Comments on: An ATypIcal TypeMedia week

By: Hrant

Hrant — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 18:24:38 +0000

Nina, thanks for the elaboration – that makes a world of difference (at least to me). In fact what you describe is the tantalizing “next level”. As I’ve said now and again: parametric type design is to type design what type design is to lettering.

The thing is, using parameters to control the outlines (independent of a “skeleton”) is also extremely rare. I only know of a single case: http://typophile.com/node/73827 (Note that Typophile is currently down… again). Probably for two reasons: too many people –in fact including Knuth himself– associate parametrization with strokes; and it’s qualitatively much harder! But one fine day it will serve to separate the women from the girls, so to speak. And Nick’s proposal could only accelerate that.

By: nina

nina — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 16:40:05 +0000

Hrant, I should specify that when I likened Nick’s idea to Metafont rather than MM, I did not mean adopting a pen model to generate outlines; what I was meaning to refer to was the idea of having a fully parameter-based “design template” in which variables can be fed different values to dynamically generate different variants, rather than just using variables to control interpolation between existing (“drawn”) variants.
(Is this clear? My head is a little fuzzy today.)

By: Nina Stössinger on Libre Fonts panel at ATypI

Nina Stössinger on Libre Fonts panel at ATypI — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:52:24 +0000

[...] http://blog.ninastoessinger.com/2013/10/an-atypical-typemedia-week/ [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:47:24 +0000

Hrant, I believe the videos will be available to all ATypI members, and a few will be published – maybe Petr’s keynote :)

By: Hrant

Hrant — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 05:08:56 +0000

For those of us who couldn’t be there, testimonials like this are very welcome! I appreciate how you give honest praise without fawning, as well as criticism without harshness. Allow me to try to adopt that spirit myself… :-)

Even though I myself disagree with most “libre types” (nice play on words BTW) on some key points, I think we have to admit that it’s now integral to the “type scene proper” – it’s not really us against them. Considering the number of reputable type designers (such as Paul and Miguel at Adobe) producing quality libre fonts, I think one can be allowed to harbor hope that libre type design can contribute positive things.

Concerning Nick Sherman’s idea of deploying interpolated fonts for dynamic/parametric typography, I personally love that sort of thing… but I actually didn’t think you would! Maybe the promise of elegance and efficiency is over-powering your distrust of what might seem to be an anti-craft “easy way out”. BTW to me MM-style outline interpolation is much more promising than the utopian “expanded skeleton” approach; yes, it’s about twice the data, but give so much more control, hence quality. And just look at Computer Modern…

Lastly, about the TypeCrit: indeed I hope as well that it keeps going. One question is whether it needs to be differentiated from the long-standing TypeCon effort, and if so, how. Concerning this last bit, the presence of Gerry on the panel might be a promising clue, if you get my non-Latin drift… (Man, I’m using a lot of ellipses… Doh!)

BTW, I would love to be able to see Petr’s talk. Are video proceedings in the pipeline? Pretty please with diacritics on top?

By: Indra

Indra — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 22:25:44 +0000

And now he will forever be hovertoshi for my visual brain. Thanks for the nice flash back of some great moments. Wonderful conference indeed.