Sumner Stone's Arepo

Yves, exotic catch!

hhp

Agreed: good catch, Yves -- that's a 3-minute for the books.

Hmmm... Three minutes. I'm relieved, I feared I was losing my touch. Since Hrant's coup de th

Yeah, I know, not taking the time to link in the original post could be considered as cheating. But it is getting pretty crowded up here in Ye Olde Hall of Fame. That with our Swedish Chicken, Cheshire Cat, Armenian Mountain Lion and other members of the m

No dude, my one-minuter was a very easy one, plus you were sleeping... This one was truly memorable! :-)

Now let's see Stephen rise to the occasion, eh?

hhp

My two minutes is chump compared to you guys

Depends on what you define as "easy", Hrant. This one was pretty easy for me. The obscure stuff Cheshire sometimes manages to come up with is mind-boggling. And Stephen needn't prove anything.

Oh no, Colin: you definitely have joined the ranks of The Fast and The Ludicrous Furious.

Damn right, as a fellow musician I have to agree.

General tip when linking to MyFonts' Test Drive: when you've copied and pasted a test drive which includes spaces, you'll notice that these'll be converted to plus signs in your url and will also show up as those when you click the link. Just change the plus signs back to spaces after you've pasted the link in your message and they'll be fine.

With plus signs

See? No plus signs!

Ah, fixed. I enter URLs using regular A tags, and when it truncated my URL at the first space. I guess I

Thanks for compliment Peter, Apolline is not anymore part of Creative Alliance.

More interesting, do you know that Arepo
mean in fact:

Opera

in reverse :-)

Funny this subject, as I just posted the url of the future Sumner Stone website today on the www.typographe.com blog!

I know, Jean-Fran

Thanks and congrats, Yves. Echt!

> Funny this subject, as I just posted the url
> of the future Sumner Stone website today on
> the www.typographe.com blog!

Yes, I got it from there! (It's read! ;)
Stone Type Foundry. Merci bien, JFP!

(BTW, the spacing is somewhat off, huh? That
RY needed at least 2 pixels more. But the whole
thing asks for slight adjustments here and there.)

So this unsung beauty doesn't have lowercase
figures et al? It seems a prime candidate for
a nice OT version with all the trappings.

> More interesting, do you know that Arepo
> mean in fact: Opera in reverse :-)

I can't be sure, of course, but I'd guess
Mr Stone was probably refering to this classic
Latin "2D palindrome" (here set in Arepo!):



In this case "opera" doesn't have any musical
connotation, but means, simply, "work". It has
been translated as "Arepo, the sower, holds
the wheels at work". But there are many different
interpretations for "arepo". In fact, there's a
whole literature debating this simple pun.

But the typeface is musical, anyway.

It has lowercase. Check my post above for a MyFonts link.

It does have lowercase indeed, and it is beautiful. I
didn't mean lowercase letters, though, but lowercase
figures (aka old-style figures, non-ranging figures,
etc.). There are only four styles listed at Myfonts,
apparently it doesn't even have a small-caps set?

Ah. I am a bit weary, and I glossed over the word

> I once used Silica

Really? Wow. I've never encountered anybody who's used it, although I think it's a great design - I almost bought it a while back. BTW, how did you manage without an italic?

> That RY needed at least 2 pixels more.

And the "UN" a pixel less.

hhp

Actually, my very old (1994?) water-stained specimen shows a set of oldstyle figures for Arepo. For some reason the Agfa Alliance fonts do not include these.

But I'm going to disagree that there is such a strong need for these, or for all the trappings. I believe Arepo was designed as strictly a display face, a companion to Sumner's Cycles or Stone Print. As such, there is less call for figures in general, and I've always felt that the lining numerals were sufficient (perhaps even superior) for titling use.

If you want to set serious, extended text, with all due finesse, then you'll want the Cycles family. This, I believe, is Stone's real magnum opus. And in a way, Cycles, Stone Print, and Arepo are all members of one extended family.

Lining (and cap-height) numerals are indeed better for display usage (in general). But so it aligning the ascenders with the caps, which doesn't seem to be the case in Arepo.

BTW, I think Stone Print is too narrow to be a really good text face.

hhp

From what foundry can one buy Cycles?

and I've always felt that the lining numerals were sufficient
(perhaps even superior) for titling use.

If it was a UC-only typeface I would agree with you,
but it's not. And it's nice that Mr Stone did take
due care of the lc figures. Pity though that they're
apparently not available.

Hrant -- I think Stone Print is borderline. I wouldn't use it for book text, but I would consider it for magazine work (which is, of course, what it was designed for). I do agree that it lives at the very narrow end for text work. I actually like to use it for modest heads and secondary, mid-range material.

Colin -- you can license Cycles directly from Sumner Stone. His contact information is on the temporary web page at the site that Rodolfo cited above.

Rodolfo -- even in U&lc display I often prefer lining figures for heads & titling. But that's a personal preference. If you license Arepo directly from Sumner, I believe you can get the OsF thrown in. If you already have a license through Agfa (I suppose you must), perhaps he might consider giving you an "upgrade" for a small additional fee -- you'd have to ask him.

-- K.

If you already have a license through Agfa (I suppose
you must)

No, I don't. If you're saying this because of the
SATOR AREPO palindrome, that's just a screendump
from the MyFonts testdrive (for didactic purposes
in the context of this discussion - of course I never
did that in any real-life situation). Do you think
that's unethical?

> I once used Silica

Really? Wow. I've never encountered anybody who's used it, although I think it's a great design - I almost bought it a while back. BTW, how did you manage without an italic?

Hrant, sorry for getting back to you so late. I only used Silica on a short article, in the news section of our then magazine FontNews, so I had no immediate need for an italic. I agree though that the inavailability of italics can be harmful to the commervial value of a typeface. Just van Rossum for example blames the relative lack of success of his FF Advert family on the absence of italics.

P.S. Your remark may shed some light as to why I sometimes seem bitter and self-centered when talking about my time at FontShop. I was on the inside, having access to all the new typefaces (sometimes even b

> inavailability of italics can be harmful

Yes. But on the other hand it's a great ideological statement.

> It hurt when they took that all away.

But you're still lucky to have been in that position at all! Always look for the silver lining. It's there.

hhp