Type Museums
David Lemon
theory, mixed with a touch of legal theory and, most recently,
esthetic theory. I enjoy theory quite a bit, but at the end of the day
I discard theories that run counter to my experience. Some of Mr
Grandi's statements bear no relationship to the world I work in, and
I suspect he might benefit from getting his hands dirty.
I'm offended by Mr Grandi's disrespect for the art of type design,
largely because he clearly has no experience with it. He writes:
> And here I see a very grave mistake: literary works are in no way
> comparable to typefaces -- typefaces are not expressions of ideas,
> ideas that can be expressed in any one of many ways. Typefaces are
> variations on a fundamental, utilitarian shape. No more, no less
> than a set of cutlery or a line of fridges or cars or lamps.
Having practiced painting and drawing for many years, then more years
of illustration and graphic design before coming to type design, I
find no qualitative distinction between the inspiration that leads to
a painting or a typeface. The typeface, of course, is more work; I
finished most of my paintings in a few months.
Mr Grandi goes on to ask, apparently in good faith ;)
> Can anybody in good faith claim that a shape is on the same plane
> as a novel?
While I've found some novels valuable, I find that images reach closer
to the human soul than words could hope to, although recent research
suggests that different people experience reality through different
sets of dominant perceptions. It appears that Mr Grandi is not attuned
to his visual side.
I find it useful to consider the example of Computer Modern that Mr
Grandi cites, because it demonstrates the drawbacks inherent when type
design is unprofitable. Dr Knuth had to stop work on his magnum opus
because of the difficulties he ran into with mathematical typesetting.
He did not design the Computer Modern series because he was under the
impression he was a gifted designer, but because he needed features
(addressability and character set) not found in Monotype Modern. Had
there been a business case for doing so, Monotype would have gladly
extended Modern (or a better face) for him, and Dr Knuth would have
been spared several years' distraction. The fact that there wasn't
money in it is instructive.
It would have been interesting to see what real type designers could
have done with the problem (and indeed, Chuck Bigelow and Chris Holmes
have more recently demonstrated one such solution). As it is, the
average TeX user is left with a mediocre interpretation of a second-
rate design. CM's popularity stems from its free distribution and
original association with TeX, rather than visual strengths. Dr Knuth
is a good friend of Professor Zapf, and I don't think either considers
himself more than a dabbler-by-necessity in the other's field.
In the end, Mr Grandi suggests that maintaining laws and cultural
practices which allow font theft and piracy is a necessary price to
pay for the freedom to develop new designs. This is a fine-spirited
defense of freedom, but I don't see its practical value. In the real
world, little of value is added without hope of compensation, and
there is little hope of compensation where theft is unrestricted. I
find it hard to accept that people who are creating designs of
demonstrable value (proven by the fact that they're stolen) should
lose their livelihoods in a tradeoff for this supposed freedom. None
of the scenarios Mr Grandi contrives to prove the contrary strike me
as at all realistic.
While I trust it was an attempt at humor, I wonder about the vision of
someone who points out that "...the dozen faces in which most text is
set have already been designed, haven't they...". I agree it's hard to
set text in a font that hasn't been designed yet, but this hardly
suggests all worthwhile type's been done. Since some of today's more
popular text fonts weren't around 50 years ago (e.g. Helvetica and
most of Professor Zapf's designs), it's easy to imagine fonts not yet
designed becoming popular in the future. Creativity does not run out
of avenues; what's growing scarce is the cultural support for this
particular form. It appears that Mr Grandi is among those who won't
know what they've lost.
- David Lemon
type nerd
disclaimer: These are only my opinions, but I'm happy to share them.
Piercarlo Grandi
David> I'm offended by Mr Grandi's disrespect for the art of type design,
David> largely because he clearly has no experience with it. He writes:
pcg> And here I see a very grave mistake: literary works are in no way
pcg> comparable to typefaces -- typefaces are not expressions of ideas,
pcg> ideas that can be expressed in any one of many ways. Typefaces are
pcg> variations on a fundamental, utilitarian shape. No more, no less
pcg> than a set of cutlery or a line of fridges or cars or lamps.
David> Having practiced painting and drawing for many years, then more
David> years of illustration and graphic design before coming to type
David> design, I find no qualitative distinction between the inspiration
David> that leads to a painting or a typeface.
Yeah, there is an important difference though: a painting communicates
an idea, and indeed that's its *only* purpose most of the time.
Expression is essential in a painting. A typeface, or a lamp, or a car's
body are beautiful only incidentally, their purpose is different, and
their scope is not expression, is utility.
Graphic design, of which I think typeface design is an instance, is an
important and qualitatively important endeavour; I can contemplate a
well shaped chair with almost the same pleasure as I can contemplate a
Mondrian painting.
But the monopolies granted on these in many countries are *completely*
different because of their different natures: Mondrian's estate own the
copyright on his paintings, not on all paintings made using grids of
straight lines with patches of color in between; it is a long and hard
monopoly, but it is very narrow, because it only protects *one*
expression. Typefaces, lamps, car bodies having a prescribed, utility
dictated shape, much like a window-based GUI, attract, int those
countries that have felt like it, a much less potent monopoly, because
look-and-feel style generalizations are all too easy...
pcg> Can anybody in good faith claim that a shape is on the same plane
pcg> as a novel?
David> While I've found some novels valuable, I find that images reach
David> closer to the human soul than words could hope to, Mr Grandi is
David> not attuned to his visual side.
I was not arguing about their "valuableness"; I was asking if they are
essentially on the same plane. They are not; and not only because by
common, if perhaps unjustified consent, literature is considered a major
art, and graphics design isn't, but also because of their _nature_; for
example the impact on society of granting a monopoly on "On the road"
does not in way prevent anybody writing any other novel about crossing
the USA by car, as the idea cannot be monopolized; but where is the idea
in a typeface? The expression is it all; and in practice, except for
oddball and display designs, there are clearly recognizable likenesses,
among a few popular typeface families, so that infringement could well
be too easy to litigate.
Unless one writes a novel that is *textually* (near) identical to "on
the road" plagiarism cannot obviously be alleged. But all fonts of an
ilk (e.g. all the "Helvetica"s) look alike -- by the metric of copyright
law one can well argue that Computer Modern is an illegal plagiarism of
Monotype Modern, while it sounds harder to argue that "Thelma & Louise"
is ripped off "On the road".
Therefore typeface (or car, lamp, cutlery) shapes are on a different
_plane_ from a novel or a painting has a direct bearing on the
appropriate legal regime for them, quite independently of any argument
over their relative artistic worth, which is quite a distinct subject,
and one quite irrelevant to this thread, and into which I shall not be
drawn.
So, if you feel that arguing typefaces are on different plane from a
novel offends you, well, too bad for you.
Piercarlo Grandi
[ ... as part of a long discussion as to whether granting some form,
and which form legal monopolies on typeface is necessarys, desirable,
or effective as to supporting and encouraging the craft/art of
typeface design, or whether most forms or least some particulalrly
strong form of legal monopoly will result in merely enriching the
established players, possibly also making it impossible or risky to
develop new viable designs by incremental evolution as has been done
for the past few hundred years ... ]
David> I find it useful to consider the example of Computer Modern that
David> Mr Grandi cites, because it demonstrates the drawbacks inherent
David> when type design is unprofitable. Dr Knuth had to stop work on
David> his magnum opus because of the difficulties he ran into with
David> mathematical typesetting.
David> He did not design the Computer Modern series because he was under
David> the impression he was a gifted designer, but because he needed
David> features (addressability and character set) not found in Monotype
David> Modern.
This is a partial view: the full story is that he was fed up with the
limitations, primarily as to the costs and lack of flexibility of
typesetting, of the traditional printing business that Monotype and
similar companies dominated and felt no need to improve.
So he decided to empower himself by being a pioneer into the cheap
technology of desktop typography, bypassing the limitations and
restrictive practices of the printing business of the time. Monotype had
then no interest whatsoever in desktop typography, could not care less
about it except perhaps as a curiosity or a threat, and he was forced to
roll his own. And he legally could!
