Computed Type Design

Christoph Knoth Contents

Abstract 3 Introduction 3 History 5 Some Historical Samples 6 About Curves 10 The History of Electronical Type Design 13 Graphical Pioneers 14 The Commercialization and Freeing of Electronical Type 16 The Age of Device-Independent Design 18 Type Outside the Box 19 Technical Approaches in Type Design 25 Defining Shapes 26 Calligraphic or Skeleton Approach 26 Outline Approach 26 Mosaic or Grid Approach 27 Inter- and Extrapolation 27 Combining Shapes 28 Placing (Linked) Shapes by Hand 28 Automated Shape Placing 28 Self Organizing Shapes 29 How the tool computer shapes the letter. 30 Characterizing and Classifying fonts 32 Making a parametrical type design tool. 34 Why make your own tools? 34 Why is there no good parametric type design tool? 34 Learning from Font Generators 34 The Difference between Spiro curves and Bézier curves 36 How could it work? 36 Too Many Fonts – Too Many Possibilities 38 How do I want to use a parametric font design program? 38 Theory part of the MA Type Design thesis by Christoph Knoth What makes a good font? 40 More Questions to Be Answered ... Later 42 Thanks to What is the Future of Type Design? 42 Magda, my parents, Tom, Konrad, Kathl, Luke, Louise, my What typeface will become a classic in the future? 42 ecal class mates, my teachers: François Rappo, Roland Früh, Ian Appendix 44 Party, Frederik Berlaen, André Vladimir Heiz and all the people Really Short Glossary 44 who answered my questions and helped me getting further with Bibliography 44 my research: Changyuhan Hu, Ingo Preuß, Tim Ahrens, Karl Webography 44 Leuthold and everyone I forgot. This document is my master thesis at the ECAL / École cantonale d’art de Lausanne and is by no means complete or a hundred percent exact. Please send corrections and additions to [email protected] When this should ever get published I hopefully will have attempted to contact all copyright holders, but I am not sure this will be possible in all instances. So I already apologize for all the mistakes and promise to correct everything with the next print run. Typeface: Computer Modern in all its variety. Printed on a laserprinter on paper. I am thinking about releasing the text under a CC licence but until now everything is, if not otherwise stated, mine. Christoph Knoth in March 2011, Lausanne, Switzerland. Abstract

A lot of tasks in font design are interlinked and a change on one letter will maybe create hours of work on others. The idea of a parametrical typeface could minimize those problems and would allow to design an infinite number of typefaces at the same time. I will try to understand why this way of designing a font never got widely adopted. If it is possible to create a more easy to use program to design western characters. And finally if this approach to type design would help to create new and interesting curves and shapes for letterforms.

Introduction

Type design is a long and tedious process. Just to design the basic letters takes days and it sometimes takes years for a full character set. The process has changed over time with technology evolving giving the designer more and more possibilities, at the same time making everything far more complex and complicated. As a result of this only a small group of people are able to design what is nowadays seen as a proper typeface. Besides the broad knowledge that is needed to design a font the learning curve for a novice can be quite long, even with the help of scripting which can do a lot of tasks that normally would have to be done by hand. In the 70s Donald Knuth developed Metafont. A program that worked with the idea of parametrical fonts and would allow to design an infinite number of typefaces. But why this way of designing never adopted by more then a handful of people? Is it possible to create a far more easy to use program to design western characters by trying to analyze the strongness and weakness of other approaches? And does a programmatic approach to type design help to create new and interesting curves and shapes for letterforms something that would not have been imagined before?

3 History

To understand how type design works today one has to understand the history of type design. That is why I have collected some early historical samples that show first approaches for a mathematical notation and a systematical modifi- cation and variation of fonts in a pre computer era. Followed by a short chapter about the curve and another chapter where I will try to shed some light on the changes that the computer brought to the type design industry.

5 History Computed Type Design

Some Historical Samples

A collection of 12 constructed “A”s Le Roman de Roi, a font that was drawn dating from 1460 to 1529.1 for Louis the XIV, is considered as one of the most detailed and exact notations for the mathematical construction of a font.1

1 Even though research conducted by Ian Party has shown that there is quite a diff erence between this idea and the fi nal typeface. But this has 1 Ian Party. Le Romain du Roi – calligraphie ou construction more to do with the limited mathematical possibilities at this time than géométrique?. 2006. KABK. Page 51 the unability to create a “good” font.

6 7 History Computed Type Design

The “Plaque Découpée Universelle” a modular Oswald Coopers Experiment “15 Serifs” shows an “Falcon stencils” and “Letters built up from the stencil device1, from around 1879. early idea for a modular typeface.1 above elements”1 On the left the “cardboard templ[a]te for making pencil-outline pattern drawings”.

1 Kindel, Eric. The “Plaque Découpée Universelle”. Typography papers 7. 2007. Page 1 Bilak, Peter. History of History. Printing and Graphic Arts in the Harvard College Library 72. Print. of_history>. Web. Cambridge

8 9 History Computed Type Design

About Curves kind. A common procedure to “write down” a curve was to define points that would be on the curve and “In mathematics, a curve (sometimes also called a then fixate them with nails and framing squares. curved line) is, generally speaking, an object simi- Afterwards thin wooden strips (called “splines”) would lar to a line but which is not required to be straight.” be placed in between the nails in a way that the inner “This entails that a line is a special case of curve, force of the spline would create the desired curve. namely a curve with null curvature.”1 And now we Today we are using a series of Bézier curves (more have gone in a full circle and are not much smarter on page 15) where the last point of one curve coin- then before, even though this is the best definition I cides with the starting point of the next curve and call Boeing found. And the search for it was very interesting but them “a Bézier spline”.2 “In computer graphics splines will probably not help type designers to produce bet- are popular curves because of the simplicity of their ter fonts. construction, their ease and accuracy of evaluation, More interesting is that defining a curve as a and their capacity to approximate complex shapes geometric object in the time before computers was through curve fitting and interactive curve design.”3 also a nontrivial task. It was needed to fixate a Even though the concept of off-curve points are harder sketch for the planks of a boat or the wing of a plane. to understand then the old “nails on-curve concept”. Where you needed to achieve a certain kind of accu- But perhaps Spiro curves (page 22) will be one day racy if you wanted to do a second curve of the same a usable alternative.

2 Compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9zier_spline 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curve 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spline_curve

curve segment Pearson Scott Foresman Carl de Boor

anchor- or on-curve-point A boeing draftman splining a curve and his tools on the right.

handle- or off-curve-point

A wooden spline fixated with nails and A Bézier spline made up from two Cubic framing squares. Bézier curves each consisting of two on-curve points and two off-curve points.

10 11 The History of Electronical Type Design

It is true, the development of type design has been heavily influenced by printing technology1. Until at one point type became more and more independent from mate- rial matter. The time when letters could be easily stored, manipulated and arranged inside a computer, changed not only the world of graphic design, but it more or less changed the way how everybody communicates, works and creates. And it did not only change the visual image of the world but also its all driving structure. Because the output that shapes this new time is still dependent on the limita- tions of the technology, recapitulating the development from the very early computer graphics to the rise of global collaborative font design will reveal the strong and weak ideas of digital type design and may help to find new ideas to change it again. That is what the first chapter is for.

1 Peter Bilak in http://www.typotheque.com/articles/in_search_of_a_comprehensive_type_design_theory “The development of type has always been inextricably connected to the development of printing technology.”

