
application for it. And so I am beginning to investigate...
At first glance, Scala and Seria are essentially the same face by the same
artist; one might conclude initially that several of the lower case
romans appear to differ only in the extent of the ascender or descender.
A closer look, however, reveals that the faces are more like cousins
than twins – of the same pedigree yet distinct in physiognomy.
To compare the two in a sentence, Scala is a chiseled, neoclassical
face with a relatively large x-height; Seria is a humanist-Renaissance
hybrid with its long ascenders and descenders and its modulated stroke.
And to compare them more systematically and in more detail, I have
made some lists of points of differentiation and have included figures
for each major component of both faces.
Lower case roman
In this figure, the lower case romans
of Scala and Seria are shown normalized to x-height. Doing so requires
that Seria be multiplied by about 25%. After normalization, the strokes
of Seria are 15–20% heavier, the letters are 5–15% wider,
and the ascenders and descenders are around 45–55% longer.
But it is not the dimension of Seria’s lower case roman that defines its
character. Rather, it is a motif that is seen throughout the face
– a motif that is established and repeated in the counters.
Begin with c, d, e, and p; you will see that the top-center regions
of the counters are relatively horizontal and straight. As you move
to the left, you see that the bowl thickness sharply increases to
form a counter angle of around 60–70°. A more comprehensive
look will reveal this motif in the ascender of the f and the descender
of the j; indeed, it is present in all letters but b, i, k, l, t,
and v–z.
Another prominent difference between Scala and Seria is in the serifs. Whereas
those of Scala are defined largely by 90° angles, the serifs of
Seria have a concave base with a convex join to the stroke; the letter
k shows this clearly, both in arm and leg.
Other notable features:
- the crossbar of the f also shows the concavity/ convexity
- the rightmost strokes of h, m, and n are not vertical; rather, they
curve inward
- in contrast to Scala, the bowls of b and q completely close the
counters
- the first two stems of w are joined by an extended serif
Lower case italic
“It is true that most romans are upright and most italics slope
to the right – but flow, not slope, is what really differentiates
the two,” writes
Robert Bringhurst (p56). The italics
of Seria serve as a case in point. While the italics of Scala
slope at about 8°, those of Seria do so at only about 1–2°;
nonetheless, there is no mistaking them for roman forms.
One similarity between the italics of the two faces is the distinctive
lower case y, in which the stem of the letter lies to the left, rather
than the right, and the descender is roughly centered. A notable difference
between the two, however, is seen in the letter f, in which that of
Seria breaks away from Scala’s form by extending a straight, serifed
descender below the baseline in a manner a la Jan van Krimpen’s Romanee.
The form of the counters links Seria’s italic to its roman; the aforementioned
motif is preserved and is seen in all letters save i, k, l, s, t,
and v–z.
Upper case roman
The upper case roman in Scala seems
to be about right angles; indeed, stems and serifs in E, F, H, I,
L, and T combine to create perpendicular forms. As expected, there
is more curvature in the upper case romans of Seria. Compare the Ks;
in Seria the arm and leg gracefully curve away from the stem; those
of Scala shoot out linearly. And compare the Rs; the leg of the R
in Seria extends, tapers, and ends well below the baseline. Finally,
note that the angular-counter motif is absent in the upper case.
Also:
- the serifs are more prominent in Seria than in Scala; on letters
such as B and D, they stretch relatively far to the left of the stem
- to achieve equal cap height, Seria must be enlarged by about 15%
- while the bowl of the P is open in Scala, it is closed completely
in Seria
Upper case italic
In Scala, the major distinguishing feature of the italic
caps is the slant; in Seria, the italic caps do not slant at all
but are marked by increased curvature, and some letters approach swash
form – see J, K, N, T, and Y. Note also the prominent tail in Q.
Numerals
The roman numerals in Scala and Seria
are very similar; a major difference is the modulated stroke of the
zero in Seria.
Comparing the italics, those of Seria have
more ornate forms – notice the curl of the descenders of 5 and
7 and the open counters in 8. Compare also the numeral 1, which is
bilaterally serifed in Seria and unilaterally so in Scala.
Andy
Crewdson wrote about Scala and Seria several months back. I forget
some of the particulars, but I do recall his praise for the new face.
I also recall that, as I read, there was no hint of disappointment
in Mr Crewdson’s experience with it. I felt a bit stupid as a result;
why hadn’t I been satisfied with any of my attempts to set text in
Seria?
I believe that the answer may lie in the relationship between the angular beauty
of the face and the conditions under which I normally print. One of
Bringhurst’s principles (6.1.3, p94) is: “Choose faces that
will survive, and if possible prosper, under the final printing conditions.”
Twelve pt at 600 dpi – while perfectly sufficient for Scala
– will simply not do for Seria.