David> Had there been a business case for doing so, Monotype would have
David> gladly extended Modern (or a better face) for him, and Dr Knuth
David> would have been spared several years' distraction. The fact that
David> there wasn't money in it is instructive.
Indeed! There was no money in it because Monotype was out to make a
profit in a comfy way, and there was no profit made in doing innovative
designs that have a market as narrow as highly mathematical
books.
Therefore Knuth, taking advantage of technology that Monotype did not
care about, and probably loathed because it lead to the demolition of
their cosy market position, empowered himself. I guess, but this is
perhaps just my paranoid streak, that if Monotype had the possibility,
they would have stopped him -- Computer Modern, and desktop typography
of which is was a vehicle, has done a lot to destroy the old world of
typography and type design
But if Monotype lost sales of Monotype typefaces to N possible customers
who could have afforded traditional typography, and chose instead to be
content with desktop typography, perhaps much more than 100 times N
other people were very happy to be able to afford desktop typography
thanks to CM and TeX. Monotype and friends only care about the N lost
customers; but tell that to the 100 N people who could stop struggling
trying to write papers with typewriters and hand annotations.
The story of Computer Modern is emblematic of all that is wrong in the
cosy high margin/low volume business model that Charles Bigelow likes so
much, and is a good example of the struggle put up by computer people,
that have realized the empowering effect of desktop typography and not
depending on unsympathetic typographers and print equipment houses.
David> It would have been interesting to see what real type designers
David> could have done with the problem (and indeed, Chuck Bigelow and
David> Chris Holmes have more recently demonstrated one such solution).
Belatedly! And the meantime, for all its limitations, more scientific
papers have found a better shape, even if not as decorous as it could
have been, than ever before.
David> As it is, the average TeX user is left with a mediocre
David> interpretation of a second- rate design.
And they have been happy with it. The cost/benefit ratio is OK: the cost
is low, the benefit is sufficiently better than typewriters.
Thanks to Knuth being able to legally roll his own, hundreds of
thousands of scientific writers now can afford to have near (which is
good enough) typeset quality for their papers at very low cost, without
having the forced choice between using a typewriter and hand annotation,
and spending huge money to have a professional typographer lay it out in
a professionally designed font.
This upsets the professional typographers and the professional font
designers, just as it has mightily upset IBM that its mainframe business
is plunging because people are empowering themselves with desktop
machines.
All sorts of nice people sing the siren song of upholding quality
standards when advocating restrictions, usually ferocious like those
advocated by Charles Bigelow, on the ability of lesser beings to compete
with them. Of course their competitors are unfair: they, like Knuth, are
not properly trained and anointed members of the guild:
David> Dr Knuth is a good friend of Professor Zapf, and I don't think
David> either considers himself more than a dabbler-by-necessity in the
David> other's field.
[ incidentally, how revealing is on one hand to acknowledge that
Knuth had to dabble by necessity in the world of typeface
design, and that necessity has also driven, perhaps unwillingly,
Zapf into computers -- weren't the good old ways better? :-) ]
The advocates of the closed shop, in one form or another, also often
point out that unfettered freedoms means that seedy beings are allowed
to commit less than nice acts, and use this as an excuse for advancing
suggestions that will not only proscribe the less than nice acts, but
also, for good measure, a lot of the not so bad ones:
David> In the end, Mr Grandi suggests that maintaining laws and cultural
David> practices which allow font theft and piracy is a necessary price
David> to pay for the freedom to develop new designs.
I think this is a misrepresentation: I am not saying that _all_ possible
forms of monopoly on typefaces will discourage, via the threat or the
actuality of litigation, evolutions and interpretations of the most
popular existing designs, which is what typeface designers do all the
time.
I am saying that _Charles Bigelow's_ proposal almost necessarily will,
and that given a status quo in which there is full artistic freedom but
also the freedom to pirate, and one in which the freedom to pirate is
removed at a grave risk to artistic freedom, I'd rather keep the status
quo, and the burden is on the proponents of restrictions to _prove_ they
will only discourage the most blatant forms of opportunism.
Charles Bigelow, and Adobe, and Monotype, have a very different
position, and it's not surprising: they already have substantial
typeface portfolios, they'd rather trade somebody's else, e.g. Knuth's,
unrestricted freedom to do new designs, for an increase in value and
market power of the assets they already own.
Naturally they can argue that Knuth is a plagiaristw who has stolen some
or most of the essential features of Monotype Modern, and depressed the
sales of that typeface because of unfair competition, and that therefore
monopolies that would stop outright pirates and also Knuth are perfectly
reasonable -- but perhaps unreasonably I don't think that something like
Computer Modern, for all its obvious derivation, should be considered
plagiarism. So, I think that if one wants legal monopolies on typefaces,
one should be careful to define them narrowly enough to allow for
Computer Modern and similar works.
In the balance between granting excessively wide or excessively narrow
monopolies, I, as a member of the public, would rather be prudent and
grant excessively narrow ones, if at all, and only if positive benefit
and improbability of adverse consequences is proven by their advocates;
people with vested interests quite legitimately have a different idea,
and to them being prudent means granting the widest, longest monopolies
possible.
David> This is a fine-spirited defense of freedom, but I don't see its
David> practical value.
See mathematics, or ways of doing business, or mere ideas, or ..., or
GCC, or Linux, :-).
More poignantly, I shall make examples.
1) In the USA no monopoly rights have been granted on typefaces for the
past two hundred years, yet I hope that nobody will argue that
typeface design lagged behind other countries. Charles Bigelow
argues this was because there were other, non legal, forms of
monopoly and barriers to competition -- perhaps this is the case, but
then this merely suggests that legally granted monopolies are not
necessary; and they may not even, in some cases, achieve the hoped
for benefits when established: in the next few years we shall see
whether the granting of typeface monopolies will cause a sudden
effervescence of investment in typeface design and research in the
UK, a country that recently started granting them.
2) Patents on software have not been granted until a few years ago in
the USA, and for the forty years before that one can hardly made a
case that this has depressed software innovation. I cannot see any
difference in the fundamental sw innovation rate before and after, or
as compared to countries like the UK that still don't grant them.
So it is not always true that:
David> In the real world, little of value is added without hope of
David> compensation, and there is little hope of compensation where
David> theft is unrestricted.
^^^^^ [ what suits you to define as theft ]
While I would beg to submit that of any measure to restrict competition
in a market, no matter how well intentioned, and especially when
proposed by existing suppliers to that market, has the consequence of
making them richer by reducing the variety of supply, at least in the
short term; and any other effects in the long term are not as certain.
Charles A. Bigelow
>>>> On Thu, 4 Nov 1993 01:51:26 GMT, le...@adobe.com (David Lemon) said:
>
>David> I'm offended by Mr Grandi's disrespect for the art of type design,
>David> largely because he clearly has no experience with it. He writes:
>
>pcg> And here I see a very grave mistake: literary works are in no way
>pcg> comparable to typefaces -- typefaces are not expressions of ideas,
>pcg> ideas that can be expressed in any one of many ways. Typefaces are
>pcg> variations on a fundamental, utilitarian shape. No more, no less
>pcg> than a set of cutlery or a line of fridges or cars or lamps.
Mr. Grandi appears to be unacquainted with the literature on type design that
discusses the "ideas" involved in, and expressed by, typefaces. This gives him
a decided debating advantage over Mr. Lemon, who is unfortunately handicapped
by actual knowledge of the literature and the profession. To help "level the
playing field", I would like to suggest some reading material that pertains to
this discussion of the presence or absence of ideas in typeface designs. Of
course, what I suggest here is only a small, skewed fraction of the available
literature on the art of type design, but it might nevertheless provide to
readers of this group some pointers toward the broader world of typographic
criticism and philosophy.
