I thought I'd start this thread because there's an interesting back story to just about every font I've been attracted to since I began in advertising. If anyone has a "Font Story", I encourage you to post it here!
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My Best,
Gary
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I thought I'd start this thread because there's an interesting back story to just about every font I've been attracted to since I began in advertising. If anyone has a "Font Story", I encourage you to post it here!
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My Best,
Gary
One of the first "Euro Fonts" I discovered and accidentally collected when I bought my first "Value Pack" from Adobe was VAG Rounded, in four weights.
It looks sort of like a serious version of the novelty font "Frankfurter", but in reality, the four designers (yeah:4!) were striving for a friendly typeface than their client at the time was using. VAG Rounded gets its name from a condensation of Volkswagen AG, it was a corporate font until the owners got sick of it in the 1990s.
What happened was Volkswagen acquired Damier-Benz, who most notably manufactured Audi. The newly merged car conglamorate couldn't decide on a new official typeface. Some factions on the new board hates Futura, which VW used, while other insisted the new logo shouldn't be a serif font (Times), as Audi was using.
So it couldn't be a straight sans serif and it couldn't be a serif. So the designers rounded the ends of a sans serif creation in hopes it would be seen as a kinder, gentler font.
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You decide. I like it as an alternative to Futura, and I believe there's a Xara knock-off called Valken you might want to take for a spin.
My Best,
Gary
That's really interesting Gary. I have a font called Salina that I like to use sometimes for fancy headings I can't remember where I got from, though I think it may have come with an older version of Xara. I wonder what kind of story it has the only information I've been able to find so far is that it was created by FontBank Inc.
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I grew up in San Francisco. My Mom had a small bookstore, and I learned many years later that her letterhead designer picked the most absolutely obvious typeface in the world, given the store's name --
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Folio was a mid '50s contemporary of Helvetica and Univers, never as popular as the other two. But it sure worked for her bookstore, and I keep the font on my PC out of sentiment -- though I have to confess (sorry, Mom) that I never used it on a job.
@Frances—
Salina is a look-alike name, actually a very popular one, for the font originally named Tango. In fact, it's quite easy to do a search on the web to get a free copy of Salina. Most versions of this free look-alike tend not to have the correct stylized upper case letterforms that almost self intersect and overlap with their swashes. However, the font is so stylized, no one is ever going to recognize your Salina font as a knock-off. You want an exaggeration of this typeface, I could recommend Octopus, scroll down. But I won't...
Still, you got yourself a $25 clone for free, in my estimation. And because there are no coincidences in Life, Frances, Barbara and I live on the border of the Town of Salina (derived from the word "salt").
Tango: Designed by Colin Brignall in 1972, first digital version available in 2002 from Elsner+Flayke, Bitstream, Linotype, URW. Currently owned by Letraset, which strongly suggests it was a dry transfer lettering font, and I think I used to have a page of it.
My Best,
Gary
@Jon—
Folio is one of a Font Quartet. I myself will confess that I have a love/hate relationship with Helvetica, and Folio shares some of the same roots as Folio, much in the same way Arial is a web-optimized version of Helvetica.
Pull up a chair! Back in the 1890s, when Hermann Berthold took over the Prussian Foundry in Berlin, Akzidenz-Grotesk had already been used for typesetting scientific publications for more than a decade. The font was retooled and readjusted, a condensed version was cast, although the exact origin—who originally created the font—is speculation today.
Flash forward and Max Miedinger at the Haas Foundry used Akzidenz-Grotesk as a model for the typeface Neue Haas Grotesk, released in 1957 and renamed Helvetica in 1960. Also in 1957, Adrian Frutiger's Univers and Bauer and Baum's Folio, were released, both clearly inspired by a Grotesque Accident. :)
You'll notice that there are very small variations in certain characters, when you compare Akzidenz-Grotesk to its siblings. For example, the cross on the capital A is dropped, and the stroke on the capital Q doesn't go inside the "O" component.
If you want to get a free Truetype version of Akzidenz-Grotesk in four weights, go to A-Z Fonts
What the Helvetica; go for it!
My Best,
Gary
That's very interesting, all the more so since I was born and raised in Salina (Kansas that is).Quote:
Originally Posted by angelize
I always knew you're the Salt of the Earth, Larry!
