Carving letters in stone

I saw a link to this little movie in Typetalk today. It's a little story about a master letter cutter and a word he carved into an entrance in colorado. It's an interesting look into that craft and the man, Douglas Coffin, is really good.

Koelbel Carved in Stone

Font. The Source Book is really good!

When I got the email from Rosie at Black Dog Publishing in London my interest was surprising — but it was probably because one of my favorite restaurants in New Mexico was Martha's Black Dog Coffee House in Socorro (now lamentably gone). Be that as it may, she was asking if I wanted to look at any of their new releases. I finally agreed to look at a release from 2008, Font. The SourceBook
. Was that a good decision or what?

When it showed up I was really pleasantly surprised. First of all, it's really nice in the hand with dull varnish protecting the background and gloss varnish over the logostyle for the book (OK the cover art is not much). There's not a hint of the post-modern professionally ugly artwork I despise (though a couple of the short essays inside were afflicted with that disease). Black type on a gray background. The pages are so heavy I thought I was turning two pages at a time until I got used to it (must be 80# matte or better). The type throughout was clean, clear, and crisp. I loved it!

The typography of the book is very conservative and a bit boring, but clean and easy to read except I swear it was set in 9 point. Gad, that body copy is small but Joanna is a very comfortable font to read. I really dislike Akzidenz Grotesque and it was used for all the heads, but it's at least clean and legible. As the source for Helvetica it comes from that direction as did the entire book. The fonts were presented on the basis of popularity, and for a history that is appropriate.

The actual book is a collection of essays on type from the development of writing through the new millennium covering the field in remarkable detail. I was really pleased and actually read it straight through, enjoying every minute of the read. It is really traditional. They participate in the Swiss type -- Helvetica is the master font belief system. I really dislike many of the fonts discussed in the book. But the information on those fonts is marvelously complete, and the reasoning behind their design is clearly explained (even when I thought the reasoning flawed from my 21st century perspective).

I disagree with many of the positions taken. Their view of type and typography is far too tied up in the past, and that past is the assumption of modernism. I realize that's the dominant thread in our current culture, but I don't have to like it. I wish they'd discussed the move toward the beautiful fonts outside the bleak "modern" sans fonts covered. There was a genuine preference to Helvetica, Univers, Clarendon, Akzidenz Grotesque, and the like with little or no mention of fonts like Avenir, Corinthian, Skia, and the like. I was surprised that Colin at Letraset was never mentioned (but then that's just a personal favorite as I have mentioned here before). Certainly nothing like Hiroshige because it is too far outside the norm. This is a book that covers the mainstream popular fonts.

However, I agree that Johnston is far superior to Gill Sans and that got a page. Optima was presented briefly with a slight air of distain. 21st century work was basically disregarded and the new explosion of small independent foundries like mine was viewed with deep suspicion. They expect traditional academic training. But I discovered many fonts I had never seen before and really like such as Triplex and Fedra, for example.

The information was fantastic. I found out many things I'd never seen before. I learned that many of my sources when I wrote my books were simply wrong. The historical data was wonderful! I got a solid glimpse at European type (American type was sort of an after thought). For me, it came close to one of those "I couldn't put it down" books. It's not cheap, but if you love type, it is a reference you need in your library.

It will be required reading for my new apprentices. It really is a Sourcebook of traditional type as it has been given to us by our Western civilization. I highly recommend it. Font. The SourceBook

Two special font collections...

In celebration of the new foundry, Hackberry is offering two new OpenType collections at huge discounts.

The first has the foundry's six most used font families for book design:

The professional book designers' collection

Aerle (5 fonts) Amitale (8 fonts) Artimas (8 fonts) Amico (8 fonts) Arturo (8 fonts) and NuevoLitho (3 fonts) for the spectacular price of $149.00. That's 38 fonts for under $4 each!

The second is for new designers building their collection. It is an expansion of my old student offering. Now it offers 32 fonts for only $49 — that's barely $1.50 per font!

Student Font Collection

I hope they'll be helpful to you. You'll need to be able to handle a 2-3 MB attachment.

More changes: New foundry name! Hackberry Fonts

There will be many changes. I've only got three pages changed so far.

Why?

Because it is no longer just me. I have an apprentice, and another person planning on apprenticing in the near future. We will be offering fonts from various font designers.

Now that I'm a full-time font designer, I have no idea which direction things will be moving.

Most typographers don't get it!

I'm in a small group in Linked-In for typography. It's rapidly proving to be a typical typography site in the world today. That's a disappointment. This is one of the graphics we were pointed to today. There were many more like it.

If you've studied under me, you know my basic definition and attitude about typographic design.

"If you notice the type you've failed as a typographer. The goal of type is clear, easy to grasp communication. The fonts chosen set the mood and can provide much of the graphic beauty, but if you look at the design and think, "That's a really neat design," you've wasted your client's time and money (UNLESS, of course, you are your own client).

The graphic at the top is proof of my theory. An amazing amount of effort was put into squeezing the type into shapes. This graphic had to take hours. I'm impressed with the amount of work that was done.

I have no idea what is being promoted here. Bad type? I think so.

A interesting font designer interview...

There was a nice interview of Alice Savoie, a font designer with Monotype in England (I think) in the "I love Typography" blog this morning. I found it interesting simply  to get an idea how academically trained font designers think. As most of you know, I am very leery of academic training even though I taught for many years.

It is very difficult to teach something like this without eliminating all the creativity and looseness that I find necessary to good design. Read the interview, I think you'll enjoy it also. There are some nice captures of her drawings also. Though, I am finding that many of us (font designers) rarely draw any more — simply working directly in FontLab seems to be more common (though logo designers like Cabarga seem to start in Illustrator).

Of course, I have very different taste in font design so I don't like her designs much. But that is to be expected. As I finished up the article I was struck by how gorgeous her personal design, Capucine, is. I love it!

A fun one this time: max x-height sans, Abrect

With this release I've tried to push the envelope a little by making the x-height as large as I could while maintaining usability. It's built off NuevoLitho but radically revised with experimental ligatures and so on. It has my 2009 display feature set for OpenType. For the first time in years, I did not add small caps. They seems silly for a font like this.

I had to pull it back a little. I started out with a 90% x-height, but this release is cut back to 78% of font size or 70% of the point size. I did have to add some built-in leading or it just became ridiculous. But it's a fun font that seems to be useful (to me anyway).

It's on sale at my site at 64% off for a month or two: only $9. If you need a downloadable version, that should be available from MyFonts or fonts.com by some time next week for Myfonts and next month for Monotype (fonts.com).

Please let me know what you think.