font names; Helvetica/Geneva/Swiss
Karl Kleine
as most of you will know (i hope), typefaces are not protected under
copyright in the US, but well in other parts of the world, like europe.
the legal status is very different from country to country. however,
where the type itself may not be protected in the US, its name may be.
for instance, `Zapf Chancery' is a trademark of ITC.
now the story of the ubiquous Helvetica: the type was designed 1957
by the Swiss designer Max Miedinger for the Haas foundry and licenced
to a number of other manufacturers of phototypesetting equipment.
It's main distinction is compactness, as you get relatively much text
within a given area. It became rather popular, particular in the US.
As Helvetica became to many people a generic term for a sens serif font,
there was a need to provide such font in all kinds of environments for
what we now call DTP. A real Helvetica would have cost royalties, and there
was no suitable marketing channel for fonts at that time. the easiest way
out under ruling law was to put out a font which `smelled the same' but
with a name suggesting the origin. The name `Helvetica' was protected by
trademark, but the type design itself not. thus we got `Geneva' and `Swiss'.
When Linotype licenced a bunch of fonts to Adobe, and the Laserwriter
hit the market, there was a way to provide a real Helvetica font to the
masses by bundling it in the purchase price of that machine. so we now
have both the original and the lookalike floating around in the DTP world.
another well known sens serif design is that age by a Swiss designer is
Univers by Adrian Frutiger. many, including me, rate it superior to
Helvetica, but Univers is not much known in North America. Univers is not
a single font, but family in various weights and shapes according to an
underlying construction scheme; Univers 55 may be the best known one.
look at it, if don't know it yet.
the bottomm line: a sad story for the type designer who has to live
from royalties. on the other hand, we all like to have a good collection
of fonts readily available. If international law would provide a
reasonable platform for font marketing on a wide scale, we would all profit.
Karl Kleine
Uul Haanstra
>
> another well known sens serif design is that age by a Swiss designer is
> Univers by Adrian Frutiger. many, including me, rate it superior to
> Helvetica, but Univers is not much known in North America. Univers is not
> a single font, but family in various weights and shapes according to an
> underlying construction scheme; Univers 55 may be the best known one.
> look at it, if don't know it yet.
>
And while you're at it, give us not just one but a few varieties, like
condensed, extended, and light.
Uul Haanstra
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Chuq Von Rospach
There's a whole family of Univers faces available from Adobe. They're
definitely available for the Mac, and I believe they're also available for
Postscript printers for the PC.
Nice stuff, Univers. Helvetica eat your heart out.
Chuq Von Rospach ch...@sun.COM Delphi: CHUQ
This signature is currently under construction.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
g.l.sicherman
Haas Helvetica is merely boring. Univers is UGLY. Mandrill rules!
(And anybody who wants Mandrill bitmaps should write me directly--
you can't get them from Mergenthaler!)
-:-
"Well, what DO you have?"
"Old English. In three sizes."
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Chuq Von Rospach
Mandrill? Hmm... I still prefer Univers.
What about text faces? My current preference for lots of text is Palatino,
but I'm hoping to upgrade one of these seconds to Garamond, which is quite
pretty and very readable. What are you folks favorite faces? Times need not
apply, of course...
Clayton Elwell
What are you folks favorite faces? Times need not apply, of course...
Times is for newspapers, hence the name :-).
I use ITC Garamond Light as the text for the magazine I put together.
I'd say that I much prefer serif faces for running text, and that
furthermore I generally prefer oldstyle faces to modern faces. How's
this for a 'top four':
ITC Garamond
Goudy Old Style
Palatino
ITC Galliard
I've been looking carefully at Stone (Adobe's new typeface family that
they developed in house), and I must admit that I like some pieces of
it better than others. For example, I think the serif italic is
absolutely wonderful, but the serif roman is pretty undistinguished.
Not bad, mind you, but it sort of strikes me as slightly off. Stone
Sans is running neck-and-neck with Gill Sans for my favorite sans
serif face. Stone Informal is an interesting idea, but I'm not
convinced yet.
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Chuq Von Rospach
>I use ITC Garamond Light as the text for the magazine I put together.
> How's this for a 'top four':
> ITC Garamond
> Goudy Old Style
> Palatino
> ITC Galliard
Hmm. something's wrong. I agree with all four choices, although I'd probably
put Goudy below Palatino. How can we start a flame war this way???