1. *Fine Print On Type*, edited by Bigelow, Duensing, and Gentry, Fine Print
Publishers, San Francisco, 1989. The best of the essays on type design from
the journal Fine Print, from 1977-1988. I find all of the essays interesting
(well, I was an associate editor of the journal, and am biased), but those of
greater relevance to this discussion might be: "Galliard" by Charles Bigelow;
"After All, What Does Functional Typography Mean?" by G.W. Ovink (and see also
his many excellent and intelligent essays in the Dutch typography journal
Quaerendo); "ITC Zapf Chancery" by Kris Holmes (and to see what her own ideas
about the chancery style are, take a look at Lucida Chancery and the newly
announced Apple Chancery, which she co-designed). "The Types of Jan Van
Krimpen" by Walter Tracy (and see also his fine book, *Letters of Credit*);
"The New Type Specimen Books: A Critical View" (some people say this contains
some of the nastiest things I've ever said in print, but, hey, who's keeping
score?); "Terpsichore and Typography" by Kris Holmes (about the, yes, "ideas"
that inspired her to design a script typeface); "The Dante Types" by John
Dreyfus (mostly historical, but a pleasure to read his pellucid style, which
can be found in his many other fine writings on typographic subjects); "Eric
Gill's Perpetua Type" by James Mosley (again, mostly historical, but a fine
example of how a first-rate typographic historian tackles a subject);
"Philosophies of Form in Seriffed Typefaces of Adrian Frutiger" by Charles
Bigelow (an admiring look at the ideas immanent in selected Frutiger designs).
2. "Form, Pattern, and Texture in the Typographic Image", by Charles Bigelow,
Fine Print, April 1989. Further discussion of the ideas and relationships of
images that are a part of and expressed by typeface designs.
3. *Hermann Zapf and his Design Philosophy* by Hermann Zapf, Society of
TYpographic Arts, Chicago, 1987. Selected articles and images by the master
typeface designer.
4. *Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning*, by Adrian Frutiger, Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 1989. Originally published in German as *Der Mensch und
seine Zeichen* by the late Horst Heiderhoff. The French edition is "Des signes
et des hommes", Editions Delta & Spes, Lausanne, 1983. A wonderful treasure
chest of ideas from a great designer who thinks *with* images, not *about*
images.
5. *Politics and Script*, by Stanley Morison. The greatest typographic writer
of this century shows that even a heavy weight can have fancy footwork.
Morison, credited with the design of Times New Roman, shows what typographic
historiography can be. Enough ideas to knock out the unwary.
It would be easy to think of many more fine works on type designs. Erich
Schulz-Anker's dazzling essay on Syntax - a sans-serif on a new basis, in
Gebrauchsgraphik, 1970. Matthew Carter's discussion of his Galliard design, in
Visible Language, Winter 1985 (which contains many other interesting essays on
type design). Any of William Dwiggin's charming essays about his own work or
about typography. His essay on Caledonia is particularly good, especially the
pseudonymous "appreciation" by Hermann Puetterschein. Fernand Baudin's
excellent treatise "How Type Works", originally "La typographie au tableau
noir". Gerrit Noordzij's zany and argumentative "Letter Letters" sent to ATypI
members. Gerard Blanchard's semiological thesis on typography, of which there
is an Italian edition, though a French edition may appear.
Really, I don't think that there is any problem of lack of ideas in typeface
design. There probablky is, however, a problem of lack of knowledge in the
minds of some people who presume to judge the art without knowing much about
it.
-- Chuck Bigelow
Charles A. Bigelow
[Well, gosh, he writes a whole lot of things, but I want to comment only on
those that touch on me, Don Knuth, and Computer Modern.]
>The story of Computer Modern is emblematic of all that is wrong in the
>cosy high margin/low volume business model that Charles Bigelow likes so
>much, and is a good example of the struggle put up by computer people,
>that have realized the empowering effect of desktop typography and not
>depending on unsympathetic typographers and print equipment houses.
I met Don Kunth at a Seybold conference at Stanford in March 1980,
and immediately liked what Don Knuth was doing in developing TeX and Metafont
and Computer Modern. I thought it was wonderful. We corresponded over the
course of the next two years on the subject of digital typography. In
particular, I spent many, many hours going over copious proofs of Computer
Modern sent to me by Don, and providing suggestions, criticisms, advice,
comments, and information on how he could improve the design. My advice was
gladly given, and graciously received, even when Don didn't always agree.
Matthew Carter, I recall, also generously contributed time and advice to Don's
Computer Modern project, and so did other designers. Hermann Zapf not only
offered advice, but worked with Knuth in designing the Euler series of fonts
for mathematical typesetting.
To the best of my knowledge, all of the professional type designers who
contributed any time or effort to Don Knuth's typographic work did so with
genuine interest in what Knuth was trying to accomplish, and with no
monopolistic, restrictive, repressive, or revanchist agendas. As an editor of
Fine Print, I arranged for Knuth's book on TeX and Metafont to be reviewed by
Don Day. I wrote an introduction to the concept of "modern" types for Don's
book on Computer Modern Typefaces. I reviewed Computer Modern in my (then)
column for Publish magazine. I arranged for Knuth to speak at the 1983 ATypI
seminar on digital typography at Stanford, and published his talk in the
special issue that I co-edited of the journal Visible Language. That seminar
was, by the way, the first major international conference that brought together
computer scientists, typographers, and type designers to share information and
knowledge about the field that was to become desktop publishing. I donated
three hectic years to organizing that conference, and took not a penny in
personal remuneration from ATypI.
I was the adviser to the Stanford students who implemented Zapf's Euler design
in Metafont, and provided the fonts to the American Mathematical Society. The
story is told in some detail in Dave Siegel's Stanford technical report.
So don't lecture to me, Piercarlo Grandi, about your paranoid delusions
that I am some kind of revanchist type monopolist. I spent many years working
to advance the personal electronic publishing that you think is so great.
>David> It would have been interesting to see what real type designers
>David> could have done with the problem (and indeed, Chuck Bigelow and
>David> Chris Holmes have more recently demonstrated one such solution).
>
>Belatedly! And the meantime, for all its limitations, more scientific
>papers have found a better shape, even if not as decorous as it could
>have been, than ever before.
Don Knuth's work directly resulted in at least two families of typefaces for
mathematical typesetting: his own Computer Modern series, the Euler series,
which uses the CM symbols, and indirectly in the two Lucida math families,
Lucida Math and Lucida New Math. Kris Holmes and I designed the Lucida (New)
Math series because we wanted to express our ideas of how the symbols and
letterforms should be designed for math typesetting. We didn't, and still
don't, have any fantasy of monopolizing the world of mathematical typesetting.
Some people like Computer Modern, some people like Lucida, some people like
Euler + CM, some people like Times Roman for math. Don Knuth gave his designs
away. That was nice. He's a generous guy. Kris Holmes and I give our phonetic
fonts away to linguists. Maybe we're nice. Maybe we're generous (but not in the
opinion of Mr. Grandi, because we also would like to be paid for our other
work).
>Thanks to Knuth being able to legally roll his own, hundreds of
>thousands of scientific writers now can afford to have near (which is
>good enough) typeset quality for their papers at very low cost, without
>having the forced choice between using a typewriter and hand annotation,
>and spending huge money to have a professional typographer lay it out in
>a professionally designed font.
>
>This upsets the professional typographers and the professional font
>designers, just as it has mightily upset IBM that its mainframe business
>is plunging because people are empowering themselves with desktop
>machines.
I don't know any professional typographers who are upset about TeX and Metafont
and Computer Modern and all the publishing done with them. I don't know one.
Can you name one, Mr. Grandi? It is true that some professional typographers
deplore the design of Computer Modern, but that is a matter of taste, not trade
restriction, and some professional typesetters despise the user-interface of
TeX, but that is a problem of user-interface design and typographic capability,
not monopolism, and, to my knowledge, all professional type designers ignore
Metafont, but that is a matter of practicality - it isn't useful for designing
most of the types that professional designers want to make. But those who don't
like CM or TeX or Metafont simply don't use it. They aren't upset or trying to
eliminate those things.
