You know what pisses me off? On page 93/94 of the current Oak Knoll catalog, there's this fancy book, selling for US$1700, made before the phototype/digital "dark ages", and the most prominent thing about it is how *horridly* they spaced the title. On top of it, what font did they use (using the term very loosely indeed) to commit this barbarism? Only Perpetua, which has the best Roman caps ever made in history.
Where's my fauchard, man.
hhp
For you, I went through last night's trash:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/1935.gif
OK, I understand that metal type couldn't have negative kerning (usually), so the "RO" can be explained. But that doesn't explain why the whole thing wasn't just spaced looser, and it doesn't explain the rediculous and uneven spacing around the "Y".
From what I understand, Gill left the spacing of his fonts to the Monotype boys, and they were usually good at it. Maybe Pierpont was on vacation? In any case, the *user* of a font -especially in the setting of a title- is equally responsible for the outcome, especially in metal. And especially in the case of Latin all-caps.
More: In the pre-digital days it wasn't really possible to implement very good spacing, but we now have no excuse to keep the spacing of Latin all-caps in the Bronze Age.
Fonts should have positive kerning between all UC-UC pairs.
hhp
Hrant, how about a scan? Let's see what you're talking about.
jb
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