12 13 History Computed Type Design

Graphical Pioneers 1949 1952 1959 ness, the reason has much more to When Ivan Edward Sutherland do with the lack of memory for a was asked: “How could you possibly buff er to store all the pixels that have done the fi rst interactive 1946 would be needed. graphics program, the fi rst non- procedural programming language, the fi rst object oriented software system, all in one year?” He replied: “Well, I didn’t know it was hard.”

A handmade prototype of a “light gun” Paul de Casteljau developed what was 1964 Whirlwind went operational in as part of the Whirlwind Project at later known as Bézier curves using de 1949. It was the fi rst digital com- MIT.4 It was one of the fi rst electroni- Casteljau’s algorithm. The ideas there puter capable of displaying real time cal input devices and was used to change are based on were widely publicized It had lots of great ideas inbuilt that Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn text and graphics on a video ter- the state of the memory. in 1962 by the French engineer Pierre are not even standard functions in developed a cathode ray tube minal, which was an oscilloscope Bézier, who used them to design auto- today’s programs. It was object ori- (CRT) that could electronically screen. mobile bodies.6 7 ented and had the possibility that store binary data. At the same time They were a primer part for the objects could be scaled and reused, the tubes “monitor” functioned later to come postscript language. geometrical constructions could be as a visual representation of the made that would depend on each memory.1 other, it also had magnetic lines and 1960 options to make lines parallel and perpendicular. The IBM 2250 Graphics Display 1947 William Fetter (1928–2002) coined the Unit was announced [...]. Similar to term Computer Graphics. the start screen of sketchpad that reads “INK”. “Characters were built The EDSAC memory display was The names of the objects shown on of line segments specifi ed by display the fi rst to use cathode ray tubes this radar screen are in line art and are 1962–1963 list subroutines. Thus any charac- to display information. The cen- therefore real vector letters. ter set or font could be displayed, ter display shows the contents of the although fonts were generally memory.3 extremely simplifi ed for performance 1957 reasons. The computer altered the The further development of the light display by changing the display list. 1954 gun resulted in a light pen that As the display list got longer, the was a used to draw and drag-and- refresh time got longer too and even- When the IBM 740 CRT drop shapes. Which turned out to be tually the display would start to The picture above is taken Recorder became available it could quite tiring because one had to have fl icker.”9 from Kilburns’ report to be used with the IBM 701, IBM 704, Sketchpad is a computer program their arm all the time in a lifted Telecommunications Research and IBM 709 computers to draw written by Ivan Sutherland. It was position.8 Establishment (TRE) Malvern, of vector graphics images on 35 mm the fi rst program ever to utilize a December 1947.2 And can proba- photographic fi lm. With the help of complete graphical user interface. bly be seen as the fi rst electronical this device non-permanent computer The program used line art generated digital and rasterized images that were created digitally that was displayed on a CRT and type on a screen. could be fi xated. not a pixelated screen as we know The picture above shows one of the fi rst it today. The reason for this has digitally scanned letters displayed on an nothing to do with its progressive- oscilloscope. It was fed into a computer with a rotating drum scanner at the National Bureau of Standards.5 Because all the graphics were made up of line art they could also be out- putted by a plotter that could draw straight lines and circles.

4 Image from the courtesy of The MITRE Corporation Archives 5 http://www.webbox.org/cgi/1957%20First%20image-processed%20 photo.html – article from paper: R. A. Kirsch, L. Cahn, L. C. Ray, 6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9zier_curve and G. H. Urban, Experiments in processing pictorial information 8 Pictures from Ivan Edward Sutherland. Technical Report 9 Wikipedia contributors, ‘IBM 2250’, Wikipedia, The 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Williams-tube.jpg with a digital computer, Proceedings of the Eastern Joint Computer 7 Picture taken from http://www-gmm.insa- Number 574, Computer Laboratory – Sketchpad: A man- Free Encyclopedia, 16 December 2009, 10:35 UTC, [accessed 11 May 2010]

14 15 History Computed Type Design

The Commercialization and 1967 1968 a point on all the curves at around October 1977 mid 1980s Freeing of Electronical Type every 30°. Further adjustments to A. A. Beers from the Academy of Fontastic (a bitmap font editor by every letter could then be made on a Science in the Soviet Union wrote a Altsys) screen. One advantage of Ikarus was program that could read a bitmap 1965 DigiGrotesk was one of the fi rst that it could save lots of letters in a character and generate an outline commercially available digital fonts big database. contour using straight and diago- and was designed in seven weights nal lines and four diff erent kinds of from light to bold by the Hell Design curves.19 Studio.14

1977–1979 1975 Plotr by Petr van Blokland used the URW Ikarus algorithm. It was the starting point for the later program Ikarus later supported interpola- Pika that would run on MacOS.20 Hell’s 50T1 Digiset, the fi rst tion, and could create a rounded and It later got sold to URW and was digital typesetter, was made com- In their paper Three Fonts of shaded version of a typeface. It was Donald Knuth developed his fi rst the foundation for MacIKARUS mercially available. Computer-drawn Letters used for the digitalization of letters version of his layout engine TeX (Ikarus M) and later FontMaster. “The process of digitizing the M. V. Mathews, Carol Lochbaum, in a bigger scale.16 together with the font design engine letters happened in an early state of and Judith A. Moss describe three At the end of the same year Metafont (reworked in 1984). It is development in photo typesetting. groups of letters drawn with a vec- Linotype stopped to produce metal a scripting based system for desktop 1981 The fi rst fully digitized typeset- tor display on a cathode ray tube. It type setters.17 publishing and font creation. It has ting system has been the “Digiset”, is probably the fi rst serious attempt a pen and an outlined model (page Bitstream was founded by Mike invented by Hell in Kiel, Germany. to draw outlines of letters.11 26). Could the interpreter back Parker, the head of Mergenthaler’s The system was presented in 1965. 1977 then only output bitmap fonts it is font design activity, that had left For the fi rst time, a letter has been now also possible to use Metatype1 ITC taking with him three col- built up upon little spots. The and produce PostScript fonts. leagues including the type designer available fonts were quite rough CSD(Character Simulated All those programs and most Matthew Carter his former Linotype in resolution and were stored as Design) was the Ph. D. dissertation of the fonts created with them are colleague.21 bitmaps, not as Bézier curves or of Phillippe Coueignoux. He derived available under a free software They are the fi rst to call them- vectors. Every letter was acti- primitives such as stems, arms, and licence. selves a digital type foundry. vated point by point from out of noses and defi ned the spatial rela- “Through Bitstream, Carter the memory and put together to tionships between them. From the and Parker proposed to license the whole black and white page evaluation of these primitives, he digital typeface designs to typeset- containing pictures too. Allen V. Hershey published the generated a grammar to describe the ting equipment manufacturers, a A mnemotechnical code was paper Calligraphy for Computers implicit structure of the characters revolutionary step in detaching the used to build up the page, somewhat describing how he used computers in a font.15 activity of designing digital fonts similar to HTML. For example, a and CRT printers to create a large Franklin C. Crow developed one of from that of building the machines command like “dz12” was used to repertory of digitized characters.12 the fi rst practical solutions for the upon which to set those fonts.”22 set the leading between lines, “sg9” 1975 anti-aliasing problem.18 meant a point size of 9. With this method, complete newspaper pages were generated, processed in the mainframe computer and after that send to the output device.”10 ITSELF (InTeractive Synthesizer of LetterForms), was designed by H. W. Mergler and Y. M. Vargo. A set of parameters could be altered to control the geometric design of the typeface. IKARUS from URW in Hamburg It can probably be seen as the fi rst programmed by Peter Karow was digital parametrical letter design.13 introduced at the ATypI in Warsaw. At the beginning it was primar- ily used to digitize analog letters