>All sorts of nice people sing the siren song of upholding quality
>standards when advocating restrictions, usually ferocious like those
>advocated by Charles Bigelow, on the ability of lesser beings to compete
>with them. Of course their competitors are unfair: they, like Knuth, are
>not properly trained and anointed members of the guild:
Come on! Get real! Where is the attempt to eliminate competition? I was happy
to assist Don Knuth in whatever way. I was happy to teach a younger generation
of designers like Carol Twombly, Dave Siegel, and Cleo Huggins. Other type
designers like Zapf, Frutiger, Guertler, Carter, and many others have taught
courses, lectured, and written books that help others to enter the field and
become competitors. Very few professional designers regard their colleagues and
competitors as unfair. However, they don't regard the pirates who make exact
plagiarisms of their designs as competitors. They regard them as thieves.
> [ incidentally, how revealing is on one hand to acknowledge that
> Knuth had to dabble by necessity in the world of typeface
> design, and that necessity has also driven, perhaps unwillingly,
> Zapf into computers -- weren't the good old ways better? :-) ]
Actually, Hermann Zapf as a young man wanted to become an electrical engineer,
and might well have joined the ranks of early computing, but for some problems
with the Nazi authorities, which resulted in his being unable to enter a
technical university. I believe that his work in digital type design, like the
faces Marconi and Edison, named no doubt after the wizards of his youth, was
entered into willingly.
>I am saying that _Charles Bigelow's_ proposal almost necessarily will,
>and that given a status quo in which there is full artistic freedom but
>also the freedom to pirate, and one in which the freedom to pirate is
>removed at a grave risk to artistic freedom
Whoa, hold on there a minute, pardner! Aren't you the jasper who was just
saying that there isn't any art in type design? Aren't you that feller that's
been yammering about how type ain't like literature or painting or something
really hi-falutin' that's got some of them there *IDEAS* in it? Wasn't you that
guy? Are you now sayin that there is *ART* after all in type design?
Hallelujah!
>will only discourage the most blatant forms of opportunism.
Nothing wrong with that. Let's hear it for covert opportunism.
>Charles Bigelow, and Adobe, and Monotype, have a very different
>position,
It might, just might be possible that these three parties actually have rather
different positions from each other.
> and it's not surprising: they already have substantial
>typeface portfolios,
Well, let's count up now. Monotype has more than 1,000 typefaces. The Adobe
library also contains well more than 1,000, though perhaps only 10% are Adobe
exclusives (David, can you give the exact numbers?). Chuck and Kris at Bigelow
& Holmes have designed maybe 50 faces between them, though several of those
were done as custom jobs for, yep, big corporations like Apple and Microsoft
and Hell. I think that Bigelow & Holmes might feel that they are maybe in a
very different position than Monotype or Adobe.
>they'd rather trade somebody's else, e.g. Knuth's,
>unrestricted freedom to do new designs, for an increase in value and
>market power of the assets they already own.
I think the refined technical term for that assertion is "a crock". It's
patently absurd that we or anyone else ever wanted to restrict Don Knuth's
freedom to design and create the fonts he wanted. Since Knuth started working
on Computer Modern, there have been several interesting new "modern" style
faces and several good revivals: Zapf's Marconi; Frutiger's Iridium, Linotype
Centennial, and revival of Didot; Benguiat's ITC Modern; and ITC has a team of
designers working on a new Bodoni. These designers don't want to restrict the
rights of others to design new faces. They just want to stop the piracy of
their own, particular, exact creations.
>Naturally they can argue that Knuth is a plagiaristw who has stolen some
>or most of the essential features of Monotype Modern, and depressed the
>sales of that typeface because of unfair competition,
I don't know of a single designer or firm who has ever argued that. Mr. Grandi,
you, to the best of my knowledge, are the only person ever to have expressed
that ridiculous idea.
>and that therefore
>monopolies that would stop outright pirates and also Knuth are perfectly
>reasonable -- but perhaps unreasonably I don't think that something like
>Computer Modern, for all its obvious derivation, should be considered
>plagiarism. So, I think that if one wants legal monopolies on typefaces,
>one should be careful to define them narrowly enough to allow for
>Computer Modern and similar works.
Well, hey there. I agree with you on that. It's not rally the first time, but
it is rare.
>In the balance between granting excessively wide or excessively narrow
>monopolies, I, as a member of the public, would rather be prudent and
>grant excessively narrow ones, if at all, and only if positive benefit
>and improbability of adverse consequences is proven by their advocates;
>people with vested interests quite legitimately have a different idea,
>and to them being prudent means granting the widest, longest monopolies
>possible.
Well, like I said, the agreement was a rare event.
-- Chuck
Don Hosek
>>>> On Thu, 4 Nov 1993 01:51:26 GMT, le...@adobe.com (David Lemon) said:
> David> I find it useful to consider the example of Computer Modern that
> David> Mr Grandi cites, because it demonstrates the drawbacks inherent
> David> when type design is unprofitable. Dr Knuth had to stop work on
> David> his magnum opus because of the difficulties he ran into with
> David> mathematical typesetting.
> David> He did not design the Computer Modern series because he was under
> David> the impression he was a gifted designer, but because he needed
> David> features (addressability and character set) not found in Monotype
> David> Modern.
> This is a partial view: the full story is that he was fed up with the
> limitations, primarily as to the costs and lack of flexibility of
> typesetting, of the traditional printing business that Monotype and
> similar companies dominated and felt no need to improve.
> So he decided to empower himself by being a pioneer into the cheap
> technology of desktop typography, bypassing the limitations and
> restrictive practices of the printing business of the time. Monotype had
> then no interest whatsoever in desktop typography, could not care less
> about it except perhaps as a curiosity or a threat, and he was forced to
> roll his own. And he legally could!
Speaking of partial views...
What happened was that Knuth's publisher was the one who decided
to change their production techniques. They abandoned Monotype
casting for a cheaper method (phototypesetting) which
unfortunately, because it was still relatively new, had lower
quality output. Knuth looked at this and realized that it ought
to be possible to improve the quality and efficiency of the
process by bringing computers into the process. There was no
issue of bringing down monopolies or any of that other stuff. You
don't seem to be familiar with Knuth's version of the story.
(Although in fairness, David Lemon also is getting some details
wrong).
> David> Had there been a business case for doing so, Monotype would have
> David> gladly extended Modern (or a better face) for him, and Dr Knuth
> David> would have been spared several years' distraction. The fact that
> David> there wasn't money in it is instructive.
Actually Modern 8a was amply suited to Knuth's needs. It had all
the necessary sorts and he was used to it. The choice of Modern
8a as the basis for Computer Modern was simply that it was the
face used for the initial printings of ACP. I don't know what the
font situation was on the phototypesetting side of things, but
TeX and Metafont came out of more than a simple lack of sorts,
but also the poor quality of mathematical typesetting being done
on the photocomposition equipment of the 70s.
> Indeed! There was no money in it because Monotype was out to make a
> profit in a comfy way, and there was no profit made in doing innovative
> designs that have a market as narrow as highly mathematical
> books.
And why do you suppose that it's not economical to produce
typefaces for mathematical setting? I've got a fairly
comprehensive set of type catalogs. If I were to dig through all
of these to determine what type faces I could typeset mathematics
in, I would have the following choices: Times, Lucida, Lucida
Bright [Lucida New], Computer Modern, Concrete (Really just a CM
variant). Of these, the last two are available for free and were
developed with US government subsidies, Luicda and Lucida Bright
are covered by design patents and the Times-compatible math is
largely inadequate (ever try to typeset real math using Symbol?).
If Computer Modern was such a trailblazer for expanding the realm
of what fonts are going to be produced, how come I still can't
set math in Baskerville?
> Thanks to Knuth being able to legally roll his own,
Well in any event, with or without typeface protection, Knuth
would have been able to work from Monotype Modern 8A. No
intellectual property protection lasts forever and Monotype
Modern 8A is a late 19th C. design. I don't think anyone would
claim that it's immoral to base work on this design. Working from
the Monotype Modern just released would probably be considered so
(since it's effectively a new design for the technology).
> hundreds of
> thousands of scientific writers now can afford to have near (which is
> good enough) typeset quality for their papers at very low cost, without
> having the forced choice between using a typewriter and hand annotation,
> and spending huge money to have a professional typographer lay it out in
> a professionally designed font.
On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for this. Much of the
TeX and LaTeX output that I see is typographyically attrocious.