The angular motif, the subtle tapers, and the curvature of Seria’s letterforms
are all there for a reason – to be seen, not smudged. And to
be seen adequately requires high quality in both printer and paper;
this is a typeface that deserves to be treated with the same care
that the designer applied in its creation.
Somewhat equipped with an answer, I’ll continue to investigate, more aware
of Seria’s limitations, and more aware also that its limitations derive
from its exquisite form.
11-August 2002
interview with eric olson
Eric
Olson is a Minneapolis-based type designer whose studio –
Process Type Foundry
– specializes in fonts for custom and retail use.
I recently asked Mr Olson to discuss his philosophy and practice:
JC: What is your training in typography?
EO: While studying graphic design at the University of Minnesota,
I had very little formal typographic training. In general, we studied
the mechanics of the trade-page layout, color theory, print production,
mark-making, etc... For better or worse, I learned much of what I
know about typography and type design through independent study.
My greatest resources for learning have been specimen books, typefaces, and other
designers, not to mention trial and error. It was several years after
designing my first typeface that I actually released a font. Although
a digital typeface can be created very rapidly, I spent those years
developing a solid understanding of letterforms, spacing, kerning
and font production.
JC: Your typefaces – Elderkin and Process Grotesque, in particular
– draw inspiration from late 19th/early 20th century grotesques.
Why this class of typefaces?
EO: I didn’t consider either face on these terms. I’m a big fan of
solid and straightforward typefaces with a little something extra
to offer. The original grotesques have that extra something so their
influence on my work is inevitable.
JC: Who do you design type for (i.e., who is your intended
user or audience)?
EO: Because I was trained both academically and professionally as
a graphic designer, I design what I think I would use or need. I work
within the parameters of actual projects and think, would I actually
use this?
I’m also interested in creating typefaces for designers who are actively
shaping visual culture. The popularity of faces like Helvetica, Franklin
Gothic, Akzidenz Grotesk, and Univers still amazes me. They are masterful
faces, but they are also tied mechanically and conceptually to a specific
era – regardless of their supposed neutrality. In turn, they have become
out of place in current design because they do not reflect our time.
Eventually, I hope to create typefaces for work that embodies our
current environment.
JC: Why did you choose to distribute the typeface Indivisible free
of charge?
EO: The face was an experiment. I wanted to see if people would actually
use a free typeface regularly. I find monos really useful, especially
for grading student papers and general utility so I’m curious to see
if others will do the same. It’s unlikely that I’ll keep the face
up for very long. It is something I made to amuse myself while working
on larger type families.
JC: Who is your inspiration/who, among typographers or designers, do you admire most?
EO: For type designers my list includes Matthew Carter, Fred Smeijers,
Adrian Frutiger, Gerard Unger, Peter Bilak, Jonathan Hoefler, Zuzana
Licko, Peter Matthias Noordzij, John Downer – the list goes
on and on. There are too many to name.
Many of my biggest influences, however, are within the larger field
of design. I’m impressed with any well thought out, functional design
object: American automobiles of the 50s, the furniture of Charles
and Ray Eames, the posters of Josef Müller-Brockmann, the graphic
design of Karel Martens, and the furniture and graphic design of Foundation
33, just to name a few. I am inspired by work that seizes the technology,
opportunity, and atmosphere of its time, and channels it into a meaningful
design solution.
JC: What are you working on now?
EO: Currently I’m finishing up a yet unnamed typeface based on the
mechanical lettering of the Wrico lettering system. It will be my
first publicly released family of typefaces containing a full range
of weights and alternate character sets. Additionally, I’m working
on a typeface proposal/commission for the Design Institute at the
University of Minnesota to accompany the Twin Cities Design Celebration
2003.
JC: What tools do you use in font production?
EO: I try to keep things as simple as possible. All of my drawing
is done in Adobe Illustrator 8. From there I paste directly into Fontographer
4.1.5. I use Fontographer for all of my spacing, kerning and testing.
I always generate working beta versions and test them sometimes for
several months. After I have everything tied up and I’m satisfied,
I import the files into Fontlab 3 for hinting and final file preparation.
JC: What is your ideal type project?
EO: Something with a conceptual framework and relevance to current
culture and technology. A tall order!
Process Type currently offers five typefaces:
(1) Elderkin - based on early 20th century gothics, (2) FIG - inspired
by the FIGlet application, (3) Kettler - a revisitation of and tribute
to Howard Kettler’s Courier, (4) Process Grotesque - an “aggressive”
descendant of the Stephenson and Blake model, and (5) Indivisible
- a 10 pitch monospace, which, as aforementioned, is currently available
for free download.
02-August 2002
go figure
Sooner or later, you’ll want to (or have to) make a graph. Many software
programs can do this, and many books tell you how. But if you really
care about the appearance of your graph, and perhaps more importantly,
about the clear communication of the information contained therein,
there is relatively little software flexible enough to give you
ideal control of the parameters, and there are only
a few guidebooks worth reading.