and not so much for actually draw- 16 Picture and information from the talk: Re-Inventing 20 http://www.petr.net/index2/-/p-332 Technology, Peter Rosenfeld, DTL FontMaster Conference, The ing type itself. To do that a digitizer 21 compare with Emily King, New Faces – Type design in the Hague, November 2009 tablet and a puck was used to mark fi rst decade of device-independent digital typesetting (1987- 17 http://www.print.ch/home/page.aspx?page_ 1997), PhD Thesis (Chapter One: Technological and Industrial id=550&archive_type_id=92&person=&categories=&arch Change: Setting the Scene) 11 Letterform Design Systems by Lynn Ruggles, Page 5 ive_id=2611&from=756 22 Emily King, New Faces – Type design in the fi rst decade of 12 Letterform Design Systems by Lynn Ruggles, Page 6 14 http://www.designhistory.org/Digital_Revolution.html 18 compare with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ device-independent digital typesetting (1987-1997), PhD Thesis 10 http://www.global-type.org/Digiset.721.0.html 13 Letterforrn Design Systems by Lynn Ruggles, Page 7 15 Letterforrn Design Systems by Lynn Ruggles, Page 7 Franklin_C._Crow 19 Letterforrn Design Systems by Lynn Ruggles, Page 6 (Chapter Three: The East Coast – Matthew Carter)

16 17 History Computed Type Design

The Age of Device- 1983 “The Apple LaserWriter was late 1985 1988 Type Outside the Box Independent Design Telefont from Linotype allows the a relatively low resolution printer, Adobe began to sell fonts indepen- IBM invents subpixel rendering. It is – transfer of digital typefaces via the 300-dot-per-inch, but provided a lot dently of output devices. Marking an improvement of the rasterization GUI & WYSIWYG telephone line. more graphic and typesetting flex- the beginning of the access to and therefore the display quality of 1990 ibility than similar machines that device-independent typesetting type on the screen. on your Desktop were on the market, for example the technologies.36 The first “random” typeface43, called 1984 Hewlett Packard’s LaserJet”31 Beowolf was created by Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland. The 1982 1986 letter shapes changed during print- Adobe was founded in December ing.44 “Beowolf was also the first font 1982 and develops and publishes in the digital font library FontFont.”45 PostScript (PS) (a page description FontShop was founded by Erik language) in the end of the 1983. A Spiekermann. Later, when the picture and line art description lan- typefoundry Berthold went out of 1991? guage that is still used today.23 business FontShop overtook their It can be seen as the start of “The first Macintosh was introduced font library.41 “the age of device-independent on January 24, 1984; it was the first In July 1985 PageMaker was intro- When Altsys released digital typesetting technology”24. commercially successful personal duced by Aldus Corporation. It was Fontographer37 it was the first suc- “PostScript was the first soft- computer to feature a mouse and a one of the first desktop publishing cessful program in the age of the late 1988 ware which allowed fonts to be graphical user interface rather than programs32, initially for the then new device-independent type design designed and distributed indepen- a command-line interface.”28 29 Apple Macintosh and in 1987 for technologies and lead to a “severe and early 1989 dently of the manufacture of the PCs running the then new Windows erosion and lose of the coherent pro- Rob Friedman, president of systems on which they were to be 1.0.”33 34 fessional body that lay behind type Bitstream, announced that his printed. Pages of type described in 1985 design” and a “trend toward inde- company had cracked Adobe’s the PostScript computer language pendent small-scale activity”.38 encryption. PostScript print- ElseWare developed Infinifonta could be printed on any output Because the “design and distribution ers would now accept and process parametrical font constructor, whose device equipped that understand the of type had been liberated from the Bitstream fonts as if they were Type actual main goal was not to ease language.”25 Also in 1985 Benjamin Bauermeister large-scale manufacture of typeset- 1 fonts. This finally allowed anyone font design but to save disk space. To store fonts Adobe used the developed the “PANOSE System. ting systems” which lost more and with the necessary tools to create To achieve this the program used an Type 1 format. It was a simplifica- “It is a method for classifying more of their control and market. Type 1 fonts and Adobe lost con- internal font structure that would tion of the PostScript system and typefaces solely on their visual char- “The type designer does not trols as the only manufacturers of create a font according to a given was not a complete language. That acteristics. It can be used to identify depend on technicians anymore” output devices. Panose code. After which each is why it could only store outlines an unknown font from a sample involving proofs and corrections of In October 1989, Adobe opened glyph had to be reworked with the and font information like names Apple introduces LaserWriter a image or to match a known font those proofs which increased the the PostScript page description writing of “cryptic” lines of code to and spacing (kerning was stored in laser printer with built-in PostScript to its closest visual neighbor from speed of type design.39 More and language and ended the “font war”. further “bend” the shapes to match a PFM (Printer Font Metrics) file). interpreter. It had four typefaces a font pool. The word PANOSE is more novices40 get access to the type the desired font.46 At the end of this Adobe would then sell licenses for or respectively nine font masters compound from letters taken from design world. Resulting in more process only those lines had to be the Type 1 fonts technology and also already built in (Adobes adapted the six classes in which the creator custom typefaces for every kind of 1989–1990 saved resulting in a much smaller offer Type 3 fonts, as a lower-cost versions of Times (Italic, Medium, of the system organized the Latin purpose. font file. implementation of Type 1, which Bold, Bold-Italic) Helvetica alphabet.”35 (read more about it in At the same time we see a lot of 1989 and 1991 are remembered as had no hinting support.26 (Medium, Fat) Courier (Medium, the text “characterizing typefaces” “new” fonts that are just renamed the “glory years”, “when type reve- This new storage format and Fat) Symbol (Medium)).30 on page 32). copies with no or little changes in nue was going through the roof.”42 May 1991 the software to read it lead to many And finally the industrialization, the design. changes in the world of graphic which was criticized by the private “The cost of the licensing was con- design. It made it very easy to copy press movement, made the private sidered very high at this time, and typefaces, there was an enormous press possible. Adobe continued to stonewall on increase in quantity of typefaces and more attractive rates. It was this an “anglicization of type culture”27 issue that led Apple to design their could be observed. own system, TrueType, around 1991. [TrueType was released with the launch of Mac OS System 7 in May 1991 and later in March 36 http://www.typotheque.com/articles/new_ 23 compare with Robin Kinross. Postscript – faces_%28chapter_one_technological_and_industrial_change_ 1992 in Windows 3.1.] Immediately Übergangsmomente: Schrifttypen von 1968 bis 1997. Page 18 setting_the_scene%29 following the announcement of 24 Emily King, New Faces – Type design in the first decade of 37 Fontographer in the later Version 3.5 (picture taken from 31 photo taken from http://museumvictoria.com.au/ TrueType, Adobe published the device-independent digital typesetting (1987-1997), PhD Thesis http://www.guidebookgallery.org/splashes/fontographer) collections/itemimages/237/714/237714_large.jpg 25 Emily King, New Faces – Type design in the first decade of 38 New Faces (Chapter One: Technological and Industrial specification for Type 1 font for- 32 Adams, Peter (2004-03-16). “PageMaker Past, Present, and device-independent digital typesetting (1987-1997), PhD Thesis Change: Setting the Scene), thesis for the degree of Doctor of Future”. http://www.makingpages.org/pagemaker/history/. (Chapter One: Technological and Industrial Change: Setting the Philosophy 1999, Kingston University, http://www.typotheque. Retrieved 2007-06-27. 41 http://fontfeed.com/archives/celebrating-20-years-of- Scene) 28 picture from http://www.mac-history.net/wp-content/ com/articles/new_faces_%28chapter_one_technological_and_ fontshop-with-erik-spiekermann/ "The FontFont logo designed 43 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.07/letterror.html uploads/2008/10/apple_macintosh_1984_high_res.jpg 33 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_PageMaker industrial_change_setting_the_scene%29 26 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ by Neville Brody; left in the original FontFont corporate colour 44 Shown here is the static version FF Beowolf OT R24 Type_1_and_Type_3_fonts#History 29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh 34 picture taken from http://www.prepressure.com/images/ 39 Fred Smeijers, Type now Page 27 PMS 187, and right in the current FontShop yellow." postscript_pagemaker.gif 45 http://www.letterror.com/content/nypels/introduction.html 27 compare with Andreas Pawlik. Postscript – GhostScript. 30 compare with Robin Kinross. Postscript – 40 Emily King, New Faces – Type design in the first decade of 42 http://www.typotheque.com/articles/ Page 25 Übergangsmomente: Schrifttypen von 1968 bis 1997. Page 19 35 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PANOSE device-independent digital typesetting (1987-1997), PhD Thesis new_faces_%28chapter_two_the_west_coast%29#_ftn298 46 Interview conducted via email with Karl Leuthold

