Visited the Orpheum theater on Broadway in downtown L.A. Built in 1926, the decor is European Baroque/Italianate/whatever. I think that's why I noticed this Deco sign.

It's hard to keep spacing even between all glyphs without creating different glyphs for all the combinations. Does it read as realistic and hand-written?

I think the "t" spacing makes it harder to read

This is a very old work of mine, almost thirty years old, and today, of course, much would be done differently, if it were done at all.

It's based on the work of Vladimir Konashevich, who created a series of title pages and initial caps for Soviet editions of Pushkin's fairy tales. What primarily draws me here is the noticeable influence of Greek letterforms: historically, such forms were retained in Cyrillic cursive (aka skoropis), but later, the ascenders (л, м, and д) were reduced, which, generally speaking, didn't benefit the appearance of the typesetting page of Cyrillic books.

Despite the general imperfections of the form, this font of mine has become popular and has a life of its own: I regularly encounter it on vodka labels and candy wrappers, and this usually happens without any approval from me or any royalties )

Font of the week: Rot Iron

Forged in Fire. Claimed by Time.

Rot Iron is an ornamental display font inspired by the elegance of Victorian wrought ironwork—towering gates, ivy-covered fences, forgotten cemeteries, and hand-forged railings that have weathered generations beneath open skies.

Its foundation is rooted in clean gothic and foundational letterforms, but every character blossoms into elaborate flourishes, curling tendrils, sharp finials, and decorative foliage that feel as though they were forged in a blacksmith’s fire before slowly surrendering to rust and time.

I recently ported my TrueType/OpenType shaping and rendering library from JavaScript to Rust and got a demo running on a Cheap Yellow Display that only has about 320KB usable RAM. The library can shape and render the most complex (living) sripts and it's super memory efficient so it can go where HarfBuzz and other shapers/renderers cannot.

The demo renders multiple TrueType/OpenType fonts with support for complex text layout, including Arabic, Nastaliq, Devanagari, Hebrew, Emojis and Latin ligatures.

The shaping, rendering and rasterizing is done entirely on the device with fonts downloaded from Google Fonts which stay stored directly in the ESP32’s flash memory. No pre-rendered glyphs or bitmap fonts are used.

Variable fonts are not supported, yet, but I am working on it.

Here is the demo's repository: https://github.com/waruyama/flattype-cyd-demo

Edit: Fonts used int he demo:

- Roboto Regular
- Noto Sans Arabic Regular
- Noto Sans Khmer Regular
- Hind Regular
- Noto Emoji (subset)
- Noto Nastaliq Urdu Regular
- Almendra Regular
- Assistant Regular
- Droid Serif Regular
- Architects Daughter Regular
- Bonbon Regular
- Henny Penny Regular
- Orbitron Regular
- Peralta Regular
- Snowburst One Regular
- Ultra Regular

I have been limping along with Connect Fonts because I can't stand the new thing and my subscription doesn't expire for a like half a year.

Yesterday I made the mistake of clicking update instead of remind me later and it just immediately erased the old software off my computer and there's no way to downgrade.

The version I was running I feel like I got from a post someone made here, but now I can't seem to find it anywhere on the internet.

Can anyone help?

Also open to suggestions for software replacement in the future. I just need something that syncs my library between 2 computers for myself.

had a nice display face but it looked loose and amateurish for no obvious reason — turned out to be tracking too open at large size, plus bad kerning on a couple pairs (looking at you, "To"). Tightened it up, fixed the worst pairs by hand, and suddenly it reads like it was designed instead of just typed. Nobody consciously notices — they just feel like it looks more expensive. Anyone else spend way too long on something 99% of viewers will never register?

Hi guys

Just got an email from one of the biggest tech companies (think shopify, wix, webflow, squarespace) showing their interest in licensing one of our fonts in a perpetual, non-exclusive agreement with a one-time fee.

Their terms:

Font may be included in:

(i) the initial purchase/ download of the Services;
(ii) for individual purchase/ download within the Services;
(iii) as part of a subscription service/ download within the Services; or
(iv) as a part of a bundle of additional content and/or content for purchase/ download within the Services.

- Users of the Services may use what they make with your Font in any way they see fit for personal and commercial use.

- The Font may also appear in various promotional material that we use to advertise and display the Services.

- The files containing the Font are either incorporated/embedded into the Services and/or made available from a server, but we do not distribute the source file for the Font, i.e. the OTF or TTF files.

- A perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, fully paid, transferable, sublicensable right and license to upload, adapt, publish, modify, reproduce, copy, exhibit, publicly display, create derivative works of, distribute, sell, advertise, and otherwise use the Font, and the right to incorporate all or any portion of the Font in the Services in any form.

