Typophile

!Square Engine

Choz Cunningham0 votes

The naming debacle is resolved, and I even found inspiration in something a bit more mechanical. With a name like !Exclamachine, there should be at least a few industrial-flavored fonts. I now present !Square Engine, a font family.

!Square Engine 050 Defex
!Square Engine 150 Simplex
!Square Engine 250 Reflex
!Square Engine 350 Latex

144 characters x 4 Styles x 2 weights in each. Includes Euro, Irony Mark, lc accents and more.

The family is inspired by the European tradition of using model numbers to describe the body & motor combination of a car or bike(and sometimes a name). These four fully-interchangeable monospaced fonts have different wrappers or "bodies" ("0xx"-"3xx"), and share character design, or "engine"(the "x50").

Future additions to the !Square Engine family will be numbered similarly, and spaced/scaled to also interchange.

(Apologies to Daft Punk ;) )

Silvermule0 votes

Great work. Also love Zugzwang.

Choz Cunningham0 votes

Thank you! Really, thank you very much! I appreciate the feedback because every font I make is both an experiment and an education. I often get frustrated and estatic several times over, because the vision in my head might look nothing like what I had in mind (sometimes better, sometimes not.)

I already have a few sketches for a sister series in the !Square Engine line, give me a few weeks, and I'll post a prototype.

I like to think of my fonts as an open invitation to an artistic collaboration, waiting for whoever might pick it up and use it in a page. The hand off of a baton can be an anxious moment.

On !Zugwang; Thank you again. ( I peeked at your website: pretty, cool, hip. )Oddly, this is my least favorite font! I'm fairly happy with the letters' shapes, but I find it impossible to really use anywhere. I may revisit it another day. Tonight, I will sleep.

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
|\/|O D Z 4 L 3 T T 0 R Z

Si_Daniels0 votes

Including punctuation in font names sometimes leads to heartbreak and technical difficulties even if its techncially legal according to the fonts specs.

Cheers, Si

Choz Cunningham0 votes

I was at first very apprehensive about that. All the fonts I've made as"!Exclamachine" have a "!" at the beginning, even though it sometimes isn't included when others refer to them. And it's invalaid in some early specs, but I believe it degrades gracefully.

If you, or anybody, has any technical problems with the fonts please bring it to my attention immediately. chozcunningham@exclamachine.com If you can tell me what OS, application or printing hardware this has happened on, I will offer all the support I can.

From my testing, or from feedback, things seem to function correctly under Win98/NT4/2K/XP/Server 2003, Mac OSX and 3 distros of Linux, Redhat, Ubuntu and Debian. All contemporary Adobe products seem to be okay as well, when bypassing the OS's font management. I've also had good luck with several Windows free/shareware type managers. At this time I am unable, to experiment more in Linux, or Pre-X Macintoshes.

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
http://www.exclamachine.com

Si_Daniels0 votes

The problems I've seen have been when the font name is referenced in code or CSS - an example being the Monotype font "Monotype.com" where the period caused issues when the font name was refferenced in code.

Choz Cunningham0 votes

In theory, a good web designer (or software) will replace the "." in the above, or the "!" in both my foundry and font names with either their (x)html equivalents or unicode descriptors. Of course, in theory, theory is as good as practice.

I may later drop this gimmick, or reserve it only for occasional use.

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
http://www.exclamachine.com

Nigella0 votes

What in the bloody hell is an 'irony mark'????????

Choz Cunningham0 votes

Irony Mark? New thread time. I answer here: http://typophile.com/node/28817

Choz Cunningham
!Exclamachine Type Foundry
http://www.exclamachine.com

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