As I said before, in the never digitized types, I’d be happy to use one day Jacno, Oswald Cooper’s hand lettering (though i think i will make a move on this one), Plymouth, all of Jean Alessandrini’s types... The list can be long.

dr

There are already at least three typefaces—good ones—based on some lettering of Oz Cooper:

Friz, Maiandara, and Robusto.

For a better Caslon, stay tuned :)

To extend the question, which well established typefaces do you think have the greatest potential for its sans or serif counterpart to be designed?

For a better Caslon, stay tuned :)

Yes William, it’s been in the making for quite a while now. What’s keeping you?

I would much rather type designers just focus on producing whatever good new designs they feel pertinent. At some point people are going to stop feeling so bleak about the present and future, the whole retro/ephemeral design trend will fade, and it would be nice to have types to lean on that aren’t revivals.

“but do you miss on the market some typeface you could imagine”

Oh yes, oh yes! I really wish there were at least a few high-quality typefaces; display and text, to match with Latin equivalents, in India’s major languages.

I know that’s hardly what you meant, still...

“To extend the question, which well established typefaces do you think have the greatest potential for its sans or serif counterpart”

Comic Serif!

Kidding of course. Just trying to provoke David since I know he loves CS so much ;)

“I know that’s hardly what you meant, still...”

It’s actually very relevant. It’s good to know the opinions on which typeface categories/market areas are considered oversupplied/undersupplied.

“It’s good to know the opinions on which typeface categories/market areas are considered oversupplied/undersupplied”

You are a spy for the transnational typographic monopolies aren’t you? ;)

Yes, for the Comic Sans Appreciation Company :-)

But maybe type designers here do listen.
Do you think that designing a typeface for India could be interesting for them in financial terms?

Hahahahaha, i laughed out loud, everyone is looking at me suspiciously now, thanks :-)

ok, i will design comic serif and comic slab.

dr

I guess Comic Sans Condensed, Comic Sans Outline as well as Comic Sans Contour have serious market potential. No kidding. Not that they’re the ones I wish to be designed.

But imagine 150 years from now the typophiles begging for a good CS revival and sharing the rare specimens of the then long defunct Microsoft foundry.

No offence meant David :)

loremipsum, we’re a bilion plus or something and counting! Quite a few of us can read and write these days, and even more have money!

But tell you’re bosses at CASAC that we are a proud people and we shall never surrender!

“ok, i will design comic serif and comic slab”

You will be a very rich man.

(and I’ll brag that it was all my idea!)

BTW, how many characters would require a typeface for a major language in India? I know that Far East fonts are results of teamwork because of a huge number of characters.

“BTW, how many characters would require a typeface for a major language in India?”

Well it differs from language to language, but nowhere near as complex as the languages of the Far East.

For the Devangari script which is the basis of most northern Indian languages, and therefore the most widely used, it should be around under 90 characters including numerals accents, ligatures etc. But I must admit I’m no expert on Devanagari.

In the 70s and 80s many Indian languages, including the one I speak, went through script reforms mainly to rationalize the number of characters and make them viable on typewriters. With recent advances in language technology, there are moves to return to earlier schemes which had far more characters (and I must add character:).

Faces I wish were digitized

although... i’m craving Zapf’s civilite less and Granjon’s more, but Kai Bernau has informed me that he doesn’t plan on releasing his (not news, as he also stated that in his Typeradio interview). so i may have to come up with a way to freshen up a bit, w/o ripping on Kai’s beautiful rendition.

Oh yes, oh yes! I really wish there were at least a few high-quality typefaces; display and text, to match with Latin equivalents, in India’s major languages.

stay tuned for this one too!!! :^p

BTW, how many characters would require a typeface for a major language in India? I know that Far East fonts are results of teamwork because of a huge number of characters.

I was informed today that a good font for Devanagari literary texts could have 800 characters, 300 is more of a working mininum.

Comic Serif is already out there >>
http://www.hvdfonts.de/specimen/HVD_Comic_Serif.pdf
:)

It’s quite nice which is disappointing :-)

Could Frutiger Serif look like this?
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/brassfonts/fiona-serif/regular/charmap.html

and Futura Serif like this:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/agfa/memo/light/charmap.html

“stay tuned for this one too!!!”
Great!

“I was informed today that a good font for Devanagari literary texts could have 800 characters, 300 is more of a working mininum”

Most of those would be ligatures, or rather, compound characters. I know that’s the case with Malayalam, a Dravidian language spoken in south of the country. We had about 900 characters which in the reformed script was brought down to less than a hundred largely by doing away with the need for compound characters.

I can read and write Sankrit and Hindi - both Languages that use Devanagari - tolerably well. I really don’t think there are 800, or for that matter 300 unique characters in use today.

But like I said I’m not an expert on Devanagari, or a typeface designer. If you’ve been talking to somebody at Reading, you could be right.

Could Frutiger Serif look like this?

>> i couldnt get the link between this and frutiger?

and Futura Serif like this:

>> lloks more flare than serif, and also... i dont think so.

dr

>> i couldnt get the link between this and frutiger?

It looks at least like it was designed to work well with Frutiger:
http://www.brass-fonts.de/mdr_fiona_info.html

>> lloks more flare than serif, and also... i dont think so.

Yes, true.

