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Gary: I know, I know, I know. But thanks for answering Jens for me!
Jens: that 99.5% of the world's population is ignorant of and unappreciate of issue X is NO argument for not doing OUR very best - if we know better! Typography is such a subtle art where every little bit counts - and the numerous glyphs made possible by OpenType's 16 bit character set (65.000!) as opposed to the regular font's 256 glyphs makes a GREAT advance in desktop typography. So I will eventually pay Adobe's steep asking price, I guess!
Quality costs, Jens - you should know that!
K
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Gary and Klaus,
thanks a lot for the info.
However, to put it with the words of my customers:
It won't increase my sales, would it?
Good example: my brother. He is printing his own brochures with ink jet printers and distributes them on trade shows in Europe. All he uses is PageMaker 6.x and Times and Helvetica. And now guess what: He is making millions with these lousy brochures. But his success proves he is right.
Quality does have it's price - correct, I agree 100%. But if the customer doesn't appreciate it, it'll be one for the trash can. And I wouldn't go for this just for pure existance of OpenType.
Hey, BTW, I learned how to kern by hand decades ago.
And something else: do you really believe that a reader will read a newspaper, magazine or book twice in the future only because you use OpenType? Hm, I don't see this happening.
Fonts galore - FIESTA!
Question: do you miss OpenType fonts in this forum, I mean the fonts in the messages could be nicer :-).
Conclusion: in my humble opinion the OpenType is a gigantic marketing hype from Adobe. OK, they look great as what I can see in the example, but who really cares??????? Show me 10 people in less than a minute that care, and I will go and invest into it.
jens
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TrueType already supports multiple font files within a family (e.g. Arial, Arial Bold, Arial Bold Italic etc.), optimisation for size and the wide (Unicode) character set, although most cheap fonts are usually <224 characters and 'one file fits all'. What OpenType offers is a cross-platform open standard with more intelligence, that allows embedding in web pages and better formatting, among many other things. Although created by Adobe and Microsoft, it's widely endorsed by other typographic companies as the new standard.
OpenType is therefore likely to be the choice of professional typographers, whose work is judged by the quality of the text. For website creators and those whom a brochure is merely an incidental part of selling other products, OpenType is much less relevant.
Regards - Sean
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can XARA handle the OpenType fonts, or do you need a specific application for it?
jens
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Gary, do you know of any freeware OpenType fonts I could download and try in InDesign? I've only read about all this lovely new typographical stuff, but I want to try it!
Xara: Does XX support OpentType, provided ATM 4.1 is installed?
Jens: You've written a lot of nonsense in this thread (about your brother's crap being "proven right" because he makes money, etc.) which I'm mercifully ignoring - for now. I'll just say this: I'm my own client - so, for once, this usually idiotic cliche is true: "the customer is always right".
:-)
K
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All the MS web fonts are OpenType (Andale Mono, Arial Black, Comic, Georgia, Impact, Trebuchet, Verdana, Webdings), although I'm not sure exactly what features are included. There are also OpenType versions of Arial, Courier, Times and other standard Windows fonts that come with Win2K which _may_ be available for free download on the MS site.
OpenType is native on Win2K, so XX uses them without help from ATM, although I doubt it takes advantage of any of the advanced features. I don't think many apps do so yet.
Regards - Sean
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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Good example: my brother. He is printing his own brochures with ink jet printers and distributes them on trade shows in Europe. All he uses is PageMaker 6.x and Times and Helvetica. And now guess what: He is making millions with these lousy brochures. But his success proves he is right. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
To address this comment about Jens' brother's success in business, I stand firmly in the camp of my fellow adman Klaus.
With this kind of logic, who would need PostScript fonts? Jens brother could be just as successful with the old bitmap fonts, eh? And who needs color printers, Jens successful brother could print out his cheap ad materials on an Epson dot matrix printer.
As one who spent 25 plus years doing TV and print advertising, and another 15 years as principal in my own graphic design company, working with the best type and the best European-trained typesetters to create the best looking advertising and design, I can tell you that good type can make a difference in how a product is perceived by the public.
In the early days of laser printed PostScript type, we designed a series of brochures for Butterfield & Butterfield, a San Francisco based international auction house. When the president of Butterfield's saw our estimate for type (to be provided by a high quality typesetting house) he balked and said we could use their laser output type instead and no one would know the difference.
Fine we said. Have your designer output this page of copy to these specifications and we will have our type house output the same copy on their machines.
We presented both samples of text to the president of the company who looked first at one and then the other, shrugged his shoulders and said, you win. I can see the difference.
If you look at a display-sized headline (36 points and larger) created with a one-size-fits all PostScript font and then compare it to a headline created with an optically sized font, you won't have to ask if it is worth it. The character and elegance of the headline of type will answer the question.
Even if the reader of the piece cannot put her or his finger on it, good typography will have a very subtle effect on his/her perception of the product or service being written about. Good typography and type design can influence the perception of quality in a product. And in the case of the auction business, where the quality of merchandise being auctioned has to be perceived for what it is, good typography can make all the difference in the world.
And finally, Jens, as you are one who appends "Creative Director" as a title to his name, I expect a lot more respect for the art of typography.
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
Be It Every So Humble...
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To all that Gary writes in answer to Jens's folly, I can only add two things:
Halleluhah!
- and Amen.
K
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Snooping at Microsoft's type section yields tons of info about OpenType, including free software and instructions for how to make and tweak font files:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...name=%20&fsize=
OpenType is a feast for lovers of type!
K
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Gary,
my brother doesn't run an auction business, he is manufacturing handmade pottery and planters in Vietnam among others. The only one thing the customers are looking for is PRICE, nothing else.
Wrong, he couldn't do it on a dot matrix, because he needs to show product pics.
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As one who spent 25 plus years doing TV and print advertising, and another 15 years as principal in my own graphic design company, working with the best type and the best European-trained typesetters to create the best looking advertising and design, I can tell you that good type can make a difference in how a product is perceived by the public.
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True. ** IF ** you are dealing with customers who want to market high priced products.
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The character and elegance of the headline of type will answer the question.
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I agree. But only some customers look at this way. And if they don't want to pay for that extra, it's their decision.
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Even if the reader of the piece cannot put her or his finger on it, good typography will have a very subtle effect on his/her perception of the product or service being written about. Good typography and type design can influence the perception of quality in a product.
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I agree. I keep telling the customers the same arguments over and over.
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And in the case of the auction business, where the quality of merchandise being auctioned has to be perceived for what it is, good typography can make all the difference in the world.
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Of course, if we are talking about high priced items.
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And finally, Jens, as you are one who appends "Creative Director" as a title to his name, I expect a lot more respect for the art of typography.
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First of all, a title is nothing else than an empty blurb on a piece of paper. I give a damn for a title, I had been forced to use a title 'because the US customers want to see a title on a biz card'. I swallowed that.
I personally appreciate good type, but 90'% of the customers don't. I just communicated what my customers perceive...
BTW, I am one of the German trained type setters, but that was long time ago...
As Sean wrote:
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OpenType is native on Win2K, so XX uses them without help from ATM, although I doubt it takes advantage of any of the advanced features. I don't think many apps do so yet.
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my question remains: which applications do take advantage of OpenType? Freehand, Illustrator, XARA X, PageMaker?
And: HOW can I identify OpenType fonts on my machine with w2k pro?
Let me know, I am curious.
jens