DT&G Magazine Editor's Column
The Design Center, DT&G Typography Department: Type, Fonts, Lettering, Calligraphy  
Readers respond: To the editors of &Type

In Response to "Good/Bad"

I realize that nowadays there are a lot of young so-called designers out there that really need a basic study in modern typography, and Mr. Showker's article did point out a few things that anyone working with type should know. He obviously has a good deal of knowledge about type and remembers what it was like to find his favorite font be released in digital form and ask, "What the hell is this?"
      Still, I'm troubled. Now, I don't think that any young designer with any real drive to learn about type will stop at this one article. Hopefully no one will take Mr. Showker's statements to be as all-inclusive as he makes them out to be. His assertion that fonts with fewer anchors in their drawing are better is insulting to those of us who are trying to steer away from the dead, carbon-copy precision of modernism and computers back towards a greater warmth and feeling that was once achieved with the letterpress.
[Fred comments] My comments are never intended to be taken as "all inclusive". My wishes are to get people, particularly designers to take notice, and follow the learning trail on their own.
* The "additional anchors" was in reference to the picture... illustrating that pure curves need only a single anchor. I did not mean to suggest that additional anchors were bad in all cases. The examples shown however do illustrate unnecessary anchors caused by scanned versions of printed letterforms.
* Mat is exactly right. The original version of both Garamond and Palatino would have required multiple anchors to achieve exact electronic duplicates. (Garamond particularly has curves within the visually 'straight' parts of most characters.) ]

Consider his statement

"Note the round "crotch" where the strokes are supposed to cross. Now, let's look closer... This is a dead give-away that the character was copied or traced from a poorly printed sample of the font. Had the author known, (or cared) he would have turned those into sharp truncations."

I grant you that the practice of font factories visually auto-tracing fonts and passing them off as their own is reprehensible and vile, (not to mention that unnecessary points will make the object take longer to draw) and people should be aware of how to spot these, but Mr. Showker really should have gone a little further.
      For instance, A look at Zuzanna Licko's take on Bodoni, Fiolsofia, will reveal a current interest in taking some of those square serifs and having them rounded, which represents a turn away from mathematical precision and coldness, and reflects the overprint one would get when using actual ink. (God forbid!) There are those of us who still taste the bitterness of seeing ANY Garamond with squared-off serifs and terminals. Also, while he may praise Adobe's version of Palatino, and for good reason, he might also mention how markedly different it is from Mr. Zapf's original drawings and how in this one example we can witness the trend of gentrification in type design, when all the character and differences of a design are removed in the name of "cleaning it up."
      This isn't a flame. What Mr. Showker says is right, but not absolutely right. There is more to the story, and it should be told.

Mat Planet

P.S. The one thing that was actually annoying was the patting on his own back he did about sight-recognition and hand rendering of types. Lots of us did that. I really find I'm a lot less annoying when I don't brag about it. It just makes you sound like a bitter old fart.

[END]

Fred replies:

Sorry for sounding like a "bitter old fart" ... from time to time I do slip into a bit of self gratification. I apologize to everyone -- it wasn't meant to brag but to inform. In defense of the comments, we've gotten literally hundreds of responses on this piece expressing wow at some insight into the formal training designers get. Mat obviously is also trained in similar disciplines, but most aren't.
      The piece is good stuff, Mat, and on behalf of the staff and all our readers, we thank you for sending it.
      The sharing of thoughts, opinions and experience are the primary objectives of the Design & Publishing Center and Mat has used this platform well. I've contacted Mat to see if he will expand on some of his comments, and perhaps provide some illustrations. We can look forward to his reply!
      Send us YOUR comments: to the editor.

 

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