10pt type on 6.5in lines, LaTeX Book style used without any
consideration for the text. There is art involved in document
design. Would you advocate that people give up having things
professionally translated since they can get one of those pocket
translator toys for a fraction of the cost?
> This upsets the professional typographers and the professional font
> designers, just as it has mightily upset IBM that its mainframe business
> is plunging because people are empowering themselves with desktop
> machines.
And I've seen a lot of companies realize that there are some
things that a mainframe handles much better than a network of
PCs. Usually after the 3090 has been sold for scrap.
> All sorts of nice people sing the siren song of upholding quality
> standards when advocating restrictions, usually ferocious like those
> advocated by Charles Bigelow, on the ability of lesser beings to compete
> with them. Of course their competitors are unfair: they, like Knuth, are
> not properly trained and anointed members of the guild:
No, they're simply asking that there work not be stolen. No one
is saying that you shouldn't design fonts. They're simply saying
that you shouldn't take their work, run it through a digitizer
and sell or give that away.
> Naturally they can argue that Knuth is a plagiaristw who has stolen some
> or most of the essential features of Monotype Modern, and depressed the
> sales of that typeface because of unfair competition, and that therefore
> monopolies that would stop outright pirates and also Knuth are perfectly
> reasonable -- but perhaps unreasonably I don't think that something like
> Computer Modern, for all its obvious derivation, should be considered
> plagiarism. So, I think that if one wants legal monopolies on typefaces,
> one should be careful to define them narrowly enough to allow for
> Computer Modern and similar works.
See above that Computer Modern would be allowable under any
typeface protection.
Incidentally, I respectfully propose that you don't know word one
about Knuth's views on typeface protection.
> 1) In the USA no monopoly rights have been granted on typefaces for the
> past two hundred years, yet I hope that nobody will argue that
> typeface design lagged behind other countries. Charles Bigelow
> argues this was because there were other, non legal, forms of
> monopoly and barriers to competition -- perhaps this is the case, but
> then this merely suggests that legally granted monopolies are not
> necessary; and they may not even, in some cases, achieve the hoped
> for benefits when established: in the next few years we shall see
> whether the granting of typeface monopolies will cause a sudden
> effervescence of investment in typeface design and research in the
> UK, a country that recently started granting them.
How about the idea that until recently, producing a font required
a much larger investment in equipment and training. That it's
easier to produce fonts is good. That it's easier to pirate fonts
is bad.
> 2) Patents on software have not been granted until a few years ago in
> the USA, and for the forty years before that one can hardly made a
> case that this has depressed software innovation. I cannot see any
> difference in the fundamental sw innovation rate before and after, or
> as compared to countries like the UK that still don't grant them.
Well gee, it wasn't really much of an issue back in the days when
the hardware and software manufacturers were one and the same.
In both of these examples, you're forgetting that part of the
protection lay in the difficulty of stealing ideas. Most of the
existing software patents are poorly written and probably
invalid. If they were handled correctly, they would be a boon to
the software industry since part of patent protection is required
disclosure. You can't patent a secret, because by the patenting
process you must make that secret available to everyone else.
Software design still rests largely on "trade secret" type
protection: if we don't let people know how we do it, then they
can't steal the idea.
> So it is not always true that:
> David> In the real world, little of value is added without hope of
> David> compensation, and there is little hope of compensation where
> David> theft is unrestricted.
> ^^^^^ [ what suits you to define as theft ]
But it is.
> While I would beg to submit that of any measure to restrict competition
> in a market, no matter how well intentioned, and especially when
> proposed by existing suppliers to that market, has the consequence of
> making them richer by reducing the variety of supply, at least in the
> short term; and any other effects in the long term are not as certain.
So should copyrights on recorded music be eliminated? After all,
anything after $7 is pure profit for the record company (the
average cost of a CD, including royalties, production costs,
distribution etc. is $5. We can assume that the record stores
make no more than a buck or two on top of that. They hold exactly
the same sort of "monopoly" that you're claiming for typeface
companies.
-dh
--
Don Hosek
dho...@ymir.claremont.edu
Quixote Digital Typography
909-621-1291
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> (Charles A. Bigelow) said:
Charles> Mr. Grandi appears to be unacquainted with the literature on
Charles> type design that discusses the "ideas" involved in, and
Charles> expressed by, typefaces.
Really? Perhaps you are confusing ideas with thought, or perhaps ideas
with impressions/emotions. The design of a typeface, just like the
design of a car body, requires a great deal of thought, and skill, and
it can convey impressions and emotions. A car body can impress people
with luxury, or sportiveness, or importance, and so on -- there is
nothing specific to typefaces in this. But typefaces, like other items
of graphics design don't express ideas: they are not an articulate
enough medium for that.
A typeface can be an interesting interpreation over a few obvious
shapes, like a designer knife or chair; designers that do lamps seem to
have more flexibility.
Graphics design can create atmospheres, convey feelings; it can matter a
lot as to the effect on the reader whether a text is set in Courier or
in Bodoni, oh yes. But I would expect that a person capable of well
balanced opinion would realize that a novel, or a painting, or a sonata
are simply on another plane.
Perhaps you are thoroughly obsessed by your work (I have met engineers
that thought a well designed piece of machinery equal in beauty to the
"Wedding of the Virgin", and perhaps they had a point), and by the
prospect of raising the value of your assets, and ready to be vicious to
anybody that cannot share you obsession, but please reconsider:
if you really mean, as you seem to, that designing a typeface or a lamp
has broad a scope and as many different possibilities, and conveys ideas
like a novel can do, I rest my case. Obsession can make people fail to
see there is an essential difference between "Guernica" or "Uncle Tom"
and Baskerville...
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> (Charles A. Bigelow) said:
pcg> I am saying that _Charles Bigelow's_ proposal almost necessarily
pcg> will, and that given a status quo in which there is full artistic
pcg> freedom but also the freedom to pirate, and one in which the
pcg> freedom to pirate is removed at a grave risk to artistic freedom
Charles> Whoa, hold on there a minute, pardner! Aren't you the jasper
Charles> who was just saying that there isn't any art in type design?
^^^
Quote me on that, mate!
Charles> Aren't you that feller that's been yammering about how type
Charles> ain't like literature or painting or something really
Charles> hi-falutin' that's got some of them there *IDEAS* in it?
Well, this is also the opinion of a lot of judges, I hear, and of
Congress. Novels, paintings, movies, ... are media articulate enough to
express ideas; typefaces may convey/arouse emotions, feelings, ... like
many other examples of graphics design, and that's all; perhaps that's
why typefaces are not quite considered a medium like text or movies or
paintings or TV. In saying so I am just repeating conventional wisdom:
perhaps it's wrong, but I tend to think not.
Charles> It's patently absurd that we or anyone else ever wanted to
Charles> restrict Don Knuth's freedom to design and create the fonts he
Charles> wanted.
This I never wrote or even implied: quote me on this if you think
otherwise, please.
What I wrote was that given typeface copyrights, there would have been
enough copyright case law to make it possible for Monotype to sue him
for infringement, and with a damn good chance of either intimidating him
into never releasing CM or, if he stood his ground, to entangle him in
endless litigation.
Under copyright law, the copyright owner has to pursue action against
anybody who might be infringing it; and moreover CM was *designed* as a
substitute, that is a competitor, for Monotype Modern, and inasmuch it
has succeeded, the diffusion of CM has reduced the sales of Monotype
Modern. So Monotype would have had both a duty and an interest.
A lot of printing businesses that would have bought Monotype Modern to
set conference proceedings, scientific journals, and the like, have not
purchased it. The AMS has vastly encouraged the use of CM -- lots of
sales lost for Monotype Modern there too.
Wouldn't this make Monotype want to sue? You and I perhaps can agree
that CM is not a plagiarized version of Monotype Modern, despite its
motivation and inspiration and despite Knuth's own words as to its
ancestry.
But Monotype's officers and legal counsel may well have seen things in
another way, if they could rely on copyright law (and even on design
patent law) and act on that, especially as they would see the obvious
fact that CM competes, and rather successfully, with their
product. Especially as they saw their financial fortunes slide in the
changeover to mass typography, a swing to which CM and TeX have given
rather a boost.