-g-
sometimes stories have little meaning to people other than the individual.
i usually purchase fonts based upon visceral feeling rather than rational thought. eplica was one of those types of purchases.
i think the only font that i have purchased that fits the bill of having a story and is a modern take is hoefler and frere-jones' slab serif font, archer.
once upon a day, i use to add a cross bar at the top of certain letters, the cap a being one of them.
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take care, mike
I love Hoefler Text, Mike, and I have a few other gems from this foundry.
Is this the same font you're talking about? There's a corresponding Pi set, did you know? Hoefler Ornaments.
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let's see if i can capitalize a proper noun...Archer is the font name:
http://www.typography.com/fonts/font...0033&path=head
i have the "hoefler text" font kicking around in my font wish list. And at 299 usd for all 27 styles, it's a steal in my opinion.
mike
It's beautiful and I didn't realize that the Hoefler Family had merged their business—haven't checked in with this foundry in years.
I'm at all four faces and the ornaments and holding. $229 is our gas and electric bill this month, sad to say. :(
-g-
I'm loving Hoefleur too -thanks for that!
Hoefler Text really is a good looking font alright.
Emigré has had several "hit fonts" over the decades, not in the least the whimsical "Remedy", complete with a matchinh swash set, two different weights, and a companion ornament set.
"Variex" is also distributed by them, designed by Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans. I think the thing that makes this font interesting is if you use different weights, the baseline of the fonts aren't even, they weren't designed to do it. So it makes the different weights really handsome for doing bold headline posters...as long as the theme is light and humorous, like the font.
I did a sketch here to show you that the different weights of Variex move outward from a center line.
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Cool, or what?
My Best,
Gary
Interesting thread Gary!
I'm not very good with fonts but always had a fascination for them
I got interested in arts and craft movement a while ago and discovered that William Morris also created a couple of typefaces.
Some have been translated into computer fonts:
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It appears he really liked Nicolas Jenson's roman typeface created in the 1400s.
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Vaguely related, I noticed later that the signature of Elbert Hubbard's "Roycroft" furniture was strikingly similar of Jenson's:
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Probably not a coincidence.
Marc
There's a good documentary about the Helvetica font and typography:
http://www.helveticafilm.com/
Gary Hustwit, who directed this movie also made "objectified"
Quite interesting if you like design.
Marc
Doh! I just realized this was a thread for "Modern" typeface and there I go putting 1400s stuff, haha!
Feel free to remove the post, goofing is a kind habit for me! ;-)
Marc
It's the "Interesting and Modern" thread, Mark, so no worries.
The Arts and Crafts movement was started in at least three areas, all around the turn of the 20th century to almost the mid 1930s, depending on where you lived. You have Rennie Mackintosh in the Scottish Arts and Crafts movement, Frank Lloyd Wright in the US, and there were some French Arts and Craftsians, but none come to mind at the moment.
Here's an example of typography created by artists at the P22 Type Foundry, based on Frank Lloyd Wright's design work:
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OKAY: BIG QUESTION
I think I have legal access to some of the old William Morris and other glyphs. They're highly ornamental stuff, perfect for the "O" in "Once Upon a Time..." in a storybook.
Shall I try to post an example? Would this bee a good font project for the fall?
-g-
This definitely looks interesting!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gare
"Arts and Craft" were also the basis of "Art Nouveau" in France .
Marc
Let me get to finding and scaling stuff, then.
From The Art Story.org, so we're on the same page historically, as to where letterforms came from and when:
Art Nouveau was aimed at modernizing design, seeking to escape the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. Artists drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms with more angular contours. The movement was committed to abolishing the traditional hierarchy of the arts, which viewed so-called liberal arts, such as painting and sculpture, as superior to craft-based decorative arts, and ultimately it had far more influence on the latter. The style went out of fashion after it gave way to Art Deco in the 1920s, but it experienced a popular revival in the 1960s, and it is now seen as an important predecessor of modernism.
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The above is 2% opinionated, but it's basically true.
G
Sounds good to me if it is indeed legal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gare
Before this goes O/T, I've created a sample page and a brief explanation of what we might like to approach next for a group font:
>>>Some resources from Arts & Crafts and earlier<<<
-g-