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LA IDUG: Variable Fonts, Color Fonts & FontLab »

I will be presenting to the Los Angeles InDesign User Group (IDUG) on September 20, 2018 in Van Nuys, CA, for their 13th anniversary meeting! Come see the cool and even sometimes amazing things being done with variable fonts, as well as a bit on color fonts and how fonts are made.

Register free on EventBrite!

Be entertained and enlightened with the joys of variable fonts and color fonts in InDesign and friends. This demo night unlocks the secrets of OpenType variations, aka variable fonts and color fonts. Learn how they work, how you use them, and why they work the way they do. Bonus: some pointers on font creation and font editing.

You will learn:

Font Creation and Editing:

Color Fonts:

Variable Fonts:

Brazil visa for ATypI São Paulo »

UPDATE: The workaround described below has apparently been closed. As mentioned in comments below, the SF Brazilian Consulate page has been updated and no longer mentions this possibility. If you look into it and verify that this option no longer exists, please let me know.

Summary: Americans can still get last-​minute visas for Brazil in less than four weeks, but for many of us it is only possible if we go in person to a distant consulate. Details below. Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and DC are currently the best Brazil consulates to hit for a quick visa.

Like some other Americans going to ATypI in São Paulo this year in mid-​October, I waited too long to start my visa process. What I didn’t understand was that some (many) of the Brazilian consulates have a big backlog, including the one serving my area. This means that I, or my designated visa service company, need to make an appointment six weeks in advance, plus allow for processing time of two weeks, and a few days for the visa to get back to me. Call it nine weeks altogether.

I didn’t realize there was an appointment issue, so I didn’t start pursuing the visa until I got back from my last trip that I had to have my passport for—which was just a week ago. Big mistake. But I have learned some more options, and am hereby sharing them so as to save my colleagues the hours of research I had to do.

(Note: Because the USA requires visas for Brazilians, Brazil does the same to Americans. So my Russian, Polish and EU colleagues don’t need a visa to go to Brazil, but I do.)

Now, whether you have a problem, and how much, depends on where you live. Some regions are served by an office that does not take appointments, but you just walk in. Others have up to six or seven weeks wait for an appointment. Some process applications in as little as a week. Others take as much as three weeks. So… it depends.

Also, you can check back with the online scheduling systems, because sometimes appointments are canceled and you can find an early opening. If you are lucky.

There is an online form to fill out, and much additional documentation they want, which you can upload. Beware of surprising inconsistencies, like the fact that the picture you upload has to be in 4:3 aspect ratio but the one you paste on the form must be two inches square. Also, the documentation required varies by which regional consulate you go to! Some require no financial records, some require one, three, or four months of bank statements.

You can hire a visa service company, which can save you from going to a consulate in person. Or get a friend to take your paperwork in. But in either of those cases, you must deal with your particular regional consulate. So what happens if your regional Brazilian consulate is San Francisco and you had to start the process nine weeks in advance to get your visa?

Well, it turns out there is an out. Not a very attractive one, but an out. You can apply to any Brazil consulate you like, as long as you do it in person. So last night I flew to Atlanta to apply for my visa, and I did, and today I am flying back.

Being restricted to applying to your regional consulate applies when doing it by mail (not all the consulates even do it by mail any more), and when using a third party—whether it is a friend or a visa service. I talked to a visa service and their supposed Brazil visa expert denied that I could go anywhere other than my regional consulate. She was wrong. I just did.

From the San Francisco consulate’s appointment scheduling calendar page:

The applicant does not have to come in person to submit his/​her application. Any friend, relative or colleague can act as a proxy. If you don´t have any relatives or friends in San Francisco who would be able to act as a proxy and submit your visa application, your other option is to use the services of a visa agency.

Tourists to Brazil have four (4) options: (a) check multiple times a day our online visa appointment system for possible cancellations and new available slots; (b) contact a visa agency to check if the agency is able to schedule an earlier appointment (visa agencies have different slots); (c) check availability of appointments at other Brazilian Consulates in the USA – Tourists are allowed to request Tourist Visas at any Brazilian Consulate regardless of the Consulate’s jurisdiction; or (d) reschedule your trip to a later date.”