Apple did sue -- and whether in good faith or just as a way to harass
and delay Microsoft we don't know. But Microsoft could stand their
ground and defend their case spending a few millions; Knuth could not
have done so, I surmise.
Perhaps you have not considered all the effects of the introduction of
copyright law into the craft/art/science of typeface design, or perhaps
you don't care. But you cannot simply dismiss out of hand the negative
consequences I have outlined. Some people do care, and they are not
unreasonable worries.
If Monotype had enjoyed a copyright on the shapes that make up Monotype
Modern, could they have stopped Knuth and prevented his release of CM?
This is a question of the utmost importance. You cannot just dismiss it.
Michael Gerard Maranda
>Charles> Mr. Grandi appears to be unacquainted with the literature on
>Charles> type design that discusses the "ideas" involved in, and
>Charles> expressed by, typefaces.
> . . . But typefaces, like other items
>of graphics design don't express ideas: they are not an articulate
>enough medium for that.
>A typeface can be an interesting interpreation over a few obvious
>shapes, like a designer knife or chair; designers that do lamps seem to
>have more flexibility.
>Graphics design can create atmospheres, convey feelings; it can matter a
>lot as to the effect on the reader whether a text is set in Courier or
>in Bodoni, oh yes. But I would expect that a person capable of well
>balanced opinion would realize that a novel, or a painting, or a sonata
>are simply on another plane....
> . . . Obsession can make people fail to
>see there is an essential difference between "Guernica" or "Uncle Tom"
>and Baskerville...
Or perhaps you yourself have not considered typography enough to realise
that a type design can completely change the way that a text is read, which
implies that it does have a communicational role, which puts it on the same
plane as other artistic ventures. You might say that that which is printed
shapes the meaning more, I would argue the same for museums that house
paintings. But you can not have one without the other.
Recall Marshall McLuhan and his theorising of the role of the medium in
shaping the message.
As for paintings and what I assume you are imputing into them as pure
originality--I find it hard to see how one could not see the repetition
involved in that medium. Or music? Is not repetition itself, repetition of
themes et cetera, central to its history? It is the variations that give
them their power -- variations within a specific history of painting, music,
writing, and--dare I say it?--typography?
Michael
Paul Race
>In article <PCG.93No...@decb.aber.ac.uk> p...@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>[Well, gosh, he writes a whole lot of things, but I want to comment only on
>those that touch on me, Don Knuth, and Computer Modern.]
verbage deleted
Charles, would you quit confusing us with the facts? Anyone who compares type
design and marketing companies with monopolies (like the electric company)
isn't worth responding to, and certainly won't be convinced by the facts.
To assert that it would be better to have a system where piracy is de facto
permissable than to allow innovative type designers to protect their own
designs breaks down in a lot of ways. For instance, who will bother to
develop new type faces if everything they do is automatically virtually public
domain? Within five years nobody would be able to find a new or unusual
typeface.
And if the hundreds of public domain or inexpensive fonts from
which he has to choose don't meet this person's needs, then by default he
is agreeing that you have something he needs that he can't get anywhere else,
in other words, an intellectual property. And then he has to make a case
that this particular intellectual property is somehow different from all the
other intellectual properties (books, songs, magazine articles, computer
programs, works of art, photographs) in the world (you know, the ones for
which the creators are protected and recompensed).
Grandi: Get an Image Club catalog and order a bunch of $25 fonts, or buy
CorelDrw and get hundreds of "knockoff" fonts you can use in all your other
applications, and get a life.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul....@DaytonOH.ncr.com
My employer is not responsible for my opinions. As a matter
of fact, they probably don't even know I get this newsgroup
and they'd stop me if they found out.
---------------------------------------------------------------
| Paul Race Corporate Customer Services, NCR SDC-2 Dayton |
| NCR: 622-1665 <Paul....@DaytonOH.ncr.com> |
| (513) 445-1665 <ncrcom!whq-top!pdr> |
| FAX: 445-7196 |
---------------------------------------------------------------
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> (Michael Gerard Maranda) said:
pcg> . . . Obsession can make people fail to see there is an essential
pcg> difference between "Guernica" or "Uncle Tom" and Baskerville...
Michael> Or perhaps you yourself have not considered typography enough
Michael> to realise that a type design can completely change the way
Michael> that a text is read,
*Completely* seems a rather strong word. Typography (which is a rather
wider subject than typeface design) does have an effect -- it is not an
overriding effect. The enjoyment of text, for example, is also in large
part mnemonic: and when one remember bits of text how it was laid out,
and the typeface, somehow seems less important than the words. The
visual impact of the typeface is only fully deployed when reading.
Consider Hamlet's monologue: it expresses a vision of life and destiny
and a perplexity that are typical of a fully articulate medium.
Typefaces can change _somewhat_ the attitude with which the text is
read, and this is easily acknowledged:
pcg> Graphics design can create atmospheres, convey feelings; it can
pcg> matter a lot as to the effect on the reader whether a text is set
pcg> in Courier or in Bodoni, oh yes.
But this is a nuance effect; just like the page layout.
Michael> which implies that it does have a communicational role, which
Michael> puts it on the same plane as other artistic ventures.
But the communicational role is very different -- the communication on
another plane. The shape of a typeface is suggestive rather than
expressive, and as a rule it had better not suggest too loudly. It is
not by chance that most text is set in rather unobtrusive typefaces, and
laid out in rather mild and standard forms; graphic design has the
essential function of aiding the fruition of text, and terrible is the
graphics designer that tries to take over.
Michael> You might say that that which is printed shapes the meaning
Michael> more, I would argue the same for museums that house
Michael> paintings. But you can not have one without the other.
Yes, indeed; but, let me insist, on different planes, as the imprinted
form of a text is rather less articulate than the text itself. Good
typeface and layout design helps the comprehension of the text, and
contributes to form the attitude with which it is read; perhaps the
graphic aspect of an imprint is like the frame of a painting, or, as you
suggest, the full ambience in which it is shown. But I am rather persuaded
that these are secondary matters.
Michael> Recall Marshall McLuhan and his theorising of the role of the
Michael> medium in shaping the message.
Ah, but I don't read it quite like that: firstly I doubt very much that
by his definition of "medium" a typeface is medium or even the full
graphics aspect of a text is a "medium" (I would say they are the
aspects/flavours of one particular medium); secondly, as I read him, the
medium conveys a message that is quite independent of that of the
"message", and it is indeed a suggestive, impressionistic message.
Michael> As for paintings and what I assume you are imputing into them
Michael> as pure originality
Perhaps I am misunderstood: there is a lot of reuse and derivation even
in more articulate domains than typefaces; Newton's remark about
standing on the shoulders of giants applies more generally than to
physics. And there is variation in typefaces. But, let me insist, on
completely different planes: a typeface or a chair are variations on a
_single_ theme, and this considerably restricts the scope for expressing
ideas.
Not so for a novel or a drama; some TV comedies have a plot very similar
to the plot of comedies by Plauto in ancient Rome, but the depth of a
text or painting can be on another plane from that of a typeface, which
is constrained by its very nature and purpose. The law in many countries
makes therefore a (common sense?) distinction between creativity in the
more articulate domains, where monopoly granted is long and hard, as it
is necessarily very narrow, and that for graphic designs, where the fact
that creativity _necessarily_ is limited to variations on a theme (even
if such variations can be many, and ingenious, the fundamental likeness
is the smake) changes the perspective.
Let me suggest, a bit tongue in cheek, that if the fundamental shape of
letters were not a constraint in typeface design, and typeface design
could extend to alphabet design, than perhaps the status of typeface
design would be different -- but then it would lose most of its
functional aspect, and become a purely creative endeavour, and a set of
gryphs would become a set of paintings.
Indeed, I would venture to say that a typeface or a chair express a
single idea: their functional aspect, the concepts of "letter/glyph" and
"chair". In a number of flavours, and each flavour conveys something.