18 19 History Computed Type Design

mat. Retail tools such as Altsys With this combination repetitive 1996 It is interesting because he tried October 2004 2005 Fontographer (on January 1995 tasks could be automated. (When The specifi cations for OpenType to deconstruct font characters into Release of the Unifi ed Font Object Gustavo Ferreira presents acquired by Macromedia, owned by later Fontographer was discon- got announced by Microsoft and their essential parts and then used (UFO) at the ATypI meeting in Elementar at the ATypI 2005. It is FontLab since May 2005) added the tinued and a lot of people switched Adobe.52 This new font format is a this imagined structure to reas- Prague by Erik van Blokland and a parametric system of pixel fonts ability to create Type 1 fonts. Since to FontLab. For it RoboFog was subset of both the PostScript Type semble a font just from it parts. A Just van Rossum. It is an open, generated by Python scripts. then, many free Type 1 fonts have rewritten and called RoboFab).49 1 and the TrueType format. system that then worked for very application independent, human been released; for instance, many of It is platform independent, has diff erent fonts. read- and editable font format.54 the fonts used with the TeX type- many typographical feature possibil- These characteristics made it 2006 setting system are available in this September 1995 ities and a better unicode support.53 possible for lots of people to create format.”47 But it took longer than 2000 1999 their own tools (some among others FontLab releases PhotoFonts, a before the fi rst OpenType typefaces are Superpolator, MetricsMachine, plug-in for Photoshop to edit and 2006 Kalliculator, frederik Berlaen Can a program simulate calligraphy. KalliCulator is based on a research of the two most common used pens: the BroadNib and PointedPen. These two pens have there own contrast and way of handeling. I were commercially available. Mac OS 9 integrated TrueType Rounding Ufo). outputsearched for parametersbitmap which describe eachfonts. pen and also the relationPlug-ins between these two pens. for This you can read in my KalliculatorResearchpaper all these parameters i put together in Kalliculator. it is calculating contrast around a skeleton letterform. These skeletons are a mix between the mathematical middle of a stroke and the imaginairy paht the hand outline font support. Fonts otheris following DTP during writing. In aprograms more correct perspective a skeleton and is the mathematical browsers middle of the pen 1992 (doesnt matter which pen) during writing with it. These new generated contrast could be exported to a .pdf or an .ufo. KalliCulator is a tool for quickly gen- could now be installed using follow.erating contrast around one or several skeletons. 1997 drag-and-drop. 2004 G

2004 calligrapher™, jürg Lehni & françois Rappo Monotype Typography was taken f over by AGFA forming AGFA November 7th, 2000 Monotype. PfaEdit (renamed to FontForge in 2004) was released by George 1998 Williams. It is an attempt to create an open source and free for all font The screenshot above from Apple introduced Advanced FontLab 3 for Mac was released. editor. Kalliculator shows an approach that f Typography (AAT) with Multiple is similar to Calligrapher but much master fonts. These are “Type 1 more advanced. Kalliculator was font programs that include two or 2001 developed by Frederik Berlaen in his more “master” fonts within a single master project at the Type & Media Source http://www.typemytype.com font fi le. It allows users to interpo- courseImage inG Screenshot,The KalliCulator Hague. at work late many intermediate “instances” He is using the ideas and possi- of the typeface. The fonts have one bilities of the broad nib and the or more “axes” which might typi- pointed pen following the imagi- Source We Make Fonts, ECAL – Typography, 2006 (ISBN: 978-2-940271-76-4) cally represent the weight, width, or HereImage weF seeScreenshot, a Calligrapher more workspace calligraphic nary line that the hand would take optical size of the font.”48 “The Letter Spirit project is an approach to font design by Jürg when drawing a letter. It is possible Seen as to unpractical it was widely attempt to fi nd out more about [...] Lehni and François Rappo where a to change the skeleton of every letter adopted and used. the creative act of artistic letter- Microsoft introduces ClearType little program called Calligrapher 2006andt ypethe Generator, angle Remo caminada &and Ludovic Varone the thickness of The vector program TYPE GENERATOR allows you to generate precise letterforms in real time. You only need to operate the specific scrollers to produce whole alphabets. The characters are defined by mathe- design. The aim is to model how the in Windows XP (though it was not will allow the application of diff er- the maticalpen formulas, for so that theevery calculated letterforms node.57 are exportable as paths and therefore importable in other programs. Transformations can be applied to the whole alphabet or just on certain letters. Thus, 26 lowercase letters of the roman activated by default until Windows ent pens to the bone structure of a typographic connections between the characters immediately become visible. h 1993 alphabet can be rendered in many Vista). It is an improvement of the font.55 diff erent but internally coherent former rendering of fonts especially FontLab 2.0 for Microsoft Windows styles.” on color LCD displays. This is quite was released. “Starting with one or more seed important for fonts that are not letters representing the beginnings hinted well. of a style, the program will attempt The images above show some types January 1995 to create the rest of the alphabet in of connections used in the inter- such a way that all 26 letters share nal structure of a font design tool 50 23 August 2002 Altsys was acquired by Macromedia that same style, or spirit.” developed by Changyuhan Hu for i which included then a new version In 2002 the Swiss design studio his Ph. D. thesis Synthesis of Mac OS X. Version 10.2 introduces of Fontographer in the Macromedia Norm published a similar attempt Parametrisable Fonts by Shape subpixel rendering a technique GenoTyp is an experiment into Graphics Suite, which helped with their program Sign-generator Components at the EPFL in similar to ClearType. genetic typography by Michael Fontographer’s wider adoption. 1.0.51 Lausanne. Schmitz. “Diff erent fonts can be Fontographer could now be mixed as desired and their genomes used with RoboFog made by Erik can be manipulated. New fonts van Blokland and Just van Rossum are generated according to genetic that brought, together with FogQ, rules.”56 source type Generator, User instructions, alphabet + programm, 2006, hGK Zurich Image H Screenshot, Type Generator workspace Python scripting to Fontographer. Type GeneratorI User Utility, Book Programm, designed S. 5 + 6, Parameter overviewand conceptualized by Remo Caminada and