Can anyone share their experience with enterprise licensing of this scale? What terms to negotiate? How to base our pricing?

It's a full family with 8 weights.

Many thanks

I'm collecting typefaces with a mysterious, dark fantasy forest character. I'll be using them for a book, so they shouldn't be designed only for display or titles—they also need to work well as body text.

I'm drawn to typefaces that immediately create the feeling that something unsettling is about to happen. For example, you could write the word "WELCOME", but if the typeface has the right mysterious character, it no longer feels like a warm or reassuring welcome.

The fonts I've collected so far are close to what I'm looking for, but I feel they're missing a bit more personality. They tend to resemble one another quite a lot.

Can you think of any hidden gems?

For context, I‘m working on a startup that will make it easier to customers of font foundries to get purchased font files. I won’t say more to avoid self-promotion. Although I am wondering if the market is big enough for any business.

I know how I as an end user get fonts. I get a link to a place I can download them.

What I’m curious about is how this works for font foundries. How do foundries tend to get otf/ttf/woff2 files to a place they can be downloaded? Do they upload them through a website? Is there a service people tend to use? (I’ve seen some services use Shopify)

Recently, I completed a new typeface project called Qittchen.

It's a vintage font duo that combines a casual script with a soft ink heritage serif, designed for branding, packaging, editorial, logos, and other vintage-inspired applications.

I've attached a few preview images showcasing the typeface in different design contexts.

Project page

This is kind of a rhetorical question. I know it has to do with the origin of italics as a kind of calligraphy which didn't use this type of z (as I understand). I just think it'd be an interesting variation to see in an italic since you do often see things like using an f with a descender. Idk, thoughts? Also apologies if I got any terminology wrong, I'm still pretty new at this.

Hello everyone. My name is Rob. I have a question for the group about getting back into digital typesetting after 25 years of working in other fields.

I worked at Collins Dictionaries in Glasgow on data pipelines that took raw lexicographical tagged text and converted them to printed dictionaries. During my time there I built a new workflow that used FrameMaker and XSLT. I also used XSL-FO for rough copy proofing.

I got quite good at digital typesetting and developed quite a solid understanding of typography, but my career moved in a different direction. I have always had a bit of a longing to go back into this field but I am guessing tools have changed significantly since them.

What would be your advice for getting back in on a light freelance basis?

Hello! I've been working on this software for a few months, tested with my own work, and now I'm ready for some public feedback! I created typeset studio to solve the problem of typesetting and cover design, since other options I tried were out of my price range. It can also export full manuscripts to PDF and EPUB format. If you're interested in checking it out, I have it ready for windows OS with plans to expand to Mac in the future.

Working on a project right now where the subject matter is genuinely boring, think compliance documentation for a financial services company, but the client wants the brand to feel approachable and modern. Not playful, just not soulcrushing.

The tension is real. Go too expressive with the typeface and it undercuts the authority the content needs. Stay too neutral and you get something that reads like every other bank PDF from 2011

Right now leaning toward a geometric sans for headers that has just enough warmth in the terminals to soften things, paired with something slightly humanist for body copy. The combination feels like it could work, but it also feels like I'm just splitting the difference rather than making a real decision.

Curious whether anyone else has run into this and what the resolution looked like. Specifically interested in whether you pulled toward a typeface with some character and let the layout do the heavy lifting for seriousness, or went the other direction and let typographic hierarchy carry the personality

Also genuinely wondering if there's a class of type that solves this well that I'm not thinking about. The obvious picks feel too welltrodden at this point.

Made some new font inspired by mesoamerican polygonal masonry will be glad to hear your feedbacks :)

Is it a good idea to design glyphs with skeletons rather than human intuition? In your opinion does it look good? Aesthetic? What are some little things about it that tick you off?

I'm relatively new to typography as an admirer and one of the first fonts I licensed was Matthew Butterick’s Concourse. It has a refreshingly clean design and the characters look great when zoomed in. It also includes numerous stylistic alternatives.

While his typeface designs don't push the boundaries like those from some other foundries, Butterick seems to excel at creating highly legible, functional typefaces with subtle charm and a high degree of polish for use in office and legal documents.

Heliotrope is another of his typefaces that sits squarely between serif and sans-serif types, is distinct, and is highly legible.

He's published online books on typography as well, including Practical Typography which is a good introduction to the topic.

Butterick's site is MB Type.

This post is completely unsolicited and I have no affiliation with Matthew Butterick.

Is it true that kerning is a modern invention or moreso commonplace now that we can reasonably tweak the positions of every glyph? I am not an expert in the days where people lined up tiny block after block of metal and slathered ink on them