Font Design

PORTLAND, OR – Extensis has now added support for Macintosh OS 10.4 Tiger to its premiere font management software, Suitcase Fusion 2. As of March 31, 2009, version 13.1 added support for OS 10.4 Tiger to the popular font manager. Although the original release of Suitcase Fusion 2 only supported OS 10.5 Leopard at the time, Extensis has since upgraded it to work with OS 10.6 Snow Leopard and now responded to customers to add backward compatibility to OS 10.4 Tiger.

According to Brian Berson, General Manager at Extensis, he announced, “We understand that times are tough for our customers right now,” and also stated, “By adding Tiger compatibility, users can benefit from the outstanding previews and performance of Suitcase Fusion 2 without upgrading their Mac OS .”

The latest release, version 13.2 offers compatibility for Windows 7 and version 13.2.1 for Macintosh OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. The Windows version has feature parity with the Macintosh version. In the past, the Windows versions of many font managers has lagged behind the Macintosh versions. This is good news for Windows users because Suitcase Fusion 2 has some really neat features:

• Font previewing with a floating preview
• Plug-in based auto-activation for professional applications
• Custom Global Auto-Activation on an application-by-application level
• Portable, secure font vault plus option to add fonts in-place
• Font searching, tagging and classification options
• Scans and repairs corrupt fonts

Extensis has put together a really nice website where you can check out all the new features of Suitcase Fusion 2 and some really cool videos here: http://www.extensis.com/en/products/suitcasefusion2/.

LINOTYPE GMBH – The Linotype company has announced a new online Guided Tour video of its font management application, FontExplorer X Pro available here: http://www.fontexplorerx.com/macguidedtour/. The video shows the Macintosh version of the software.

FontExplorer X Pro in Detail

The Guided Tour video explains most of the features of the program in detail. FontExplorer X Pro allows you to organize your fonts – just like media files – in a Library, Sets and Smart Sets and use them in a typical workflow.

FontExplorer X Pro is organized in a concise, easy to follow interface. The main window is dived into 4 main areas:

• The Source View
• The List View
• The Info Area
• The Preview Area

The Working Areas are covered in detail:

The Source View

The Source View provides an overview of the number of fonts on your system.

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - Source View and List View

It has an integrated shopping solution that lets you browse fonts and experiment with fonts as if they were installed on your computer. You can find lots of fonts and foundries. Once you have found the typeface of your choice, you can purchase and download it with just a few clicks. It will be installed directly onto your system.

Font Sets

Font Sets allow you to organize your fonts. Easily create sets for customers, projects or whatever suits your daily work best. The System Set shows the fonts that are stored in different locations on your computer and installed on your system.

The List View

The List View allows you to activate or deactivate fonts and sort or group them in different ways. You can even have a “What You See Is What You Get” preview of all the fonts in the list and adjust its size. You can keep full control over the content of this view with a right-click on the header (Control + click with the Macintosh mouse).

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - List View

The Info Area

You can also find this information in the small info area in the bottom left. Resize it and with a right-click you can configure the content of this window to suit your needs.

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - Info Area

The Preview Area

In addition to the “What You See Is What You Get” function in the List View, you can take a closer look at selected fonts in the Preview Area. Inspect the typographical details, including ligatures or kerning. If you need a printable preview of your selected font, just click and drag the text lines from the Preview Window to your desktop. This will generate an output document in the format of your choice. Options include JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF and PDF formats.

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - Preview Area

Smart Sets

FontExplorer X Pro supports Smart Sets. Smart Sets let you define the criteria for the fonts in the set. For example, you can setup a Smart Set to include fonts by a certain vendor, or every italic font or every font used for a particular customer.

Application Sets

Application Sets allow certain fonts to be activated by certain applications – for example, Adobe Illustrator. An Application Set can contain regular font sets. So, for example, you may have organized several sets used for different Illustrator projects. You can create an Autoactivate Application Set for Illustrator and place all your Illustrator font sets into this Application Set, so that as soon as you start Illustrator, all your Illustrator fonts will be auto-activated.

To optimize your system performance, you can define which fonts you want activated at all times or activated only when FontExplorer X Pro is running.

Font Information

By double-clicking a font, FontExplorer X Pro opens the Information Window. In the Summary Overview, you’ll find all the information about this font.

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - Summary Overview

The Character Window shows all the characters of the selected font. In the sidebar you can see the codes, IDs, and various unicode options.

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - Character Window

You can also compare different font sizes and a full set of display options and settings in the Detailed Preview.

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - Detailed Preview

Finally, there is a Kerning Window where you will find specific information about the kerning of selected character pairs.

FontExplorer X Pro for Macintosh - Kerning Window

Font Management

Linotype states that with FontExplorer X Pro you can focus on your work instead of font management. It provides you with features and tools for professional font management including:

• Backup and save functionality
• Global and plug-in based auto activation
• Multiple export settings
• Handling of font conflicts
• Multiple settings and preferences

This month’s free font download at Softmaker is Delano Caps. The font is available at http://www.freefont.de/us. It is available in 3 formats – Windows TrueType and Type 1 PostScript and Macintosh Type 1 PostScript.

Delano Caps is a Display font and its attributes include decorative, engraving, caps only. Delano Caps is similar to URW Dextor which was originally designed by L. Meuffels in 1994. Dextor was originally offered by the French company, Mecanorma. It is also offered by URW, Linotype and Scangraphic.

