Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Path: news.cinenet.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!uucp3.uu.net!world!kibo From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) Subject: Re: Font design question Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: X-Kibo-Equipment: a distributed Lego robot (distributed by accident) Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 09:18:27 GMT X-Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 9581 centons, 71 microns, .04 mugars Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 References: <5leekh$cnt$1@nnrp01.primenet.com> Nntp-Posting-Host: ppp0a003.std.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Organization: welcome datacomp X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.4.0 Lines: 55 Xref: news.cinenet.net alt.religion.kibology:29866 WARNING: BORING POST OF INTEREST ONLY TO NERDS WHO TALK TO THEMSELVES mmcirvin@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin) wrote: > > mmcirvin@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin) wrote: > > > > I think that Futura also introduced the "one-story > > a" without the hook on top, another abstraction from the German lettering. > > Hmm... I guess the one-story a also shows up in script and italic > typefaces. But I ought to shut up before I say anything else that is > blatantly wrong. Well, yeah, but I really consider the Futura "a" different from the chancery cursive "a" they were using five hundred years ago. You couldn't write the Futura one with _two_ calligraphic strokes; it's a three-piece letter. (Takes two strokes to make a circle with a quill, usually.) Futura's a fascinating hybrid of ideas that had previously been too ahead of their time to catch on: Caslon II's "Egyptian", the first sans-serif sold, was an all-caps geometric font very similar to Futura (actually more like the 1970 Avant Garde Gothic.) Futura's capitals actually draw their structure from the greatest Roman letters of all, the Trajan column inscription (about 1900 years ago). Note the Futura "M" and "R" if you don't believe me. The lowercase are 50% blackletter and 50% Cubism (see Renner's original prospectus that had some bizarre two-piece letters.) And the whole thing is masterfully executed: the weight of strokes varies all over the place, and none of the round letters are remotely circular, all to give the thing a more pleasingly "even" effect than something completely geometric (Avant Garde) has. Futura corrects for all kinds of optical quirks in the human visual system to make it look plainer than it is. Turn the "o" sideways and the "H" upside down to see some of the more obvious effects; would you notice if an Avant Garde "o" was sideways? BTW, the Adobe, Bitstream, and URW/E&F versions of Futura -- all fully-licensed -- have different designs. The one from URW and/or E&F (URW sells digital data to smaller companies) is closest to the original foundry type; Adobe's (I think) is one which has been modified for Linotype machines, and Bitstream's derives from (I believe, but am uncertain) a Berthold phototype version. There are also a plethora of Futura clones still in circulation after all these years: Linotype Spartan, Monotype Twentieth Century (which was later mutated into Century Gothic to "space like" Avant Garde!) If you're seriously studying Futura, Matt, avail yourself of "Letters of Credit" and "Anatomy of a Typeface". There you can see Renner's original drawing for the lowercase, along with the original drawings for Erbar and Johnston's Underground letters, and Koch's Kabel. Bauer actually sold some of the funny Cubist lowercase letters for Futura, like the rectangular "m" and two-piece "r", very briefly in the twenties. Those two books also show that Gill Sans, Kabel, and Metro were all issued with "Futura Alternates", a sign that Futura was incredibly influential. (You could actually make Gill Sans look like Futura by swapping about a dozen Monotype matrices.) -- K.