By animated I'm sure they simply mean "bouncing on the baseline."

Although on second thought, it could also mean there is a bit of Opentype goodness happening which gives us an alternate which changes spacing from the baseline so it seems a tad more organic in words with two of the same character ... or somesuch like that.

Yeah, that's what I assumed ... but none of the technical specifications mention anything like that.

It would be pretty cool if that was the case, though. They throw the word around as if it were a technical descriptor rather than simply an aesthetic term, so I'm not sure they mean variance from the baseline, although certainly the face does have a nice bit of movement in that respect.

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jlt : http://www.hewnandhammered.com : rnrmf!

One reason I think it is safe to assume it has OT goodness is the involvment of Tal. He's a proven wizard with this stuff. I can't wait to check it out.

Tal gives us a little more information:

"Uh oh. Looks like the 'animated' term is confusing people. It just means, like you said, that the fonts are bouncy. The display fonts do have two versions of almost every alphanumeric character and some OpenType code that inserts them as needed to prevent similar forms from occurring in a specified range. But, most of the bounce is controlled by the structure of the letterforms themselves. The baselines are systematically shifted to ensure proper bounce. The OpenType feature is insurance so to speak."

It's simply an error in the PR copywriter's judgement. A rarity for House.
Burbank, on the other hand, is great.

Animated?
Sounds Frisky to me... ;-)

Makes me green-in-the-screen to just think about it :-)

ChrisL

Ken Barber has used the word animated before when he was speaking about this style of lettering. I don't think it was an error, more a misunderstand. I just think we live in a day and age when it is technically possible to "animate" the letters using OT technology and programming wizardry.

> we live in a day and age when it is technically possible to “animate” the letters

Makes me feel like dancing, Tiffany!

I meant "error in judgement". It is not the best term for the font's PR as it is easily confused. Other words: lively, bouncy, vibrant, energetic, dynamic, spirited. But no big whoop.

Sorry for being so late to respond to this thread. I've been kerning...

It’s simply an error in the PR copywriter’s judgement.

The error is mine. House has been using the "animated" term for years to describe bouncy typefaces. And, the term has historical precedent. For example, pages 38-40 of the Photo Lettering Inc. Alphabet Thesaurus Volume I (1960) are referred to as the "Animated Gothics" section. Thus, I thought I'd be safe with the term. The confusion probably comes from the fact that we're not hiding that my love for classic character animation was a huge source of inspiration for this family. Animated fonts. Animated movies. Animatedly animated animation. I simply ran out of terms to describe it all. Oh well. Hopefully people will like the fonts.

As for the questions about the OpenType features and bounce, here's what is going on in the fonts:

Burbank has been meticulously drawn to ensure that all settings have an evenly distributed bounce without resorting to any fancy OpenType features. This works 97% of the time, but occasionally it needs a helping hand. For example, here's a setting showing only the base (non-alternate) letterforms:

I think it looks pretty good, but the duplicate T letterforms bother me. Being the perfectionist that I am, I had to do something about this. So I drew subtly different alternates for (nearly) the whole range of alphanumeric characters for every member of Burbank Big. The fonts contain OpenType code that inserts these alternates only when needed to alleviate Repetitive Structure Syndrome. The result looks like this:

Overlaying the examples shows this:

The alternate E is inserted because the L has a similar structure to the E, the alternate T is inserted to eliminate the duplicate form and the rest of the letterforms are the base forms. The OpenType code is used only as a fallback for times when the base forms don't do enough work on their own. This isn't as flashy as Ed-Interlock, Local Gothic or Luxury Text-Italic, but it gets the job done.

Thanks for the illustrations, Tal. Love it when the creators come in to give the inside story. Don't sweat the copy, it'll incite a few support calls, but I'm sure it won't hurt sales a bit.

Looks great. I'd be tempted to call it "animated" as well.
But the red/blue overlap on your bottom sample is freaking my eyes out on screen. I should put my old 3-D glasses on and enjoy the show.
thanks

I should put my old 3-D glasses on and enjoy the show.

maybe then it really does become animated!

So Norbert, What have you been drinking? :-)

ChrisL