personally, i have feature envy, so i'd go with Dederon

IMHO, Dolly is better drawn and works better as text.

william, can you give some specific reasons why you say this?

As far as text, I think I have somewhere the specimen booklet for Dolly, which looks great. The PDF I printed out for Dederon looked to me clotted and not so lively. Dolly seems to me to manage to be dark, but keep liveliness and a degree of lightness. I admit I haven't seen Dederon in use other than the PDF, so probably I should just have kept quiet. It's the internet that made me do it :)

It’s the internet that made me do it :)

That happens to me a lot.

i believe that the dolly specimen book includes a cd
you might be able to still find a copy from an online book store

Besides feature-heaviness (and price) another thing you should
consider is what size you'll typically set - and this is tied to the
vertical proportions. Dolly has a smaller x-height, so it's better
at larger sizes, maybe around 12, while Dederon seems to be
optimal for something like 10 point.

> The PDF I printed out for Dederon looked to me clotted and not so lively.

What kind of printer though?...

hhp

>Dolly has a smaller x-height, so it’s better
at larger sizes, maybe around 12.

Looking at the specimen book, to my eye Dolly works best at 10 point, but is lovely at 12 pt also--though a bit dark for my taste. At smaller sizes, I think it could use some wider tracking than in the specimen book.

Here is what Erik Spiekermann says in the Introduction to the specimen book: "What purpose was Dolly designed for? In small sizes--the ones we read--it looks like a warm, comfortable Garamondish, Minion-like Roman. Close up, we notice dozens of subtle curves and unusual shapes. The designers have managed to walk the fine line between their vanity (wanting to show off how good they are) and their purpose (to design other people will enjoy.)"

He goes on to say other nice things about Dolly, which I think are very deserved, as I think it is one of the best recent text faces--which is why I bought the specimen book at TypeCon. Count me a fan of Dolly.

My printer--1200 dpi Xante tuned to 'light'--does thicken a bit more than offset, but I think that is not the difference. I have just looked at a few characters large (on the fontshop site and the PDF from Suitcase) and Dederon is both thicker and with less contrast in the normal weight. To me it just goes a little too far in that direction.

Also the design of Dederon to me is just flat-footed compared to the lively Dolly. Again, I don't have a printed sample, so there may be charms to Dederon that I don't see.

> To me it just goes a little too far in that direction.

Or, like I said, it's better for smaller sizes.

> flat-footed

Or you could say it's more neutral, more reserved.

hhp

I went with Dolly. I'd like the OpenType goodies of Dederon Serif but I prefer Dolly's letterforms. It was a hard choice, though; they seem pretty similar to me in a lot of respects.

The Dederon numerals are lovely, but I find Dolly more charming overall.

Reviving an old thread because I've used Dederon Serif recently.

I'm not sure whether this would work as a book face. It is quite unlike Dolly. The medium weight is far too heavy. Fair enough. The light, however, looks better suited for Display than anything else. It looks anemic. This is all at around 10 pts. The situation doesn't really improve at smaller sizes. In any case the letterspacing seems a little too wide and the x-height a little too small. All in all it looks like a cross between Mrs. Eaves and a slab serif.

Anyone else notice this?

Some others come to my mind, that you might -or might not- consider as well:
- Lexicon & Trinite by Bram de Does.
- Parry by Artur Schmal.
- Fresco by Fred Smeijers.
- Ginkgo Pro by Alex Rütten.
- Relato by Eduardo Manso.
- Esta Pro by Dino Dos Santos.
- Edita by TypeTogether.
- North by Trine Rask.
- Comenia Serif by František Štorm.
- Coranto by Gerard Unger
- DTL Dorian, Unico, Paradox

Pablo:

Excellent list! There are some on there that I wouldn't have thought of, but sure enough, they fit the category.

Aside from Dolly I particularly like Ginkgo. It has a careless, wild quality that really livens up the page. And is it ever readable! Lexicon and Dorian are wonderful as well. I have a license for Dorian and I wish I could use it more often. I love all this brushy, organic type.

Also, there is another one: St Lorie by StereoTypes.
It's a scrip, but it feels like Dolly to. Also the caps looks like Liza Caps.

If you really want to compare these brushy slab-serifs, compare FF Tisa to Premiera OT.

Seems like all these young type designers who have gone to study at Reading are cranking out these slab-serif student projects and then putting them on the market. Some work better than others.

FF Tisa:

Premiera OT:

There is however far less conformity at Reading than KABK.
And slabs are now fashionable way beyond Reading! I think
that's because people are paying the price for dishonesty and
capricious living, and now value the frank and austere.

hhp

hrant:

Do you mean "frank and austere" in terms of the design of the type or in terms of the attitude toward type? Not that the two are all that inseparable.

I mean the typefaces themselves. And although a typeface is of course partly (largely?) a result of the attitudes of its designer, most people making slabs are doing it to sell more fonts! And buying fonts doesn't exactly qualify as an austerity measure...

hhp

Note that while FF Tisa's designer is a University of Reading graduate, Premiéra was designed by Thomas Gabriel, who studied at KABK. But one of Thomas's two business partners at Typejockeys is Michael Hochleitner, who *is* a Reading graduate ;-)

Premiéra is an (excellent!) typeface that was started at the Type and Media program in The Hague, not on the MATD course in Reading. Moreover, while there are a few stylistic similarities across some of the typefaces designed at Reading, I wouldn't say that Slab Serifs are a big theme, tackled by a majority of students there. Other directions seem much more prominent in my memory. FF Tisa stands out as a pretty unique typeface, I think.

> Other directions seem much more prominent in my memory.

Elaborate, please! :-)

hhp

Haha… the work is all published and can speak for itself ;-)

I guess that it depends on what your definition of a slab serif is. In my opinion, trapezoidal serifs aren't slab serifs, for example. But if you browse all of the typefaces on the Reading typefaces website (http://www.typefacedesign.org), I think your see several different kinds of investigations.

Stuart by nonpareille is another one