49 http://www.petr.net/index2/-/p-254 http://www.petr.net/ Ludovic Varone and programmed index2/-/p-253 54 http://unifi edfontobject.org 47 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 52 http://news.cnet.com/Short-Specifi cation-for-OpenType- by Patrick Vuarnoz is a program Type_1_and_Type_3_fonts#History 50 http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/mcgrawg/lspirit.html available/2110-1001_3-226558.html 55 Source: We Make Fonts, ECAL – Typography, 2006 (ISBN: http://www.cogsci.indiana.edu/farg/mcgrawg/thesis.html 978-2-949271-76-4) 48 http://www.adobe.com/devnet/opentype/archives/mult_ 53 compare with http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ master.html 51 http://www.norm.to/pages/generator_3.html OpenType#Vergleich_mit_TrueType_und_PostScript 56 http://www.genotyp.com/ 57 Source: http://typemytype.com

20 21 History Computed Type Design

that is able to generate letter forms August 2008 2010 he is working on a letter measurer, in real time. Because the characters As part of a larger collection of so that he can fi nd out more about are defi ned by mathematical formu- scripts for FontLab the RMX the rhythm (spacing, width) and the las a lot of diff erent parameters can Harmonizer from Tim Ahrens gives legibility of letters.65 be adjusted and then will change the possibility to harmonize Bézier the whole alphabet or just one let- curves and so helps to speed up the ter. Afterwards the typeface can be design process. 2009 exported as a vector path and used Opening up again the debate in other programs.58 about whether the computer is taking away too much of the responsibility from the type designer.May May 2007 2007 Frank E. Blokland released the DTL Letter Modeller. It is a font construction program that is based on a calligraphic model that Edward Johnston used in the 1920s. The model has metaness features built “typism is a web-based font editor. in to make it possible to change cer- It is a public site where anyone can tain variables and output a basic create a font for others to use and to lower-case alphabet. Furthermore Spiro created by Raph Levien is a study, to modify and to copy.”66 Frank E. Blokland has the idea that toolkit for curve design, especially the model that he is using can also for font design. Spiro is licensed Font Constructor is a tool made be taken to “measure” typefaces by under the GPL and shipping with October 2009 by Frederik Berlaen that makes comparing their characteristics to FontForge and Inkscape.64 Trying to it easy to “play” with elements in the most basic confi guration of the establish a more intuitive on-curve- Web Open Font Format (woﬀ ) order to build a typeface. DTL Letter Modeller. That is why point vector design (on the left) in for Firefox 3.6. Other browsers plan he is working on a letter measurer, comparison to the off - and on-curve- to introduce it.67 so that he can fi nd out more about point based Bézier curves (on the the rhythm (spacing, width) and the right). legibility of letters.61 2010 August 2008 As part of a larger collection of 2009 scripts for FontLab the RMX Harmonizer from Tim Ahrens gives Spiro was released by Raph Levien, the possibility to harmonize Bézier a new and more intuitive way of curves and so helps to speed up the drawing “smooth”59 curves. design process. Opening up again the debate about whether the computer is taking away April 2008 too much of the responsibility from the type designer.

“typism is a web-based font editor. Frank E. Blokland released the DTL It is a public site where anyone can Letter Modeller. It is a font con- create a font for others to use and to struction program that is based on study, to modify and to copy.”62 a calligraphic model that Edward Johnston used in the 1920s. The model has metaness features built October 2009 in to make it possible to change cer- FontStruct from FontShop is a free tain variables and output a basic online font-building tool based on Web Open Font Format (woﬀ ) lower-case alphabet. Furthermore geometrical shapes, which can be for Firefox 3.6. Other browsers plan Frank E. Blokland has the idea that arranged in a grid pattern.60 to introduce it.63 the model that he is using can also be taken to “measure” typefaces by comparing their characteristics to

58 Source: Type Generator, User Instructions, Alphabet + the most basic confi guration of the Programm, 2006 HGK Zürich, 1 Screenshot, Type Generator DTL Letter Modeller. That is why workspace, 2 User Utility Programm, S. 5, 6, Parameter overview 61 http://typophile.com/node/48736 65 http://typophile.com/node/48736 59 http://typophile.com/node/52821 62 http://typism.appspot.com/fonts/index 66 http://typism.appspot.com/fonts/index 60 http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/learn_more 63 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Open_Font_Format 64 http://www.levien.com/spiro/ 67 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Open_Font_Format

22 23 Technical Approaches in Type Design

There are many ideas and concepts towards font design and how the design of a typeface should be tackled. That is why there are numerous ways on how programmers laid out software for the development of digital typefaces. The two main tasks when designing type are the definition of shapes and the combination of them. Therein we can find different approaches that will be analyzed in this chapter. It will be pointed out which program uses which approach with a discussion of what are the assets and drawbacks.1 Some programs, one being Metafont, even allow the combination of two or more of those approaches.

1 Starting points for this kind of comparison can be found in the “research project generating fontdesign” by Frederik Barlean, Jürg Lehni, Ian Party, François Rappo and Ludovic Varone. Technical Approaches in Type Design Computed Type Design

Defi ning Shapes

The fi rst signs left by man were the prints of their foot steps in sand and soft soil. The fi rst signs consciously created by man were probably written with the index fi nger or a stick in the sand, then later carved in wax, wood and stone which would fi nally preserve the traces for centuries. The foot would leave a complete shape with one print, making it the ancestor of today’s often used outline approach. The fi nger however, would create a thick line that would follow its movement making it the forerunner of the calligraphic approach. Later shapes would also2004 cbealligrapher™, drawn jürg Lehni & f rançoisfrom Rappo the outside what took more time but would also give new stylistic f possibilities. So from the very beginning both approaches would coexist as calligraphy and punchcutting coexisted. Also found objects like stones would be used to create shapes and are today known as the mosaics or grid approach.

Source We Make Fonts, ECAL – Typography, 2006 (ISBN: 978-2-940271-76-4) Image F Screenshot, Calligrapher workspace Calligraphic or Skeleton Approach Outline Approach Inter- and Extrapolation Mosaic or Grid Approach How it works How it works How it works Originated from linear-drawing, writing and calligra- Originated from the drawing of letters rather then How it works A software tries to analyze already existing glyphs phy where diff erent kinds of pens (pointed, broad-nib, the writing of them, diff erent kinds of tools allow to A grid defi nes where diff erent kind of strokes or parts and inter- and extrapolates between their maxima. It ...) get applied to a skeleton resulting in diff erent kind change the outline of each glyph. Sometimes referred can go. Originally used to cover surfaces with tiles works best to interpolate in between diff erent weights of characters depending on the pen. to as “sculpting”2 this approach has not changed much and called a mosaic many grids have been refi ned and and widths of the same font but it can also be used to since its introduction in Fontographer. adapted to better suit the construction principles of interpolate in between diff erent fonts. Most of the time Example Programs fonts. it produces an unforeseen and more experimental new » Illustrator has many tools to make fonts with a Example Programs font. bone structure (and all kind of other vector deforma- » FontLab and Fontographer (Bézier curves) require Example Programs Today it is mostly used to interpolated in between tion), but there is no font export a lot of experience to make the curves harmonic. » Pixelfonts were a necessity when displays changed outlines but one can also imagine it to be used to » Metafont uses formulas and parameters to change » Ikarus needs a point each 30°, which results in lot of from vector to bitmap. In a way it is still the stan- interpolate in between skeletons. the bone structure points, it is a good program to digitize a font. dard today for screen displays. But today the pix- » Calligrapher from Jürg Lehni and François Rappo » Metafont uses curves and formulas together with elized letters are derived from vector versions. And Example Programs » Kalliculator uses hand placed skeletons with a very parameters, but is not very intuitive, because there only very few fonts get a special so called hand » Multiple Master Fonts sophisticated brush model is no graphical user interface. If one outline has hinted version, where the letters get optimized for » Extrapolating functions in Fontlab metaness included then it can be used to generate special pixel sizes. » Superpolator numerous shapes, but they are at the same time very » Fontstruct is an online tool which makes it very » GenoTyp hard to control. easy to share your font design. » Spiro curves (see also page 22) are a more intui- » DutchLettermodeller is programmed to use relative approach than Bézier curves, they are harder to tions based on a calligraphic model but the actual control, but have better joints. rendering is more related to a grid approach. » ARAP (As-rigid-as-possible) is used for a very intuitive shape deformation, but it is at the same time probably harder to achieve very exact results.3