But that's all: by and large Bodoni's role is accessory/functional to
text, just as the role of a Bauhaus chair is accessory/functional to
furnishing, just as, on a wider plane, are the whole fields of text
layout, and interior decoration.
Bah, perhaps I should not be saying this in comp.fonts, the haunt of
type nerds. When passion/obsession set in... :-)
A personal note: it may be interesting to know that I think that
_programming_ is a branch of the humanities, and that program texts
are pieces of textual work that can be subjected to the same type of
critique that one could apply to a book; invidual programming styles,
both as to coding and structure, are easily recognized, and even
programming "schools", and one can speak meaningfully of the phrase
structure of a program, and deconstruct it :-), and so on. Programs
also express (and implement) ideas, despite their having a functional,
rather than entertaining, _purpose_ (which is quite different from
having a functional _nature_); but even if I am obsessed enough about
program architectures, and programming happens in a rather articulate
medium, and articulate enough for copyright to apply to it, perhaps
just about, I would be loth to argue that the scope for creativity for
a programmer is *qualitatively* as wide as that for literature and
movies and painting and sonatas: these involve much wider domains of
the "human experience" than the domain of programming. I am really
puzzled that somebody can regard something as narrowly focused as
typeface design as being on the same plane as novel and movies etc.
Note that I am not saying it is an "inferior" craft/art form: it is
just much more limited in scope.
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> Race) said:
Paul> To assert that it would be better to have a system where piracy is
Paul> de facto permissable than to allow innovative type designers to
Paul> protect their own designs breaks down in a lot of ways. For
Paul> instance, who will bother to develop new type faces if everything
Paul> they do is automatically virtually public domain? Within five
Paul> years nobody would be able to find a new or unusual typeface.
So there has been *no* new typeface design in the years from 1796+5 in
the United States?
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> said:
David> Had there been a business case for doing so, Monotype would have
David> gladly extended Modern (or a better face) for him, and Dr Knuth
David> would have been spared several years' distraction. The fact that
David> there wasn't money in it is instructive.
Don> Actually Modern 8a was amply suited to Knuth's needs. It had all
Don> the necessary sorts and he was used to it. The choice of Modern 8a
Don> as the basis for Computer Modern was simply that it was the face
Don> used for the initial printings of ACP.
Note that this phrase would be the starting for a plagiarism case: here
we have somebody that has taken the inteelectual property of Monotype
and derived from it a designt to avoid paying Monotype their due. :-)
Don> And why do you suppose that it's not economical to produce
Don> typefaces for mathematical setting? I've got a fairly
Don> comprehensive set of type catalogs. If I were to dig through all
Don> of these to determine what type faces I could typeset mathematics
Don> in, I would have the following choices: Times, Lucida, Lucida
Don> Bright [Lucida New], Computer Modern, Concrete (Really just a CM
Don> variant).
Amazing vastness of choice. Those catalogs have *thousands* of faces in
them. Perhaps there is not much money in maths typesetting...
Don> If Computer Modern was such a trailblazer for expanding the realm
Don> of what fonts are going to be produced, how come I still can't
Don> set math in Baskerville?
Now, here you are turning my argument on its head -- CM has been a
trailblazer for the whole field of digital type design. Maths type
design is just a small, and relatively unpopular, section of math
design.
pcg> hundreds of thousands of scientific writers now can afford to have
pcg> near (which is good enough) typeset quality for their papers at
pcg> very low cost, without having the forced choice between using a
pcg> typewriter and hand annotation, and spending huge money to have a
pcg> professional typographer lay it out in a professionally designed
pcg> font.
Don> On the other hand, there's a lot to be said for this. Much of the
Don> TeX and LaTeX output that I see is typographyically attrocious.
Don> 10pt type on 6.5in lines, LaTeX Book style used without any
Don> consideration for the text. There is art involved in document
Don> design. Would you advocate that people give up having things
Don> professionally translated since they can get one of those pocket
Don> translator toys for a fraction of the cost?
But I am not advocating poor quality typography, or poorm quality
translations -- I am advocating leaving as free a choice as possible
between low-cost/low-quality and high-cost/high-quality
alternatives. Then lots of people choose low-cost/low-quality, and
companies target to a high-cost/high-quality market have trouble. Too
bad.
Don> Incidentally, I respectfully propose that you don't know word one
Don> about Knuth's views on typeface protection.
Please quote me on claiming that. I am discussing Charles Bigelow's
views, and mine -- I never claimed otherwise. What relevance has this
remark of yours to this discussion, except as a nuisance?
pcg> 1) In the USA no monopoly rights have been granted on typefaces for the
pcg> past two hundred years, yet I hope that nobody will argue that
pcg> typeface design lagged behind other countries. Charles Bigelow
pcg> argues this was because there were other, non legal, forms of
pcg> monopoly and barriers to competition
Don> How about the idea that until recently, producing a font required
Don> a much larger investment in equipment and training.
Well, that is what Charles Bigelow said, and I noted that -- you don't
have to lecture me on things that have already been said. I can then
repeat what I have remarkedi as to that: that this simply proves that
legal monopolies are not necessarily indispensable.
Don> That it's easier to produce fonts is good. That it's easier to
Don> pirate fonts is bad.
Amen.
pcg> While I would beg to submit that of any measure to restrict
pcg> competition in a market, no matter how well intentioned, and
pcg> especially when proposed by existing suppliers to that market, has
pcg> the consequence of making them richer by reducing the variety of
pcg> supply, at least in the short term; and any other effects in the
pcg> long term are not as certain.
Don> So should copyrights on recorded music be eliminated? After all,
Don> anything after $7 is pure profit for the record company
Well, they are under investigation here in the UK for abuse of dominant
market position. But this is baside the point: there is a much stronger
case for keeping copyright on music then creating it for typefaces, and
it has been supported by experience that reducing the variety of
suppliers in the short term for music does not have adverse long term
effects on the creation of new music, and may actually foster it.
My case is that there are reasons to suspect things would not work so
well for typefaces, especially if Charles Bigelow's proposed copyright
extension to typefaces were the legal monopoly chosen.
Don> They hold exactly the same sort of "monopoly" that you're claiming
Don> for typeface companies.
But absolutely not! There is lots of case law that music copyrights are
very narrowly defined, and this is because there is an immense scope for
variation in music. I question very much that the legal regime for music
is appropriate for car bodies, typefaces, or chairs. Most legislative
bodies, in the countries that grant monopolies on typeface design, tend
to agree.
I hope that the USA legislator think well again before granting any sort
of typeface monopoly rights, and then they do not listen to the self
serving lobbying of those that stand to gain from as wide and long a
monopoly as they can.
An interesting note: the tests for infringement on design patents and
copyrights are rather different; moreover there is quite a bit of
sensible case law on design patents applied to shapes, which would not
exist if copyright were extended to typefaces; there would therefore
be open field for people with depp pockets to create new, and perhaps
far more favourable, case law.
You said that Charles Bigelow has already design patented Lucida -- why
is he not quite happy with a form of monopoly that is not controversial
for all other forms of graphic design? Can he argue that design patents
have failed to stop piracy of chair and car body designs in the USA? Or
has he got something "better" in mind for his little portfolio of
typefaces? Vested interests can be rather interesting things to watch.
Jerry Whiting
Jerry "small 'n' type nerd" Whiting
Freek Wiedijk
>Or perhaps you yourself have not considered typography enough to realise
>that a type design can completely change the way that a text is read, which
No!
Typographers often state that `some fonts are more
appropriate for some kind of texts than others.' For
instance, they believe that `literature' needs other
typefaces than, say, a `technical manual'. I _think_ they
mean something like: `it's inappropriate to set a great work
of literature in Modern and to set a technical manual in
Bembo.'
I don't understand this position _at all_. Why would one
typeface be more appropriate for some kind of text than
others?
Freek
--
Third theory of Phenomenal Dynamics: The difference between
a symbol and an object is quantitative, not qualitative.
Gomer P. Snodgrass
> I don't understand this position _at all_. Why would one
> typeface be more appropriate for some kind of text than
> others?