Check back often for information on font design and font editing.

The current versions of FontLab’s applications for Mac OS X require the Rosetta library to be installed in Mac OS X. Rosetta is not enabled by default in Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

Rosetta is a small (2 MB) library that comes with Mac OS X and enables Intel Macs to run PowerPC code. Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 installed Rosetta by default. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard does not. If you’re installing Mac OS X 10.6 yourself, you can choose the “Customize” option during installation, and enable Rosetta so that it will be installed on your system.

If you already have Mac OS X 10.6 installed on your computer, and try to launch one of FontLab’s installers, a dialog box should appear telling you “To open this application, you need to install Rosetta. Would you like to install it now?” Choose “Install” and proceed with the Rosetta installation. After it is complete, install the FontLab application as usual.

This month’s free font download from Softmaker is Flagstaff. It is a display font that looks like it was inspired by the Op Art style of lettering that was popular in the U.S.  in many photo type houses in the 1960′s and 1970′s.

The Flagstaff font can be downloaded this month for free from http://www.freefont.de/us. It is available in PC TrueType and PostScript Type 1 formats and Macintosh PostScript Type 1 format. This font is very similar to the Glyphic Series originally designed by Richard A. Schlatter in 1972. There is also another font family released in 2002 – Glyphic Neue by Typeco – which is also very similar.

Linotype offers new font licensing through a new EULA (end user license agreement) that permits EOT font embedding for non-commercial websites. Linotype states on its website that, “This is one small advancement toward the goal of offering Web designers the same level of typographic freedom that print designers enjoy.”

EOT Fonts

The EOT font format is for displaying typefaces on web pages that users would not normally have installed on their local computers. Fonts are converted to the EOT format and uploaded to the website by the webmaster. When viewers load the web page in their browser, the EOT fonts are downloaded into a temporary folder similar to how other temporary files are downloaded and stored (graphics files, html files, etc.).  The browser uses the fonts from this temporary storage area to display them on the web page. The EOT fonts are encrypted to prevent them from being used for any other purpose. This prevents a font from being used on a web site other than the one it was licensed for.

Browser Support

The EOT font technology was developed by Microsoft along with the release of Internet Explorer 4 and has continued support going forward for later versions of Internet Explorer. Currently, Microsoft Internet Explorer is the only browser to support the EOT font format.

Our Comments

While the EOT font format goes a long way for web designers to have more freedom to use more typefaces than just the basic web fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia, Courier New, Trebuchet, Verdana, Andale Mono), it is not a complete solution. There are many other browsers – Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, etc. The ideal solution would be one that is supported by all browsers – similar to CSS.

More Information

Linotype has a web page with a complete FAQ and more details here: http://www.linotype.com/en/5926/eotfonts.html

This month’s free font download at Softmaker (http://www.freefont.de/us/index.htm) is Henderson. It is available in 3 formats: TrueType Windows, Type 1 PostScript Windows and Type 1 Macintosh. Henderson is based on the Linotype Hawthorn typeface. Hawthorn is a serif typeface created for display usage. It was created by Mike Daines in 1968.

Henderson combines both round and sharp stems and serifs and it has a distinct, late 60s feel. It is at home with the late 60s pop art feel of its era. Its sharp and pointy serifs are probably its most unique feature. Henderson is slightly condensed with tall x-heights like many other display faces intended for use is advertising headlines.

This month’s free font download from Softmaker is Stone Handwriting. Each month, a new font is available as a free download from the same url: http://www.freefont.de/us/index.htm. There are a ton of handwriting fonts available online and a lot of them are unsuitable for many layouts because they are messy in appearance. This one has a nice, neat and clean feel. The characters have a uniform height, but does not appear to be draftsman-like, thus lending itself to informal usage without being messy.

This font comes in TrueType (TTF) and OpenType PostScript (OTF) formats. The PostScript variety makes it a good candidate for professional layouts output by printers and service bureaus.

This month’s free font from Softmaker.de is Alte Schwabacher. This is one of the German black letter font standards. It is available this month  from the url: http://www.freefont.de/us/index.htm. Another popular historical German black letter font is Fraktur.

WhatTheFont is a free online font identification web form available at MyFonts.com (http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/). It is the best, most reliable font identification tool that I have found. The way it works is that you upload an image file with a sample of the font you want to identify. Then it runs a character recognition script on the sample where it identifies each letter. You will be sent to a screen where you can make adjustments in case of an error. You can also re-combine compound shapes that have become separated – such as the dot over the lower case “i” or “j” or the dot under the question mark or exclamation point. The screen allows you to drag and drop the separated part over the character it has been separated from and re-combine the compound shape. When you are finished making adjustments, simply press the “Search” button and it will send you to a search results page with a list of candidates for the font.

WhatTheFont supports most common image file formats such as BMP, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc. The website offers tips for getting a good result, such as the maximum size of the uploaded image and the optimum number of pixels for the letter height.

The results are very impressive. Even with a low resolution sample, if it is upsampled in Photoshop and steps are taken to create a clean image, the results can be spot on. You can use Photoshop to clean up the image by converting all the characters to black and white and adjusting the brightness and contrast to get nice, dark letters. Then you can go to the trouble to make sure each letter is separated by a little space.

I have used this tool over and over and it has saved me a ton of time looking through specimen sheets trying to find that font that I just know, but can’t remember the name.