Emphasis added. Note that a tourist visa is perfectly valid for going to a conference, although you may also need a letter from ATypI inviting you to come if you tell the consulate you are coming for a conference.

I had already looked at almost all the consulates, and now have looked at all. Here is what I know.

NOTE that processing times given are for in-​person appointments, and may be longer for mail or visa agency processing. Most consulates mail back the visa. You may need to supply a self-​addressed pre-​paid express mail envelope, which you can buy at the post office at the same time as your $160 money order.

SUMMARY: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and DC are the best. Miami may also be an option.

Atlanta: same-​day appointments available. One week processing time.

Boston: Dubious viability. About two week delay for an appointment. Up to two weeks (10 business days) processing time.

Chicago: No apppointments! Two weeks (ten business days) processing for in-​person visa applications.

Hartford: Not viable, first app’ts in October.

Houston: You have to have your electronic paperwork submitted to even check on their app’t calendar system. Processing time is only up to four days for tourist visas, and may be same day!

Los Angeles: Not viable, first app’ts six weeks out.

Miami: Marginal. No app’ts! Up to three weeks (15 business days) processing time for in-​person applications.

New York City: Not viable, first app’ts a week or two out, plus three weeks processing time.

San Francisco: Not viable, first app’ts six weeks out.

Washington, DC: No app’ts, and one week (five business days) processing time. but they recommend at least a month in advance of your travel.

Awesome: Fiona Ross receives 2014 SOTA Typography Award »

I was standing at the side of the room at TypeCon 2014 in DC for the SoTA Typography award, given to one person each year for contributions to the field of type design. Honestly, I was trying to decide whether to bag out early and get some dinner, or wait and hear the speeches. I was sure the award recipient would be somebody deserving, but that leaves a lot of room. Victor Gaultney of SIL, who specialize in fonts for global language support, was standing next to me. We chatted and agreed that we had no idea who was going to get the award this year.

Fiona Ross receiving SoTA Typography award

Fiona Ross receiving SoTA Typography award. Photo © 2014 Laurence Penney, all rights reserved, used with his kind permission.

When the award presentation began, in the first few moments it became apparent to us from the preamble who was getting the award. I couldn’t help myself. “They’re giving it to Fiona!” I burst out, turning to Victor. We looked at each other, did a spontaneous fist bump, and shouted “YES!” in unison, doubtless disturbing the nearby attendees (sorry about that, folks).

I simply couldn’t imagine a more appropriate recipient for the award, and certainly nobody as deserving whose early career was so long unsung in public. Needless to say, I stayed through to the very end of the speeches and ceremony.

While it is not precisely true to say my younger daughter is named after Ms. Ross, neither is her first name being Fiona completely coincidental. Fiona Ross is an amazing person in both her professional achievements and as a human being, so sharing a name with her hardly seemed like a bad thing. Ms Ross has made immense contributions to global type design: in her work heading up Linotype’s non-​Latin type design team; as an educator at the University of Reading for their MA Typeface Design program; and creating and overseeing commissioned type designs at Tiro Typeworks (with John Hudson, Ross Mills and Tim Holloway, among others) for clients such as Adobe, Microsoft, and Harvard University.

Typefaces designed personally by Fiona (such as the Linotype Bengali) or by her team remain among the most widely used typefaces in the relevant parts of the world, their equivalents of Times and Helvetica.

I had the occasion to hire Tiro, and hence Fiona, when Adobe needed Arabic, Hebrew and Thai typefaces. The team did splendid work on all three, as well as developing a quote on a set of Indic typefaces, some of which would eventually be commissioned by Adobe, years later. Fiona was polite and gentle early on when I made a criticism showing my complete and utter ignorance of the norms of Thai type design, about which I can only say… I was young and foolish.