Well, as always, there's some social baggage to drag around, but it seems
pretty simple: a face like Futura--very modern, Bauhaus-ish, etc. etc., is
not the face that you want to set an opulent catalog in, for example.
A lot of it seems to me to be a bit circular (mind you, not reducing the
validity of the claim at all). That is, one does not set opulent catalogs
in Futura, because opulent catalogs are not set in Futura. Futura's "values",
founded on a kind of, well, futuristic minimalism, do not present the catalog's
values authentically. The catalog, let's say, wants to be rich, floral,
excessive and a bit gaudy. Trying to communicate those values in an under-
stated minimalist face is self-defeating. That's the long and short of it:
image. You're dealing with an inherently subjective medium, and, presumably,
as a typographer or graphic designer you have some "message" (for want of a
better term) you want to convey. Some typefaces, in conclusion, have either
(i) been designed to or (ii) have traditionally conveyed certain messages.
The question might just as well be asked, why are some colors inappropriate to
use in certain ad layouts, or magazine mastheads? Again, it all has to do
with the *image* that's trying to be portrayed: thus, Newsweek, for example,
has a red swash with an extra-bold title across the page. Yankee, on the other
hand, is typically laid out in dark greens and New England fall colors. Try
switching the two layouts and see what happens.
Finally, consider the old Pepsi ad campaign--the "Gotta Have It" and "Uh-Huh"
crap. Recognizing that they were targeting the Generation X types, you can
see that they used very bold, moderately distorted mixes of off-the-wall
serif type and in-your-face sans serif type, set against swashes of bold
primary or neon colors (I'm thinking primarily of the billboards). Fonts:
if they had set the ad campaign in Bitstream Ribbon 131, stenciled in leaves
and flowers and muted lights, the target market would have been repulsed.
Your example, that a technical manual would never be set in Bembo, comes out
of the same principle. There are other things to consider besides messages,
of course: I was coming at it from an advertising/magazine perspective. In
the tech. manual case, you wouldn't set it in Bembo because for such a
functional document, Bembo is too ornate. Your objective as the manual's
designer would be to create an easy-to-read but extremely *functional* guide
to the product--one that would not distract, but would convey its information
as quickly and, frankly, blandly as possible.
All right, enough preaching.
LAiRD
--
..
/\.. prism magazine (pr...@amherst.edu) | laird j. nelson
::/__\.. amherst college, amherst, ma | ljne...@unix.amherst.edu
..
Don Hosek
> mm0...@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Michael Gerard Maranda) writes:
>>Or perhaps you yourself have not considered typography enough to realise
>>that a type design can completely change the way that a text is read, which
>>implies that it does have a communicational role, [...]
> No!
> Typographers often state that `some fonts are more
> appropriate for some kind of texts than others.' For
> instance, they believe that `literature' needs other
> typefaces than, say, a `technical manual'. I _think_ they
> mean something like: `it's inappropriate to set a great work
> of literature in Modern and to set a technical manual in
> Bembo.'
> I don't understand this position _at all_. Why would one
> typeface be more appropriate for some kind of text than
> others?
Because the appearance of a typeface carries with it a lot of
[subconscious] associations. There are obvious cases, like if you
see a copperplate script face, you're likely to think "Wedding
Invitation" and if you see certain wood type designs you might
think "barbeque" or "horses" but beyond that, each style of
typeface originated out of the times that it was written in. You
might want to take a text and print it out in several different
type faces and see if you can feel the difference. There are no
hard and fast rules for what an appropriate type face is. I've
been working a lot with Monotype Ehrhardt (in both digital and
foundry metal versions). The two primary texts I'm dealing with
are quite different. One is a poem by John Fowles for a livre
d'artiste the other is the text of a technical manual. In each of
these Ehrhardt works, but it would be difficult to say why I
would use Ehrhardt rather than Centaur, say, on the Fowles poem
although I _know_ that Centaur would be a poor choice. Caslon
would probably work on that text but I doubt that I could
successfully use Caslon on the technical text which is also
currently set in Ehrhardt.
Anyone who says that there are hard and fast rules in typography
is either a fool or a liar.
ra...@watnxt08.ucr.edu
> an idea, and indeed that's its *only* purpose most of the time.
> Expression is essential in a painting. A typeface, or a lamp, or a car's
> body are beautiful only incidentally, their purpose is different, and
> their scope is not expression, is utility.
All I want to say is that this analogy is bullshit! If the typefaces artistic
appearance were only incidental, NOBODY would buy ANY fonts! Windows would
come with one monospaced font, and one kerned. Cars have stuff under the hood
as WELL as the beauty, and lamps can easily be works of art. Anyone who has
installed fonts should agree that they are art, or else they would never have
gone through the trouble of getting them.
n_w$$h
Piercarlo Grandi
Freek> Typographers often state that `some fonts are more appropriate
Freek> for some kind of texts than others.' For instance, they believe
Freek> that `literature' needs other typefaces than, say, a `technical
Freek> manual'. I _think_ they mean something like: `it's inappropriate
Freek> to set a great work of literature in Modern and to set a
Freek> technical manual in Bembo.'
Freek> I don't understand this position _at all_. Why would one
Freek> typeface be more appropriate for some kind of text than others?
Let me jump in for an ex-officio defense (more credible than others,
perhaps, as I am an outsider with no obsession on the matter ;->) of the
idea that there is some more to faces than being alphabets: the way a
text is presented influences the way it is read. It's a matter of
stylistics, and of ergonomics, and they matter. Presentation style, of
which a typeface is an important part in a printed text, matters. This
is naturally subject to taste.
But there are (broad and fuzzy) "universals" in taste, and certain
presentations styles are generally perceived as more congenial by most
readers, and most suitable to certain materials.
A tasteful and talented typeface designer can take the basic shapes of
the alphabet and derive from them a pleasanter looking face than a
lesser one; in not too dissimilar a way from an interior decorator who
can substantially change how an interior space is lived, at times even
by simply rearranging what's already there. The functional dimension is
in both cases influenced by the aesthetical.
Anders Thulin
>Typographers often state that `some fonts are more
>appropriate for some kind of texts than others.' For
>instance, they believe that `literature' needs other
>typefaces than, say, a `technical manual'.
>I _think_ they
>mean something like: `it's inappropriate to set a great work
>of literature in Modern and to set a technical manual in
>Bembo.'
>I don't understand this position _at all_. Why would one
>typeface be more appropriate for some kind of text than
>others?
Here are some parameters:
* cost of setting
Wide typefaces produce more pages, narrow ones fewer, thus affecting the
final price of the book.
(The obvious counterexampke of typeface X being available only for
handsetting, and Y for Linotype is too simple ... :-)
* choice of paper
Some technical manuals should be printed on dirt-resistent paper, and
should also be possible to read under less-than-perfect light
conditions. Thin and light typefaces are thus out of the question.
* speed of reading
Set book Y in Bembo (low x-height, fairly light) and in New Century
Schoolbook (high x-height, fairly dark).
Which will provide the easiest read, and thus be most suitable?
The answer may not be obvious - I've read Gustav Meyrink's 'The Golem'
set in Bodoni, and in Baskerville. I prefer the Bodoni version - the
typeface slows me down to the speed of the narrative. Baskerville is
too 'fast' for this particular book.
Another example: Imagine `Daphnis et Cloe' set in Bodoni - far too
heavy for a very lightweight work. Similarly, 'the Anglo-Saxon
Elegies' would not, I think, look its best in Centaur or Garamond -
something more sombre is wanted.
In some cases, the reasons may be even more obscure. If a typeface
was used a lot for school-books, there would be some danger that it
would bring that kind of associations with it, when it used in other
kinds of books. That would clearly be undesirable.
In Sweden, many years ago, a book-designer designed school-books bound
in a special cloth, and decorated in a rather distinctive way. His
idea was to get away from the traditional school-book-look, and
provide something that looked more like a ordinary book.
Many years later he was asked to design a binding for a customer, and
he tried to reuse his old school-book design. The customer refused it
-- it looked just like one of his old school-books.
--
Anders Thulin a...@linkoping.trab.se 013-23 55 32
Telia Research AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden