Daxline or Karbon?

Steve Caplin28 February 2012 · 14:06

Hi everyone,

I'm new here. I'm redesigning the 7th edition of my book How to Cheat in Photoshop, which is set in Rotis (yes, yes, yes, I know, but the first edition came out in 2001 and I haven't got around to changing it since).

So I looked around for a suitable caption/headline font - the captions are all sans - and wanted a spurless sans because it appeals to me. I'd just about settled on Daxline, which has the look I'm after, when I came across a discussion of it here (from 5 years ago) which mentioned Karbon.

I've checked out Karbon, and I really like it. But I also like Daxline.

I've made a mistake buying fonts before, ending up with poor letter and word spacing and no decent kerning pairs. Does anyone have hands-on experience of these two? Can you vouch for them? And, the tricky question: which should I choose?

Also - as a secondary matter - can anyone recommend a good serif font to go with them, for the longer pieces in the book?

Thanks

Steve

Hrant H Papazian28 February 2012 · 14:20

I'd be quite surprised to hear that either Daxline or Karbon
set poorly - they're both from highly reputable font houses.

One advantage with Karbon is that its designer is alive (in
fact he's impressively young :-) while Hans Reichel sadly
passed away recently - the reasoning there is that if you
ever need any modifications/extensions to the fonts you
could get them done by the original designer.

hhp

Hrant H Papazian28 February 2012 · 14:34

BTW: http://typophile.com/node/19343
Although nothing is viewable any more...
In fact Karbon (sans) was first aired
during its development on Typophile.
http://typophile.com/node/2388

Also read: http://typophile.com/node/36138
Especially: http://typophile.com/node/36138#comment-347210

hhp

William Berkson28 February 2012 · 15:16

Kris Sowersby is one of the best designers working now, and you can have confidence in his craftsmanship. So I think it's just a question of which font you think will most suit the project and the look you want.

Steve Caplin28 February 2012 · 23:40

Good points, and thanks for your help.

Yes, I know Karbon was first aired here, and that's one reason why I posed the question here.

The trouble with fonts is that you can't try them out before you buy them, and I really need to see usage on the page before I'll know which is the right one. Ho hum - a difficult choice!

Frode Bo Helland29 February 2012 · 03:53

If you buy from the small and independent they can often help with stuff like modifying this or that, fixing errors, setting a test page etc.

William Berkson29 February 2012 · 10:03

Karbon has an extensive PDF you can download, and there is for Dax.

If you contact the foundry, I'm pretty sure they will be willing to set your text in the font, and send you a custom PDF.

Steve Caplin29 February 2012 · 23:27

Thanks - checking both out.

Jens Kutílek2 March 2012 · 06:36

Hans Reichel was very exact about kerning (as about anything regarding his typefaces), usually he wouldn't allow us to change a single pair ;)

Frode, I'm not sure if I understand what you allude to, but FontFont is certainly »small and independent« enough to fix any errors or provide custom samples settings. For modifications though, there is a charge.

Frode Bo Helland2 March 2012 · 07:00

I wasn’t implying that FF can’t be helpful in these matters, Jens. I’m just saying there’s an additional layer (of bureacrazy) between you and the designer. Foundries are often more cautious about potential pirate leaks, but many (some?) designers — if you’ve establish a personal relation with them — are not afraid to create vector files, font files &tc for testing.

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