I’ll cover graphing software in more detail in another entry, and I’ll
focus primarily on two programs – called SigmaPlot
and S-Plus
(available, unfortunately, only to users of Microsoft Windows; a
freeware program called R,
however, shares many of the features of S-Plus) – that enable
the easy creation of publication-quality graphs of many kinds. Here,
I’ll focus on a few of the guidelines or rules to follow when
making graphs, and I’ll illustrate these rules using only one kind
of plot – the scatterplot. In addition, I’ll pair bad
examples with good ones, and I’ll explain why the rules work.
These rules aren’t mine; they have been formulated and put into
practice by many researchers before me. But the person who has perhaps
done the most and best work to understand the theory and practice
of statistical graphs, and to consolidate and illustrate these rules,
is William
Cleveland. His book, The
Elements of Graphing Data, is to graph-makers and
statisticians what Robert
Bringhurst’s The
Elements of Typographic Style is to typographers.
It is a how-to compendium of graph-making, and is indispensable
to those of us who plot data on a routine basis.
Cleveland’s overarching message is: Draw the eye to the data; treat the data
fairly and carefully. Six of what I consider Cleveland’s most important
rules are:
(1) Use a pair of scale lines for each variable. Cleveland
makes a strong argument for table look-up here – that “judging
the scale value of a point by judging its position along a scale
line...is easier and more accurate as the distance of the point
from the scale line decreases.” Compare figures 1a
and 1b
(made-up data set), and notice how much easier table look-up is
when two scale lines are used for each variable, rather than just one.
(2) Make the data rectangle slightly smaller than the scale-line
rectangle. In figure 2a,
the data rectangle and the scale-line rectangle are coincident;
some data points therefore fall on the scale lines and are difficult
to see. A “padding” of 5% is added to the data rectangle
in figure 2b;
all data points are contained within the scale-line rectangle and
are easily visualized.
(3) Use outward-pointing tick marks. Inward-pointing ticks,
as shown in figure 3a,
simply add clutter to the interior of the graph, and in my opinion,
make table look-up more difficult. Compare to figure 3b.
(4) Avoid slavishly including zero on the axes. Cleveland here
refers to the widely-read book by Darrell Huff – How
to Lie with Statistics – wherein Huff says
that a graph without a zero line is dishonest. Cleveland argues
that to include zero, however, may result in a waste of space, and
more importantly, may interfere with our judgment of the data (figure
4a).
Therefore, fill the scale-line rectangle with the data (figure 4b).
Cleveland emphasizes: “Assume the viewer will look at the tick
mark labels and understand them.”
(5) Use open rather than filled symbols to mark the data points.
Invariably, some of the data will fall on or close to the same coordinates;
see the points that lie roughly at (26, 7) in figures 5a
and 5b.
They are hard to distinguish in 5a, in which filled circles are
used to denote the data, but the overlap can clearly be seen in 5b.
(6) If summarizing the data or drawing the eye to them with a line,
use the line that best fits them. It is tempting to superimpose
a straight-line regression fit to the data – this is the easiest
(or only) option in some graphing programs – but it may not
be fair to the data or to the reader. The data set used here has
some curvature, and the straight-line fit shown in figure 6a
does not adequately represent it. A technique called locally-weighted
regression (loess for short) draws a smooth curve to the data by
connecting locally fitted regions of data (figure 6b).
A review of The Elements of Graphing Data in Meteorological
Magazine states, “Ideally, everyone interested in getting
the most out of their data or presenting data clearly and concisely
should have a copy handy.” My recommendation is no less enthusiastic.
Buy, read, and digest ($52.95US); the quality of your graphs will
improve, and the clarity of the information you convey will increase
dramatically.
23-July 2002
syntax: 7 of 20
Syntax
was designed by Hans
Eduard Meier in the late 1960s and expanded (download
pdf) in the year 2000 to include two additional weights
as well as small caps and text figures. The canonical humanist sans-serif;
inspired by Sabon.
And perhaps the best deal in type – only $119US for the
full set on hard media. See Sumner
Stone’s excellent article in Fine
Print on Type.
18-July 2002
celeste: 6 of 20
By Christopher
Burke, type designer and
scholar. Celeste
was introduced in 1994 and sold via FontFont;
Greek and small text versions have more recently become available,
making this one of the most versatile faces available.
18-July 2002
unusual ff ligature...
I recently posted the following question on
TYPO-L:
“The ff
ligature in MT Pastonchi is unusual in two ways: (1)
the first f is of greater height than the second, and (2) the ascender
of the first leapfrogs well over much of that of the second.
“I’m looking for a precedent for this and cannot seem to find one. Was
this novel form of the ff ligature a development of Francesco Pastonchi
or of someone else?”
Thanks to
