Conversation with Ricardo Lafuente
Ricardo Lafuente looks at the way typography, (open source) tools and design economies feed off and into each other. In a few weeks he will publish his text here for you to download. In the mean time, read a few of the ideas we exchanged by …
What does it mean, when a typeface is released in the public domain? What are the legal issues surrounding typography? How can a font be generated collaboratively, using open source software? What does it mean, an open standard and how can such a standard fit different contexts?
To get our …
Due to my recent task of teaching typography, I was looking around for
courses and experiences in that domain. This drove me to Ellen Lupton's
website, teacher at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA):
www.designwritingresearch.org.
There, in an impressive generosity, you can consult her current syllabi
and exercices …
Interview with Harrisson
One of the co-conspirators in this open source adventure is a Brussels graphiste going under the name Harrisson. His interest in open source software flows with the culture of exchange that keeps the off centre music scene alive, as well as with the humanist tradition persistingly present …
Kaffeeschrift was developed by Jan Gerner from Dresden for use in
menus etc., hence the monospaced figures. It works well for titles and
headers, but was not designed for longer texts (though it holds out
surprisingly well)
Download and try out here: http://www.yanone.de/typedesign/kaffeesatz/
Tagesschrift is …
For those who read German, type designer and -critic Gerrit van Aaken published quite a few well-researched essays on familiar open source typefaces such as Gentium and Vera plus a few surprises such as Kaffeesatz and Union (not under an open licence, but distributed by the Danish government for use …
Two projects to submit fonts to, or find others to work with:
Typeforge
http://www.typeforge.net
The Typeforge project was initiated by Portuguese type designer Pedro Amado, to create a platform for "open source collaborative type design". You are encouraged to share sketches, notes and ideas and work on …
Discovering that there are so little free fonts* available, keeps surprising us. But did you know that even the logo for Debian, the version of Linux that amongst others Ubuntu is based on, was done in a proprietary font (Poppl Laudatio Condensed)?
* There is a lot of Freeware around, but …
Invalidity Division, sounds like science-fiction, doesn't it? Registered community design is not bad either. Time to start a jargon file...
[...]this time the dispute is over fonts; specifically Segoe, one of the typefaces Microsoft wants to use in Vista (the new Windows, "bringing clarity to your world"). Microsoft filed its …
Is an independent online-platform for digital type culture, initiated by the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany.
The project is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and has the objectives of creating a basis for fundamental typographic …