Funny, I found this about Memo (or Agora, at Berthold): L’Agora est une nouvelle version de l’Elan qui est lui même dessiné sur une base de Futura.

I would like someone to produce a competent digital version of Electra, Granjon and Aldus. One that is thick, juicy and useable, not thin, wispy and hopelessly weak. I also love Galliard Roman, but despise the italic—it’s just not legible if used for anything other than spot text and captions. A “Galliard Book Pro” for example, this is something I’d be very interested in.

Ryan: I am glad to see that I am not the only one not to like Galliard’s italics. I have a very good book here, very interesting, entirely composed in Galliard, and EVERY time italics appear in the book, I feel funny. These two sets of types just don’t fit with each other, for me. And that’s a shame, for I truely love the romans.

dr

If someone did an “alt version” of Galliard with completely different italics—give it a new name if need be—that would be awesome. And of course, old style figures and juicy ligatures, please.

If someone did an “alt version” of Galliard with completely different italics—give it a new name if need be—that would be awesome.

also based on Granjon’s work, check out Kai Bernau’s Lyon. however, a very different feel from Galliard, i’m afraid.

For years, starting about 1988 I pestered people toward getting a good digital version of Linotype Monticello. & For most of those years I was laughed at and told no one would buy it. Or I was met with uncomprehending stares from the many people who had never heard of it.

Thanks to Princeton University Press and its Thomas Jefferson papers project, we now have a very nice Monticello, created by Matthew Carter.

Over the past ten years or so, though, I have become much less interested in “revivals” of older faces. As James Puckett suggests above, rather let us encourage typeface designers to start anew, to create types go beyond “revivals.” In book types [at least for setting English] it may be argued that it will be tough to do anything wholly “new.” Basic forms are set, and both readers and typographers have expectations from text types. But recent work from folks such as Kent Lew and Stefan Hattenbach shows that standard forms can be subtly adjusted and re-worked to make new types that both meet those expectations and present us with intelligent variations on the model.

I for one do not care how closely any revival of, say, a Garamond model or a Caslon model hews to any particular earlier Garamond or Caslon. This is a fruitless quest. & any resulting face will be the subject of many gaseous arguments about how close it is to the “true” model. Why should anyone care about that? What I want is a face of robust color for offset printing, and one that makes full use of the technologies for both creating and using the new fonts.

That said, as soon as someone comes up with a really good version of Electra, I shall want it. Electra fills a unique typographic niche. Nothing since has come close, and all digital versions are purely watered down; I shall not use them. But there are times when I have wished for it.

powers

Will, i like your post: you spend 75% of it saying how much you dont like revivals, and you end it up asking for a revival :-)

dr

Aside from revivals - today when there are so many text typefaces available, does it happen that you need a font for a project but you go for a compromise because nothing on the market exactly matches what you imagine as the most suitable? Do graphic designers and typographers ever imagine non-existing fonts? I guess yes as this is one of the reasons why typefaces are commissioned. My question is if you ever think of something quite specific that is not a revival.

(Years ago I had a very specific image of a sans typeface in my mind. Then Joshua Darden’s Freight Sans was released - and it’s a 90% match of what I had imagined. Now, someone will tease me to death because of another thread on lowercase a, but I imagined the “a” a little different, maybe less inclined to the left, but that’s really not important and I’m happy it’s out.)

>I for one do not care how closely any revival of, say, a Garamond model or a Caslon model hews to any particular earlier Garamond or Caslon. This is a fruitless quest. & any resulting face will be the subject of many gaseous arguments about how close it is to the “true” model.

I agree that seeking the holy grail of ’authenticity’ is misguided. In the case of Caslon, this was attempted by the late Justin Howe, but the metal type he used included 19th century recuttings of Caslon, as well as some damaged old type. He also digitized his face based on his modern prints from the metal types, and the result is much lighter than 18th century or even most later letter press printing of Caslon. The result in my view is good for an ’antique’ look, but not so good for general use.

My fantasy for Electra is that Monotype Imaging will commission Kent Lew to do a good version.

>My fantasy for Electra is that Monotype Imaging will commission Kent Lew to do a good version.

I share that fantasy. Kent is the guy to do it.

>Will, i like your post: you spend 75% of it saying how much you dont like revivals, and you end it up asking for a revival :-)

All I can say in my defense is to quote Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.”

powers

I’d third that Electra thought. But I would add that I would want the version not to explicitly follow the patterns, but to somewhere in between the printed page and the patterns.

i think it would be nice to have some bodoni’s around that are truly scalable even up to very large sizes. i hate it when the thins get fat and clunky.

Trevett: What about ITC Bodoni? Mind you, three optical sizes is not enough - especially for a Didone.

Devanagari: John Hudson and Fiona Ross have told me that a really decent Devanagari should have 800+ glyphs, possibly over 1100 if you include also not only basic Latin but the Latin needed for transliteration of Devanagari.

Cheers,

T

All of you pining for a heartier digital Electra are aware of Font Bureau’s Quiosco, right?
http://fontbureau.com/fonts/Quiosco/styles

Trevett, take a look at H&FJ’s Didot. Use the right optical size and your thins stay thin at ridiculously large sizes.
http://typography.com/fonts/font_overview.php?productLineID=100004

marcox: excellent suggestion on the h&fj didot. backstory on bazaar was fun to read too.

thomas: i have the itc bodoni and you are right that the three sizes are not enough.

thanks