I'm a graphic designer, not a type designer. I just opened up all my Berthold fonts in Type Tool and discovered, much to my dismay, that their fonts seem sloppily drawn: baselines and cap heights consistently don't match one another between letters or even in the same letter. None of my other fonts seem to do this. Is it normal, or are they optical adjustments that I don't understand?
Many thanks for your input!
Font names, file dates and formats might help.
Ben Archer mentions the 'special' fonts B hawked in the 80's - http://typophile.com/node/28845
Just for example:
UniveBQLig - 5/5/05, T1 Mac
FuturBQLig - 5/5/05, T1 Mac
But the problem is by no means confined to these...
I would email/write/call the people from whom you licensed the fonts directy and ask them about this, complain really, and see if it wasn't a mistake.
Many foundries used each other's data in the first wave of trying to collect every font in the world (early 90's). So while the outlines of Berthold's Futura might be inconsistent, I'd bet that Berthold's own designs were digitized to an extremely high level of precision. Berthold allowed Adobe to produce and distribute PS versions of their fonts only after Adobe proved that they could match Berthold's data exactly. Check one of the BQ originals like Formata, Comenius or Pontifex.
I think I might switch to Linotype's Univers in that case. What do you think?
Could you give a visual example? Some optical adjustments are necessary in fonts. Hard to say if the ones you think of are correct or not without a visual.
I think I might switch to Linotype’s Univers in that case. What do you think?
Are you actually having some sort of problem with the printed output you get from these fonts?
> Could you give a visual example?
Here are T1 font samples of the former Berthold AG:
http://www.sanskritweb.net/temporary/FuturBQLig.jpg
http://www.sanskritweb.net/temporary/UniveBQLig.jpg
Where are "sloppy baselines" and "sloppy cap heights"?
I doubt whether Mr. Yoshiki uses fonts of the Berthold AG.
Wow...those are some nasty letters. Linotype’s versions don’t have those baseline/height issues, nor all the extra points.
> Does that help?
Yes. Thanks.
Your screen shots reveal that you are using the raw font files which were produced by the defunct H. Berthold AG prior to its bankruptcy. The entire collection had been hastily scanned and converted to raw fonts in PS font format, but the finishing of the raw fonts was not possible due to the sudden liquidation of the company by the Berlin court.
In my documentation "The mentally deranged graphic designer as font buyer" I proved for another font collection that not all, but most font buyers are mentally deranged graphic designers. For the Berthold "Quality" collection it can be proved too that not all, but most font buyers are mentally deranged graphic designers.
Several years after the liquidation of the H. Berthold AG, an American confidence trickster couple declared themselves to be the legal successors of the defunct H. Berthold AG stock corporation, and after appropriating the raw fonts, they declared themselves to be the copyright owners. For the past 10 years this couple has been selling these raw fonts in order to cheat mentally deranged graphic designers, who have not been mentally able to notice that the "Quality" fonts are the raw, unfinished font files.
During these past 10 years, it seems that Mr. Yoshiki Waterhouse is the first to notice that there is something wrong with the Berthold "Quality" fonts. This proves that not all font buyers are mentally deranged.
Uli is very entertaining!
Can't be denied, but where's typophile's legal disclaimer? This sort of thing has got forum operators in trouble in the past.
Here's wiki's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer
>has got forum operators in trouble in the past
That's interesting. In what kind of issue? I would have thought that in an open forum the liability would be on the person posting only.
I probably shouldn't give a specific example. However, I think given the possibility of anonymous posts a disclaimer should appear somewhere. This is obviously a question for Punchcut and their legal advice.
I would have thought that in an open forum the liability would be on the person posting only.
Not in a nation full of federal judges who still don’t even use computers, much less the internet.
Anyway, if Berthold was going to file suit over Uli’s postings, it would have happened already. I’m pretty sure that they just write him off as that nutter across the pond.
Uli is very entertaining!
and possibly from the same genetic stock as Dr. Bronner…
> Anyway, if Berthold was going to file suit over Uli’s postings, it would have happened already.
They wanted to, but did not dare to appear before a German court for fear of being arrested. And when their German lawyer committed suicide, they lost their representative at court.
PS: No more comments possible now. I am offline during my vacation.
"And when their German lawyer committed suicide"
Crazy. It was nice to see the Helvetica movie been made, but for real mass typographic appeal, sounds like the Berthold story needs to be turned into a typographic conspiracy thriller summer blockbuster!
Many thanks for your help, everyone. I'm switching to Linotype.
Y
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