Does anyone know when Matthew Carter's Yale Design Roman will be available to the public?
http://www.yale.edu/universityprinter/typeface/yale_design_roman.html
Many thanks!
Does anyone know when Matthew Carter's Yale Design Roman will be available to the public?
http://www.yale.edu/universityprinter/typeface/yale_design_roman.html
Many thanks!
John,
Please read up on the Yale Typeface before making any more ignorant comments:
http://www.yale.edu/universityprinter/typeface/typeface.html
There are 5 tabs there to help you understand where the typeface came from. Especially take note of the info in tab 3.
Please also re-consider advising people to enlist students or faculty to help steal unlicensed copies.
You know, the one with the pointy things at the ends.
Honest-to-God conversation I had with my wife a few weeks ago:
Me (presenting some font samples to my wife): What do you think of using one of these fonts for your business logo?
My wife: I don't know. I don't really like those pointy things at the ends.
Me (after a few seconds of trying to figure out what the hell she is talking about): You mean the serifs?
My wife: Yeah.
Me: Good to know. I'll go search for some more fonts.
Before you all pull on your hooded robes, I should say that I did read all the documentation on the Yale site, and then compared his alphabet with that of Monotype Bembo, and to my eye it's entirely too close to that Bembo. My heterodox opinion is that Carter could have gone much further. (And where are the bold and bold italic? Only a "street" version, somewhat but not quite fully bolder, appears on the website.) His differences are fascinating, of course--slight overall condensing, adjusted x-height, and above all, a smoothing away of many of the most charming kinks--e.g., on the capital K--instead of adding *more* kinks as, say, Dupré might have done with the same assignment. But these differences don't add up to anything fresh, transcending the source material, as Galliard did. Yale is certainly entitled to their own more "formal" Bembo, but if it went on the market, I would see no point to getting it. I speak as a type consumer, not a type designer.
The edit functionality is indeed 'a whole other Oprah' - I suppose it's good form to mark an edited post (edit) or such (maybe this should happen automatically) - but the feature is there, and when I've said something really stupid I've used it (usually within a few minutes of posting the stupid comment). Perhaps the feature should expire within a set time after posting?
> Carter could have gone much further.
from hrant: I agree, but not further from Bembo, because that’s not the point anyway.
But that's exactly the point. The first poster asked whether Carter's Yale fonts were available to the public, which implies a second question: if they were, would they be worth acquiring? My answer to both is no. The prospect of Carter taking a fresh look at Bembo is profoundly exciting, especially since Morison's 1929 is the only version extant. We don't know what his client specified, but the Yale tweaking is deeply disappointing relative to the type market, and I hope Carter could still revisit Bembo with more creative effect. There is a market demand to revive older pre-Morison Bembos, delving deeper into the Renaissance source material for a funkier, more charming result, more like a Dupré face.
> if they were, would they be worth acquiring?
I, for one, would welcome a more useable version of Bembo. "Something went wrong" in the transfer to digital (or maybe even in the transfer to phototype? I'm too young to tell) of the standard MT Bembo and its offsprings.
<rant>
Hell, Tufte even had his own Bembo made because the commercially available ones are mostly crummy.
As for a bold, or even a --shudder-- bold italic: What are you thinking? Did Manuce have a bold italic? Does anyone need bold italics? We would live in a much better world if it weren't for bold italics!
</(h)rant>
Tufte had a digital Bembo made for his later offset work, probably because he was accustomed to having books set in Monotype metal Bembo by Michael and Winnie Bixler (for offset repro, no less). He has the same prejudice we all have: "Metal Bembo is so great, why is the digital so weak?" and he knew metal Bembo.
One partial answer to that complaint is the new, OpenType Bembo Book, which Robin Nicholas based on a different size master than the earlier digital version. It's stronger.
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