The July Tips and Tricks page-The 20 fonts we can't live without

[mwenz]

I know...but for correctness' sake it needed rectifying.

Now, this doesn't work as well as the original, but here are the two fonts I mentioned above. And dithering sucks but it was quick.

Take care, Mike

[Gare]

Looking good, Mike!

Folks, you gotta click on Mike's graphic #11. It animates, but not as the thumbnail we see, it's sort of an Easter egg, so watch carefully!

I was over at Linotype today—which is the fontaholic's equivalent of looking in Tiffany's showroom window from the street—and checked out the Frutiger Next Ultra style. Mike, I gotta report that Humanist 777 is so danged close, it's ridiculous.

And then your mock-up got me thinking about other font similarities and purely with text, how you could express a graphical idea. Which is more appropriate to be doing over in the Fonts and Typography monthly challenges, but as long as I'm here...



I un-obliqued the Eras regular typeface. I like it better, and it's served me well for over a decade without the 2 degree slant someone originally put in the normal and bold versions.

Oh, and the use of Avante Garde, two very different weights butted together is a very, very old design. If you're stick for a logo idea, and neither you nor anyone else has done this in 5 years, you're safe to submit it to a client.

—gare

[angelize]

I have un obliqued that Eras font before by skewing it back a bit! I've done this the odd time with other fonts as well to give them a bit of different look. I'll often stretch, squash, skew and even mold fonts when putting together ad layouts.

[David O'Neil]

Just read this, and for those who are interested Corel has a couple products with huge numbers of fonts in them for low cost. Yes, I know Corel and Xara have a bad history, and many may not want to support them, but if you want 900+ fonts for < $100, check out their WordPerfect home edition. Old Corel Draw 7 disks can be found online which also have this font collection (I believe), and some of them are less than $50.

[Gare]

Thank you, David; that's a good tip and a good link.

I imagined in the mid-1990s that Corel Corp. bought out Bitstream's font cataloge in its entirety. Happy to learn they did not, Bitstream is now owned by Monotype, and you can't get 900 typefaces for the price of a word processor anywhere else!

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

I just got an email ad on July 31, 2012 from Smith Micro, advertising 1,000 Opentype fonts, plus a lot of clipart in SVG file format for $40, the caveat being they say this is a Macintosh product. Um, unless I've been asleep at the wheel, or the download comes as a StuffIt archive (in which case you download a free version of StuffIt Expander for Windows, OpenType and SVG files aren't Macintosh-specific, so in theory this $40 download deal applies to everyone.

1,000 typefaces for $40

Several times the pinheads at Smith Micro have advertised a product "for the Macintosh" that works biplatform.

If you're shopping for a collection of typefaces, this looks like a good option, the offer ends August 12th.

Which means it will come around in another 6 months.

:)

—g

[mwenz]

I think the issue of Mac applies to their Logo Studio software that is part of the bundle.

Take care, Mike

[Gare]

Yes, apparently there's a Macintosh bare-bones vector program for making cookie-cutter logos.

Still, $40 for look-alike fonts, a thousand? That's "shovelware" I can live with!

-g