That is another theme in her career: Fiona Ross has also been unfailingly helpful and absurdly humble. She does not like to be called an “expert” on non-​Latin type design, preferring the term “specialist.” But as must undoubtedly be clear by now, if she is not an expert, then there must be no experts, as she is in the top tier of the most knowledgeable people in the world in this area. This willingness to share her knowledge and erudition has magnified her impact on the world and on the field of type design. No better award candidate could be imagined.

 

FontLab type design workshop in India, March 3–5 »

I am very excited to be getting my visa for India today! I’m one of the instructors for a 3-​day advanced type design workshop with FontLab. Registration is now open on the FontLab blog, and there is a detailed schedule of planned talks.

Free Fonts, Revealed and… Reviled? »

I am writing this from the ATypI conference 2013 in Amsterdam. I hosted a panel on free fonts on the first opening day (Wednesday) of the pre-​conference two-​tracked discussion, and Victor Gaultney of SIL International did the same on Friday. The panels and discussions around them brought up a bunch of issues, and I wanted to share my thoughts. Note that this is something of a live post, and subject to clarifications and additions, though I think my main positions are pretty set.

Free Fonts Panel (photo)

Victor Gaultney of SIL International hosted a panel on free fonts at ATypI Amsterdam 2013. Left to right: Dave Crossland, David Lemon (Adobe fonts), David Kuettel (Google), Greg Veen (Typekit, Edge web fonts), Eben Sorkin.

Threat, or Menace?

I don’t think free fonts are evil. If anybody has that misperception about my thinking, it’s my own darn fault for entitling my panel “Free fonts: threat or menace?” I intended it as a joke, a bit of a deliberate incitement to get people talking/​thinking, and perhaps poking gentle fun at the not-​unusual anti-​free attitudes in the type design community. I got the “threat or menace” part from old comic books, in which crusading newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson is writing crazy anti-​Spider-​Man newspaper headlines, but apparently it goes back even further.

Of course free fonts are at least mostly a good thing for people who use fonts. Who doesn’t like free? For hobbyists and casual font users, they are certainly a good thing. For professional users who are passionate about quality, it is less clear, as if free fonts have a negative impact on average quality or continued availability of new, quality fonts, then it may not be all good for them.

Gratis vs Libre

There are two overlapping but distinct kinds of free fonts; it is worth distinguishing them.

Libre” fonts are those which post few if any restrictions on what the user or acquirer can do with them. They are generally “open source” and can be bundled with either commercial or open source software. Although it is allowed to charge for them, it is also allowed to redistribute them for free, so it is hard to sell them effectively. Most of the really high-​end free fonts made by professional type designers are released under libre licenses.

Free as in beer” or “gratis” fonts are those for which there is no charge. Many of them still have licensing restrictions on what one can do with them, such as only allowing non-​commercial use, or restricting modifications.

Most of the “free fonts” in the world are gratis rather than libre, but the biggest growth lately has been in libre fonts. Sites such as “dafont” feature many gratis fonts that are not libre, but also some libre fonts.

Sometimes a type designer or foundry will make some members of a larger family available gratis. Often they will be less useful styles, but whether it’s the regular and the bold or just the black italic, giving away some styles as a teaser for the rest of the family seems like a special case. This has worked well for some designers (e.g. Jos Buivenga /​ exljbris with his Museo families). Some have seen less result.

Quality vs Free Fonts

I am pretty harsh about font quality. Most of the fonts I have made have never shipped, because my conceptions of quality early on outstripped my ability to execute at that quality level. So I will be the first to say that there are plenty of commercial fonts that suck. Easily 30–40% of commercial fonts leave me thoroughly unimpressed. If you look at libre fonts, and use the Google Fonts collection as your baseline, maybe 65% of those fonts suck. If you just look at all free fonts on dafont, maybe 95% of those fonts stink.

Why is that?

Well, most of the people who are capable of making high quality fonts have some serious training, and/​or a fair bit of experience. The people who are at a stage of their career where they are interested in making stuff and willing and able to give it away are mostly younger people just starting out, or people just beginning to get really into type design. On average they have a lot less experience and skill.