>I've been looking carefully at Stone (Adobe's new typeface family that
>they developed in house), and I must admit that I like some pieces of
>it better than others. For example, I think the serif italic is
>absolutely wonderful, but the serif roman is pretty undistinguished.
>Not bad, mind you, but it sort of strikes me as slightly off. Stone
>Sans is running neck-and-neck with Gill Sans for my favorite sans
>serif face. Stone Informal is an interesting idea, but I'm not
>convinced yet.
I'm with you. They used Stone for the new Adobe book, so I got a chance to
see it in action. I think the Serif font is nice, but nothing to write home
about. The sans-serif is a good, solid, boring serif font. Nothing wrong
with it, but nothing to really draw your attention to it.
I'll say right now it's much better than anything I'd be able to design. Or
even dream of designing. But, except for being the first set of faces
designed specifically for Postscript output (rather than an adaptation of
some other face) I don't see any real advantages to using it. I might well
use stone down the road for some stuff, but it isn't a face that makes me
want to run down to ComputerWare and shove it on my hard disk. The family is
a nice, conservative, average, useful but not noteworthy family.
Rich Salz
> Nothing wrong
>with it, but nothing to really draw your attention to it.
least one area.
/r$
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Johan Vromans
> What are you folks favorite faces?
Garamond.
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"It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"
Paul Ausick
We've just printed all the documentation for a new product on a Sun/Mac/LW+
conglomeration using Palatino for body text and Helvetica for display
copy. We chose them because they were the best looking of the standard
LW+ fonts. Someday soon we'll buy Optima, which I think is the most
beautiful font on earth. The big problem with using Optima, or Palatino
for that matter, on the LW+ is that the output resolution doesn't give
very smooth characters in large sizes. Try a 54+ point Palatino "T" and
you'll see what I mean. Of course on the typesetting machines this isn't
a problem.
Another font I like a lot is ITC Galliard. I like Aksidenz Grotesque
better than either Helvetica or Univers, but it's not available from
Adobe. Have to limit myself to Adobe's stuff, for now.
I enjoy reading this group and hope the discussion will stay keen.
Cheers,
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Ardent Computer Corporation
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Sunnyvale, CA 94086 408/732-0400
caps...@cup.portal.com
Caslon
Garamond
Gill Sans
the Metro family
Memphis
Since this is 'Font Flames', I'll take this opportunity to buck the
trends and criticise those horrible ITC renditions of legitimate
classic faces, like Caslon, Garamond, Baskerville, etc.
These great faces have had their descenders cut off and their x heights
bloated to reflect modern (1970's) tastes. Too bad that you cannot
yet buy the original renditions from Adobe.
sand...@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu.uucp
I chose ITC Garamond for the magazine I publish, but also feel that each
application dictates a particular general typestyle. For example, the
magazine Publish! use Trump Mediaeval (sp?), which is a very dynamic type,
and one which seems very appropriate for their publication. It seems to
remind me of Palatino, another dynamic and artistic typeface (in my book),
yet also seems to be (despite its name) a very "modern" typeface.
Years ago I came across a little pamphlet, which was set in Helios Light,
and I remember being struck by the beauty of the layout. As far as I know,
the nearest PS font to Helios would be Helvetica, but to me it is more of
a special-purpose font than a general-purpose one. I doubt it would look
well in many applications unless properly handled. Also, the use of sans-
serif for text seems to be more common in Europe than in the US. (The Helios
Light pamphlet refered to earlier was from Germany btw.)
Before buying ITC Garamond Light from Adobe, I tried both 10/14 and 11/14
Times Roman for the body of the magazine, and was fairly impressed with it.
(This was using about a 27 pica line--wider lines might not have read as well.)
In my opinion, Garamond does come across with more refinement and grace, in
the case of the magazine (Grail World) I am publishing, but Times is still
very much on my list of favorite font families, along with the others I have
mentioned above.
Best regards,
Mark Sandrock
Paul Andrews
>>Haas Helvetica is merely boring. Univers is UGLY. Mandrill rules!
>apply, of course...
Palatino Rules OK for large bodies of text. Avant-Garde for titles and stuff.
- Paul
Jim Parry
> ch...@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
> What are you folks favorite faces? Times need not apply, of course...
(in no particular order):
Futura Black
Gill Kayo
Stop
Motter Tekkura
Helvetica Rounded
for TEXT fonts:
Helvetica
Microgramma
Palatino
(you'll notice i like modernific display fonts that hurt the eyes to read. :-)
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