2 http://typophile.com/node/29008 3 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.21.3205&rep=rep1&type=pdf

26 27 Technical Approaches in Type Design Computed Type Design

Combining Shapes

The combination of shapes is an approach that can already be observed with the use of counter punches in the early metal type design. Its scope can be advanced by looking at Oswald Cooper’s work from 1936 (page 8), “which involved apply- ing 15 serifs [...] to stems of similar weight to test their infl uence in letter design”4 or Matthew Carter’s work for the Walker Art Center5. But the process of combining shapes is not only important in the design process but can also be used in the type setting program. With the use of diff erent OpenType features it can provide alternate letters or ligatures. This is especially important for Arabic typefaces or lots of typefaces that try to simulate handwriting.

4 The history of History, Peter Bil’ak, http://www.typotheque.com/articles/the_history_of_history 5 Matthew Carter http://design.walkerart.org/detail.wac?id=2098&title=Articles

Placing (Linked) Shapes by Hand Automated Shape Placing Self Organizing Shapes » The method that Changyuhan Hu introduced with How it works Example Programs his PhD-thesis “Synthesis of Parametrisable After drawing a shape you can drag it around, save » Metafont allows diff erent kind of parametrical com- Fonts by Shape Components” at the EPFL in it somewhere and reuse it for the next shape. It is a ponents to be used in a font. What is not only use- Lausanne in 1998 off ers a fl exible font description. function that most people used to and that is probably ful for accents but also comes in handy for Kanji Characters are derived by an “assembly of struc- the most “natural”. For programming reasons it is usu- characters. ture elements (stems, bars, serifs, round parts, and ally not possible to nest shapes in an infi nite number. » In 2008 at the ECAL in Lausanne, David Keshavjee arches)”6. Some things, like the placing of accents for diacritics, and Julien Tavelli wrote a script for FontLab to In my eyes the underlying model is a great idea are often automated. generate diff erent basic shapes with a freely chosen because it captures the fundamental model of type contrast. After which the script could assemble those design. And it defi nitely takes care that the font gets Example Programs components to form a font. Every position where a high consistency. I am not sure though if the imple- » FontLab those parts had to be placed was hand coded. mentation is as fl exible as the ground model as I have » Font Constructor not seen the program in use. It is obviously quite » Fontstruct (shapes can only be placed in a very good in recreating fonts, but it is not clear if it can rough grid) create new fonts.

6 Changyuan Hu, Roger D. Hersch. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Parameterizable Fonts Based on Shape Components. Page 1

28 29 Technical Approaches in Type Design Computed Type Design

How the tool computer shapes the letter. There is a certain idea about how computer generated fonts look like. This originated from the look and feel of tech- nically created typefaces which are most of the time constructed or designed in a way that they are computer readable like OCR-A (1966) from American Type Founders and OCR-B (1968) from Adrian Futiger.1 Inspired from those type faces other designers created fonts which are not computer readable but share the same style. »»Another characteristic is an obvious grid which is associated with the way a computer works. One can observe this in the “New Alphabet” (1967) by Wim Crouwel which is the most famous example of this style. OCR A »»Fonts that are created solely from lines or geometric shapes like pixel fonts. a pixel font »»The first PostScript fonts could not have too many points. An outcome of this constraint is among others the font Charter (1993) from Matthew Carter. »»Fonts that try to emulate materials with a filterish like feeling. »»Repetitive geometric shapes like the fonts generated with the FontLab script from David Keshavjee and Julien Tavelli. Amiga Video Toaster 2.0 Demo from Newtek Wim Crouwels New Alphabet

metallic type filter

1 http://myfonts.wordpress.com/2006/09/18/ typographic-abbreviations-series-1-ocr/

30 31 Computed Type Design Characterizing and Classifying fonts

There have been many attempts in font sellers like linotype, myfonts, Stroke weight the history of type design to fi nd a lot are from the type cooker3 hairline, very thin, thin, extra classifi cation systems. An early and and some are taken from memory. light, light, book, plain, medium, widely used one was developed by They are regrouped shortend and semi bold, bold, extra bold, black, Maximilien Vox in 1952. It groups extended when I thought this was heavy fonts depending on their character- necessary. istics typical for the centuries they Intended application appeared in the fi rst time. Construction unknown, multi-purpose, news- The Panose System devel- roman, italic, caps and small caps, print, smooth off set printing, oped by Benjamin Bauermeister capitals with roman, capitals with engraving, signage, packaging, sub- that you can see on the right side italic, continuous script, casual titles on television, anti-aliased solely relies on visual characteris- brush script, nothing bitmaps, rubber stamping, way tics and leaves out the historical fi nding4 references. One example could Width be: “Family Kind: Latin text = compressed, condensed, narrow, Intended size 2, Serif Style: Cove = 2, Weight: normal, extended, wide, very wide, very small, reading sizes, display Medium = 6, Proportion: Modern extremely wide sizes, very large sizes = 3), Contrast: Medium low = 5, Stroke variation: Transitional = Height and Height-Relations Other things 4, Arm style: Straight arms = 5, ascender to x-height to descender, many/few details (corresponds Letterform: Round = 2, Midline: ascender/descender is normal, lon- to small and display sizes), Standard = 3, X-height: Large = ger than normal, shorter than discontinuous, many/few peculiar- 4”, which would give you the code normal, much shorter than normal, ities, randomness in type setting 2263545234. This is very handy for none at all (through letter substitution), a database but does not help you squarishness, thick/thin stroke when you are talking with a human Contrast type endings about type faces. broad nib, pointed nib, transi- Being dissatisfi ed with the tional, speedball nib, brush, can’t Special existing approaches Indra be determined, the relation of the only straight lines, octagonal con- Kupferschmid proposed together inner curve to the outer curve struction, rough contours, casual, with Max Bollwage and Hans sketchy appearance, cut as sten- Peter Willberg in 1998 another Contrast amount cil without drop-out counters, must classifi cation system that takes inverted contrast, slightly inverted contain at least 1 ligature, must the structure and impression into contrast, no contrast at all (thick contain at least 2 ligatures, initial account.1 equals thin), no visible contrast, and terminal swash variations Another approach is to describe very low contrast, low contrast, fonts by grouping them with some contrast, visible contrast, Qualities similar fonts because one very quite some contrast, a lot of con- treadable, neutral, most eﬃ cient 5, known font name can imply a lot of trast, high contrast, very high suitable for small type6, best to characteristics.2 contrast, extreme contrast learn to read7, fraud resistant8, for Categories make sense for a low resolution printing (Bitstream general overview but proved to be Stems Charter and Lucida typeface) useless in special cases because straight, some ductus, not a single nowadays when type designers mix straight line, not a single straight From a Certain Period styles and characteristics belonging angle, fl ared Humanist, Garald, Transitional, to diff erent categories to elude Modern (Didone, Mechanistic, their type designs from being put Stroke endings Lineal) in one group human readable clas- straight, no serif, rounded, no serif, sifi cations are more or less obsolete wedge shaped serifs, slab shaped or only suitable for older typefaces. serifs, some serifs here and there, To get a better overview I tried only serifs at the top end, only ser- to collect as many as possible tags ifs at the bottom end 4 http://opentype.info/blog/2009/09/02/ and categories. Characterizations designing-the-ultimate-wayfi nding-typeface/ are taken from the websites of big 5 http://www.gerardunger.com/fontstore/store-gulliver. html 6 http://www.fontshop.com/fontlist/applications/ small_text/?utm_source=NewsletterApr272010&utm_ 1 Indra Kupferschmid. Buchstaben kommen selten allein medium=web&utm_content=FontsForSmallSizes&utm_ 1 (ISBN 3-7212-0501-4), Hans Peter Willberg. Wegweiser An overview of the panose system created by Alan Bernard Hughes. term=em&utm_campaign=HelvCompanions Schrift (ISBN 3-87439-569-3), Max Bollwage. Typografi e kompakt (ISBN 3-540-22376-2) 7 http://www.clubtype.co.uk/fonts/sas/sassoonfonts.html

2 http://typophile.com/node/9757 3 http://typecooker.com/parameters.html 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift 1 http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=941

32 33 Computed Type Design Making a parametrical type design tool.

Why make your own tools? ple have both of these unusual combinations of skills; hence the best products of Metafont “I try not to get too engaged with designing will probably be collaborative efforts between and defining the technology by itself. I see too two people who complement each other’s many gifted designers getting too deeply into abilities. Indeed, this situation isn’t very dif- the abstract questions of formulations of tech- ferent from the way types have been created nology, so they have no time left to actually for many generations, except that the role of use the technology in a creative way. I sup- “punch-cutter” is now being played by skilled pose there is a lot of creativity in making the computer specialists instead of by skilled tools, but I also want to reserve the time for metalworkers.”3 the simple making of artifacts: books, posters, In this quote a weakness of MetaFont typefaces, exhibitions, etc.”1 already becomes obvious. You need to be Peter Bilak may have a point with his skilled in two things and as a matter of fact opinion because tools need a lot of time to be many people are not. So being skilled only in conceptualized and to be build but if you are programming will not get you started with done with it you save a lot of time and can designing a font so you better start getting create something unique you were unable to good in drawing curves rather then learning do before. For example mass customization to program. of an item with the help of a script that over- Today the situation may have changed Different styles of type obtained by varying the parameters of takes repetitive task. considering that the many “super families” Metafont: (a) Computer modern roman; (b) Computer modern Furthermore the limits of the programs with OpenType features are the product of bold; (c) Computer modern sans-serif; (d) Computer modern sans- you have installed on your hard disk often programming help from someone other than serif bold; (e) Computer modern typewriter; (f) Computer modern dictate what you can and will do with it. But the type designer and are often part of a slanted roman; (g) Computer modern roman with small caps; (h) it would be better to tell the machine what to collaboration. But there is still a lot of hand Computer modern roman with small caps and “small lowercase”; do, not the other way around.2 work included. (i) Computer modern funny.1 Maybe the point of making your own programs is also that already the thinking 1 Knuth, Donald Ervin. Digital Typography. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications, 1999. Page 50. Print. and researching about a possible tool that Learning from Font you would need and trying to produce it can Generators change how you think about your profession and the way you work. And it is much better Only a few designers where ever interested

then to wait for the update of your favorite in improving the technology of type design. Computer Modern (BKM-cmr10) program that will never come anyway. They just used the available tools and more or less handcrafted with an enormous time abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz consuming process lots of typefaces. Most Why is there no good of the programmers on the other hand just parametric type design tool? saw the possibilities of the technology but ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ never thought about what a type designer

Donald Knuth says that: “A top-notch really needs. Century designer of typefaces needs to have an Metafont can probably be seen as a good unusually good eye and a highly developed example for this assumption. It was designed abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz sensitivity to the nuances of shapes. A top- to give rasterized letters at the end. This notch user of computer languages needs to was not a problem at the time Donald Knuth have an unusual talent for abstract reason- programmed TeX but is a big disadvantage ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ing and a highly developed ability to express now that every font is made out of Bézier

intuitive ideas in formal terms. Very few peo- curves. And it seems that it is almost impos- Monotype Modern abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1 Jürg Lehni interviews Peter Bilak , Typeface as Program 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMJsELe2Rh0 3 Donald E. Knuth. “The METAFONTbook. 2000 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Comparison between Donald Knuth’s Computer Modern and the presumable archetypes.

34 35 Making a parametrical type design tool. Computed Type Design

sible to convert “the formulas” as of which times is quite uncontrollable. It kind of misses the letters are made to those Bézier curves. a function for maxima points. Something that The only practical process is tracing the works naturally with Bézier points but always rasterized letters. gets out of control with Spiro curves. Dave Crossland is stating the idea that type design is probably not very abstract and logical [...] its more emotional than logi- How could it work? cal.4 Making the following statement from Donald Knuth more clear: “asking an artist to It would be nice if it would be possible to become enough of a mathematician to under- treat typefaces more like colors6. So that it stand how to write a font with 60 parameters would be possible to choose some and then is too much”. mix in between them. Adam Twardoch is one of many type A good parametrical type design tool designers that say Knuths font Computer should have in my eyes an internal font struc- Modern (see on the page before) is “simply ture that incorporates the most basic features hideous” and because he is so “brilliant” it similar to the one that Changyuhan Hu came proves that his “concept has massive fl aws”.5 up with. It should be possible to add tags So I guess that most of the designers to every node or connection to allow special assume that it is much faster to sculpt letters treatment trough the program. Tags could Original Noordzij Cube regenerated by Changyuhan Hu than to program them. be for example x-axis, top-extrema, baseline, On the following pages I started to collect pen-turn, smooth-connection et cetera. examples of computer generated fonts to Categories derived from the chapter about make future comparisons between presumable categorization and classifi cation (page 32) archetypes and “good” role models in type will be used to make fi rst decisions about the design. appearance of the typeface. Further tags can be added to specifi c parts to change details. Out of this ground structure the software The Diff erence would then create a bone structure made up between Spiro curves from Beziér curves for all the letters. The tags help to put the curves extreme points in hamburgefont and Bézier curves the right positions. It will be then possible to choose the roundness of the curves and to add When I started my research and I discov- in between points that will help to infl uence ered Spiro Curves (page 22) I fi rst thought the overall curve shape. hamburgefont you would need less points if you defi ne a If the user wants to edit the letters I font with the more intuitive spiro curves. But imagine a global and a local mode. If the user after trying it out for a while I am not so sure is in the global mode and changes something anymore. on one letter all other letters will change hamburgefont If you edit with Bézier curves you only correspondingly. If he or she is in the local edit two off -curve-points between two mode the change will only happen on the hamburgefont endpoints defi ning the inbetween-curve. A letter he or she is working on. Every value change on a spiro points on the other hand that is changed will always be stored in rela- aff ects multiple parts of the whole shape tion to the original model. I am also thinking because it is harmonized. In this way it some- about a relative mode where you can defi ne Apple Times from Linotype regenerated by Changyuhan Hu point-to-point-relations or point-to-baseline. Apple Times Bold from Linotype Apple Helvetica from Linotype Bauer Bodoni from Linotype

4 http://understandinglimited.com/2008/07/24/why-metafont-didnt-catch-on/

5 Adam Twardoch as twardoch on http://typophile.com/node/29008 6 http://typophile.com/node/9757

36 37 INFINIFONT: A PARAMETRIC FONT GENERATION SYSTEM 125

Making a parametrical type design tool. Computed Type Design

The solution could also lie in the creation programs from Adobe.7 If you click on one of a graphical user interface for Metafont but of the variations the whole font will develop maybe it would be easier to just take some of in that direction giving you again 8 new the ideas and port them to a new program. variations. So after time you can eff ort- Another good ground structure could less refi ne your font until you reached your be provided by FontForge (page 21) favorite result. because many things like drawing shapes Or you just do it as Michael Bierut: “I left and exporting to numerous font formats are my fi rst job. Suddenly I could use any type- already included. Plus it is free and open face I wanted, and I went nuts. On one of my source software. On the other hand the graph- fi rst projects, I used 37 diff erent fonts on 16 ical user interface is a little messy. But maybe pages.”8 this could be solved at the same time. I am asking myself if also my software should be open source and free for all to. How do I want to use So other people could help to design and a parametric font program it. And this would also create a bigger chance for it to get used. design program? It should be easily expandable and fl exible enough able to accommodate change and At the beginning as long as the program is not Figure 2. The Pecos development environment to create new letter forms, but stiff enough to so much advanced I want to do some quick The Pecos development environment from infi nifont. Looks make letter forms recognizable. experiments and fast try outs. Using it as font very interesting but never got commercially available. As most of the parametrical type design inspiration machine. a Garamond lowercase w. Note the list of available Terafont component names, which can programs we have seen just recreated older Later I imagine it as a tool to react on be used to navigate among Terafont global and function files. The glyph function for the designs there is the question if there really daily news. A kind of “Fast Fashion”-tool for cursive lowercase w has three views, two of which are shown in Figure 2. The text view can be something new or if the program is type design. Maybe even off ering a daily font allows the function text to be divided into sections for convenient editing. The graphical stuck in the in between of already precon- for download. view displays the character outline path resulting from the execution of the compiled function binary by the Font Engine. When visible, the third view (the ‘value bar’) appears to ceived design? This question can only be Big news sites and smaller blogs feel more the left of the text view, and displays in text format the values of all variables local to the answered by making the program. and more like things that are just made for glyph function LowerW2 at the end of its execution. Possible problems that I will encounter consuming. A real interaction or surprise that Pecos uses the same version of the Font Engine for glyph screen display as that shipped and could imagine already: font looks to equal is not just defi ned by the content but further- with the run-time Infinifont system (although through a necessarily different application or boring and special characteristics have to more by the design does not currently exist. programmer’s interface). As the Terafont and PANOSE files are developed, individual be hand coded. The layout only plays a role when someone glyphs can be compiled and displayed in the graphical view, and TrueType files for all visits a site for the fi rst time. active, compiled PANOSE files can be written to disk for testing. Pecos also includes a TrueType character debugger that can be used to read and execute hint programs bound to The more often you come back to this site a particular glyph, and then rasterize the glyph for display on a grid. When the Terafont Too Many Fonts – Too the more you ignore the design and some- Many Possibilities times this makes you quite happy that there is nothing in between you and the content you If you have a great amount of typefaces there like to consume. And at one point you realize is a point where you can only fi nd a lot of it would be easier to let a machine collect grunge fonts and sloppy digitalizations from the information for you and read everything the early 90s. It is like looking for a needle in in one place with the same formatting in an a haystack. This problem also has to be con- RSS-reader. sidered if one makes a parametric type design tool that can output endless amounts of fonts. So maybe one idea would be to create a brainstorm option where you can see the actual state of your font with up to 8 auto- matically created variations like in some 7 compare with http://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereff ects/cs/using/ WS4961760E-8127-46fe-84BD-41304CA88459a.html The “general global parameter editing window” and “The parameter 8 http://www.designobserver.com/observatory/entry.html?entry=5497 editing window for condensation” from Changyuhan Hu’s PhD-thesis “Synthesis of Parametrisable Fonts by Shape Components”1. It was also never released for the public.

1 Changyuan Hu, Roger D. Hersch. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Parameterizable Fonts Based on Shape Components. Page 1

38 39 Making a parametrical type design tool. Computed Type Design

To bring those people back on the page answer points to the problem: how can a type I want to do a news website that on a daily designer design a typeface when he is not in basis off ers a new layout. I think content and control of the subject? Does it mean that we design has to be inspiring and fresh everyday. need to have an endless library of typefaces to What would be a good exercise for a font- fi t an endless number of subjects?”10 A good design tool and a small layout-engine. question. But maybe we need a feature database rather then a type face database. So if you need for example a type face for small What makes a good font? print, you need a list of features that help readability in small sizes. To make a program that generates fonts there Ilene Strizver claims that “[c]onsistent has to be a collection of characteristics defi n- design characteristics”11 are important. But ing what a good font is. sometimes visual inconsistency can give some Most legibility studies proved to be incon- interesting fl avour to a type face? sistent and tested fonts against each other Some other people claim that a type face without taking the x-height, character and has to have good curves.12 So you have to line-spacing into consideration. fi nd the “right” relation from the inner to the And at the end they all gave diff erent outer curve. You have to “repair” optical illu- answers to what reads worse and what reads sions that are caused by geometrical type better. Some studies suggest that fonts that design. But what is a “harmonious” curve? are people used to read better. Another one Is “G2-continuity” enough? No kinks? “fl ow, suggests that when a text is set in a font that harmony and tension”. What defi nes a “steady is hard to read you will remember more of the rhythm”? content you have read.9 So legibility is already At the end it all comes down to a feeling. a really ambiguous factor and might not be Is it a good name? Can I sell it to the client? a serious one when you want to do a display Can I aff ord it? Can I download a test type face anyway. version? Is everybody else already using it? The French type designer Jean-François Do I like it? It seems, it is all personal and Porchez states: “The only criterion I rely you defi nately need your personal font. on is simple: a good typeface fi ts the need of the subject.” “This rather ambiguous

Outlines and possible kind of lower case “A”s generated by Frederik Berlaen’s Kalliculator.1

10 http://www.typotheque.com/articles/ in_search_of_a_comprehensive_type_design_theory 11 Ilene Strizver. What Makes a Good Typeface, Part 1 of 2. http://www. 9 Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Erikka B. Vaughan. itcfonts.com/Ulc/4012/GoodTextFace.htm Fortune favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Eff ects of disfl uency on educational outcomes. Cognition. Volume 118. Issue 1. January 2011. Pages 111-115. ISSN 12 Diff erent Authors. Sitting and looking at curves... http://typophile.com/ 0010-0277. node/69500

1 Berlaen, Frederik. Kalliculator (Masterthesis). Page 15 and 58. .

40 41 Computed Type Design