Also, polishing a font until it is really good is a whole lot of extra work and a lot less fun than the earlier stages of the design process. Frankly, it’s the 80/​20 rule, only with type it is more like 90/​10 or 95/​5. Most of the quality improvement won’t be immediately/​consciously noticed by most potential users, especially in the new growth area of the web where would-​be end users are generally less typographically savvy.

I should be clear that when I say “quality” I am not talking about matters of mere taste. There are objective aspects of font quality. For example, in spacing a typical sans serif, if the cap H and N have straight sides, and the white space (sidebearings) allocated to the left and right sides of the cap H are significantly different values, and those in turn differ from the sidebearings of the cap N, then the font is simply badly made.

One of my perennial arguments with the folks at Google is about the fact that they didn’t have a very high quality bar at all, and let in an awful lot of fonts that I would say are simply crap or at least substandard, at an objective level. Some of the folks on the Google side of the fence say that they are simply giving their users free choice and that if one of the fonts I consider to be junk becomes popular, then that’s evidence that it was actually “good.” I don’t have much patience for this line of argument. I think that Google is abandoning what it ought to see as a responsibility to be a gatekeeper not of taste, but of quality. It is not hard to find the expertise to deal with these things.

Interestingly, Adobe, having an increasing interest in there being decent quality libre fonts out there, is actually dedicating some in-​house resources (read: people’s time) to helping fix and improve some of those fonts. Kudos to them.

Money for Free Fonts?

Most of the solid quality libre fonts were actually commissioned works, or done in-​house by a big company. In either case, somebody with deep pockets had a need or desire for a new open source font, They expected to make money in some other way, and were willing to pay usual professional wages for the development of fonts that met their needs. But these well-​paid professional fonts are a minority of all libre fonts.

Google has offered a bounty on libre fonts, but according to Bruno Maag in the discussion here at ATypI, it amounts to some $2000 per font. He suggests a basic three-​member family takes about 400 hours to create, and that hence Google is paying $15 an hour for type design, and that isn’t a livable wage. Bruno’s angry outburst about this garnered applause from a significant chunk of the audience.

Of course, the audience here at ATypI in Amsterdam is an audience of middle-​class and better westerners, to whom $15/​hr is not a real living wage. But in much of the world that is a pretty decent wage, especially for a student or somebody in the earlier stages of their career.

But I expect there is no reason to think that Google or any other specific company will continue to pay for new libre font development at the same rate that new commercial fonts have been being made in the past. If the money to be made in creating libre (and other free fonts) is less than what we had before, it’s possible that the total amount of money will go down, and the impact of libre and gratis fonts on the demand for retail fonts matters.

Eben Sorkin has suggested that for popular libre fonts he has designed, people are starting to ask about paying for customizations, additions and modifications. He thinks he can make sufficient money off of this to make it worthwhile, and that this may be a viable model for everyone.

I am not entirely convinced this will be the reality for the “average” type designer from a wealthy country. Maybe. If not, the development of the bulk of libre fonts will tend to be more of an activity for people from less wealthy countries, and/​or done by less experienced type designers.

Some libre or gratis fonts can raise development money on Kickstarter or some similar crowdfunding source. This is challenging, and doesn’t work for all projects. It also requires a different skill set in terms of social connections and marketing to be successful. Unfortunately, many type designers don’t want to have to sell themselves, their story and their projects in that way. (Though arguably it is an important skill for traditional retail proprietary fonts as well!)

David Kuettel of Google responded to Bruno Maag’s outburst with a lengthy and partly evasive response, which basically amounted to “we want to see type designers get paid, and we haven’t worked out the model by which this happens. First we need to finish sorting out various technical and practical issues, and once we iron those out, we will be able to come up with a better model to pay for the fonts.”

I am not excited by this response that wants the type designers to do all their work up front and just trust that sooner or later a model will spontaneously break out that allows them to make money. In the future. With different fonts, as I don’t believe that for the existing libre fonts (that were made before that magical future), Google or anybody else is likely to start paying additional revenue that they don’t have to.

Although interest in using type is growing, growing even faster is the supply of people trying to design it. There are more and more serious college and university programs teaching type design. The loose anarcho-​syndicalist Crafting Type collective (which I am a member of) teaches three-​day type design workshops to beginners, which while not turning out master type designers certainly gets them past the level of the average gratis typeface, perhaps to the level of the average libre typeface. But (in my estimation) having so many people interested in trying to design type means that supply of type designers is outpacing demand, which is creating another source of downward pressure on prices/​wages.

Impact of Gratis & Libre on Commercial Fonts?

There are a number of different theories about the impact of more and more free fonts on the income made from retail font licensing.

(1) One theory is that free fonts will have little or no impact. For the most part they are of poor quality. The people who want to distinguish their work have always been willing to pay and always will be, because being different and distinctive and using quality fonts is of value to them. The people who would use the free fonts would never have bought retail font licenses anyway.

(2) Another theory is that free fonts increase the awareness of fonts in general and help stoke demand, and that as this new audience gets more sophisticated some of them will gradually get more and more interested in commercial alternatives to free fonts.

(3) Some folks believe that just like fonts bundled with apps, free fonts will decrease the total demand for retail fonts. Any demand they create will be outstripped by the demand they satisfy. Some users will not become sophisticated enough to prefer better typefaces, while others will simply choose from the higher-​quality free fonts they can find, which appear to only be a growing category.

Personally, I actually buy all three of these theories to some degree. I think there is a core demand (1) that will never go away. But I think the portion of that demand that is truly immutable is a small part of the total market for fonts. I do think that making free fonts available will increase awareness of fonts (2), but I am politely skeptical that any resulting increase in paid font licensing will surpass the decrease due to free fonts substituting for paid fonts (3).

Of course, even if I am right about that mix, that doesn’t say what happens to the total money being spent on fonts. Some people will commission libre fonts, or Google may continue to pay a bounty on the ones they want to see made. My guess is that the total amount of money going into the pockets of type designers is more likely to decrease than increase, but I can’t swear that’s what will happen. But even if the total amount of money going to type designers goes up, I am pretty sure that more people will be doing it and the average $/​hr compensation will go down. Mind you, even if so, these economic shifts will not happen overnight.

Result?

I actually hope that some of my projections and guesses are wrong, because of course I would like to see more money ending up in the pockets of type designers. But even if my predictions and guesses are all correct, I don’t see free fonts as bad, exactly. Having more fonts available for free to the average user is still a good thing for the end user. The percentage of new fonts that are of what I think of as high quality may go down (compared to the old proprietary world), but the total numbers of all kinds will only increase. Existing quality fonts won’t go away, even if the average quality of new fonts is lower.

While the changes may be “bad” for many first-​world type designers, including people I know personally, I don’t see anything horribly wrong with there being more work for people who have less money, and to whom $15/​hr is a good wage. Although I like the idea of everybody in the developing world having the same level of affluence that professionals do in the west, realistically this doesn’t happen overnight. Wages in developing countries increase over time. The changes I foresee in type design economics are part of that shift, even at wages that we would consider potentially exploitive here in the USA. I don’t like the idea of type designers making only $15/​hr, and I fear that it won’t get the level of quality and care that I would like to see, but at least that’s not a sweatshop wage. If we were talking $5/​hr it would be different.

For those of us (mostly first-​world type designers) for whom the coming shift is not a Good Thing, it may be a saddening change. But I think change is inevitable, and all the players involved are going to do what makes sense for them at the time. A company like Adobe making a couple of open source typefaces is not due to some huge change in their corporate ideology or thinking: it just became beneficial to them to create a few open source fonts due to their other business interests. Similarly other type designers are going to do what is right for them (as well as they can judge). If that makes for more free fonts and lower income levels for the average pre-​existing type designer, that’s not some evil conspiracy, just change and life.

[Revised twice on 13 October 2013, first to add more on font quality, second to discuss free fonts as a promo for bigger families. Revised 14 October 2013 to clarify wording on free and libre some more, and clarify sweatshop wage position. Later revisions for grammar. Revised again 16 August 2015 to clarify a couple of sentences about economics and wages.]

Intro Type Design Workshops in New York & Singapore »

I had so much fun doing this in Portland, that I am again joining Dave Crossland (pending sufficient registrations) to teach a 2-​day intro type design workshop in New York City at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, July 20–21.

We have essentially a loose anarcho-​syndicalist collective, organized by Dave under the “Crafting Type” banner. Doing this in a tag-​team format turns out to be amazingly effective and fun. Dave comes from a very different perspective than I do in some respects, but we share our love of type and type design. Students really benefit from a variety of viewpoints and expertise.

The Singapore Crafting Type workshop is July 17–19, being taught by Eben Sorkin and Octavio Pardo. They too are knowledgeable instructors with varying perspectives, and it should be a great opportunity! 

Here again is some of my own work:

Hypatia Sans poster style sample

Hypatia Sans poster on Adobe’s site, click for high-​res PDF.

Debating Bush memos (with Rather?) on Reddit »

Yes, that really is me trying to debate the Bush National Guard Memos with Dan Rather on Reddit.

There are a zillion posts in that thread, so he may never see my comment, and has every excuse to ignore it if he does. I wish I could get him to come out to one of my “Font Detective” talks that covers that case, preferably the one in NYC that is more open-​ended. But if not, the talk at SXSW in Austin a week later.

In a funny coincidence, it turns out that Mr Rather currently has two main residences, one in NYC, and one in Austin. So you would think the odds would be good that he could come to one of the talks, if he wished.

Crafting Type” intro font design workshop in Portland »

I am joining Dave Crossland and other type designers (depending on registration levels) to teach a 3-​day intro type design workshop here in Portland at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). I am really looking forward to this, even if I don’t know that I can live up to the hype from the initial teaser post about it. But I love type, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to teach the basics of type design. I am looking forward to helping do that in a workshop environment, and doing so with other instructors so we can divide up the material, and even dynamically discuss things in front of the class. Dave comes from a very different perspective than I do in some respects, but we share our love of type and type design.

Thanks to Paul Platosh at PNCA for helping make this happen!

Here is some of my own work:

Hypatia Sans poster style sample

Hypatia Sans poster on Adobe’s site, click for high-​res PDF.

New York: WebVisions + Font Detective (discount!) »

Friends of Speakers (like me) Save 15%!
WEBVISIONS NEW YORK + FONT DETECTIVE

Feb 27th – March 1st
Theater for the New City

WebVisions explores the future of web and mobile design, technology, user experience and business strategy with an all-​star lineup of visionary speakers, including author, filmmaker and futurist Douglas Rushkoff, Ethan Nicolle, creator of Axe Cop and Jason Kunesh from the Obama for America campaign! Oh, and also me. 🙂

The event kicks off with a full day of workshops followed by special evening events, including my “Font Detective: Extra Bold” talk about cases of forged documents (sponsored by AIGA). And of course, two days of sessions, keynotes and panels, including my talk “Typography is the New Black.”

The “Font Detective: Extra Bold” talk sold out in Chicago, and it will be a much shorter version at SXSW a week later, so this is your best opportunity to come hear some really fun stuff. The Chicago audience refused to even take a bathroom break when given the option to hear more cases instead, so I gather people find it pretty compelling. Or maybe Chicagoans just have unnaturally strong bladders.

To receive the conference discounts, click the link “Enter promotional code” by the Order Now button and enter the code “DOGOODERY

Register online at http://wvnyc-2013.eventbrite.com/#

Town Hall meeting for TypeCon coming to Portland in 2013 »

All sorts of folks are getting involved, but I’m one of those helping bring TypeCon to Portland OR for August 2013!

My colleague Jim Kidwell and I will be hosting a Town Hall for volunteers and interested parties 7 pm Tues Nov 27 at Extensis in downtown Portland.

More details and RSVP.

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