I'm currently working on a Condensed weight of my font Outstanding.

I draw my font glyphs in bitmap, then edit the imported graphics. I made the source graphics for the condensed weight by shrinking the Regular weight horizontally to 80%, without changing the height. I then clean up the images in my font editor, (ScanFont 3).

Here is the X from the Regular weight, in Capitals and lower case small caps, and the equivalent glyph in caps for the Condensed weight:


The small caps X in the Regular weight is unmodified, other than to have the shadows removed.

So, I'm wondering what looks best from among my options for the small caps X in the Condensed weight. Because this weight has been artificially created with stretch/skew, it doesn't have to be faithful to an original design.

Here are my choices:



The first one is the same as the Capital, less the shadow.

In the second one, the serifs at lower left and upper right have been shortened.

In the third one, the serifs at upper left and lower right have been shortened, and the serif at upper right has been shortened further.

Which X do you like best, for the Condensed small caps?

Thanks,

~bobistheowl

He lied to you, Ben. MK Stencil is still part of the Manfred Klein 2003 Archive at TypOasis,(http://www.moorstation.org/typoasis/typoasis1.htm) which is still, for the most part, his home site, (his last releases were on his post 2007 home page, http://manfred-klein.ina-mar.com/



This is the page link: http://www.moorstation.org/typoasis/designers/klein03/deco/mkstencilsans.htm

It looks like Lobster, with an ex ligature.

I highly doubt that Manfred Klein ever modified someone else' font to make one of his own, considering that he had retired from a long career of type design before computers had mouses. He didn't even need to draw his alphabets on paper. He could just realize them directly from memory or from his imagination in his font editor.

I received an e-mail from Manfred Klein once. Unfortunately, his Internet presence ended before he had the chance to see my tribute font. He retired from typography to care for his wife, who was quite ill. I believe he may also have been suffering from symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, based on information told to me by a third party who knew him well.

rosiereesd, the embedding setting for Bloody Impact is "Editing of the document is allowed".

Bloody Impact does not have a glyph for the apostrophe in its character map. The fact that the text defaulted to Times New Roman when you typed the apostrophe suggests to me that you were probably using the font with MS Word 2000 or 2003. The problems you had with the printing could likely be related to your attempt to use the nonexistent apostrophe. One other possibility is that you had the font open, but not installed when you tried to print your document. That would also allow you to see the font in an electronic document, but not be able to print the text. If the only character that printed was the Times New Roman apostrophe, that possibility would be more likely. I highly doubt that a computer virus is to blame.

You may also wish to send a private message to Jason Arthur of JibbaJabba Fonts - there's a 'Send a Private Message' link near the top of the page, on the details page for the font. He could probably better explain if you are able to do what you want to do, using that font. If there is a problem with the font, I'm sure he would want to know that, too, and as soon as possible. Sometimes fonts we make can behave differently on someone else's computer, usually for a logical reason, and often easily corrected, but we don't know about the problem, because we don't experience it ourselves.

It's the sort of translation that is best done NOT carefully. My post is prose, but it's not literature. The goal is not to reproduce the nuances of my writing style, as if one were translating Sartre to English, or Mark Twain to French. So many professional translators fall into that trap, when translating business form letters. It's more like how an interpreter works, when two people who don't understand each other converse orally, through a third party. It's not really that different from two people making fonts from the same poorly scanned .pdf of an old book.

I'm just curious about how the same opinions would be expressed, using the syntax of another language. To me, the difference between French and English is like the difference between wine and beer. French grammar follows a logic derived from Latin. English is easier to understand on a basic level, but harder to master, as so much of it is contradictory, and frequently incorrect technically, even in sources that ought to be reliable. The grammar in many English books, newspapers, and magazines is atrocious, but at the same time, easily understandable, because the same errors are made so often that the proper usage looks unusual.

rosiereesd, we can't really help you, until you tell us which font(s)s are affected, and the application in which you are using it/them.

The part about the printing problem probably relates to the embedding settings, as determined by the designer. That's what "Free for Personal Use" means, in many cases. Not 'buying a license is optional, and on an honour system', but actual restrictions built into the font, which allow you to see it in use before deciding if you want to buy a commercial license, but not being able to print, without having first purchased one.

Most of the demo fonts from The Scriptorium have those restrictions, and many others, I'm sure. Depending on the software used to make a font, the default setting for embedding instructions can be different, as well. For some fonts, the designer may, in fact, not know which settings they have used.

Is it possible he hasn't finished making the font yet? That could explain a character map, but no download links.

Billy hasn't had a new font on Dafont since June, 2011, (pijamas), after being quite a prolific designer for the previous few years. He's probably doing different things with his life right now. I know he was very involved with skateboards at one time. When somebody makes as many fonts as has has, it would be normal to expect him to have more than one project on the go at the same time. Maybe Backstab was never completed.

I'm impressed, koeiekat. I wasn't aware that you had a font with 50.000 plus downloads!

I'm sure the animal shelters you support are severely underfunded where you live, as they are here. They can do a lt of good with that.

Bodoni designed the typefaces, either on paper, or for printing blocks. The people who digitalized his typefaces designed the fonts used for electronic printing.

Designing a typeface is like creating art. Designing fonts is more like technical drawing, where precision, rather than inspiration, is most important. Those who design both their typefaces and their fonts are both artists and architects.

akasper, everyone who has one or more fonts hosted by Dafont will have a link at the top of each Dafont browser window called My Account. Click on this link, and a list of your fonts will appear, with download totals for the previous day, total downloads to date, and the number of comments made on your font. To the right of the name of each font, you'll see a link called update. Click the update link, and you'll be directed to a separate page of details and preferences about your font. You can update the license terms, add or change artwork, add or change the Note of the Author, etc. After making any changes, click the Submit button at the bottom, and the Dafont Webmaster will probably have your changes processed in 1-3 days.

I think you'll need to have a Paypal account if you want to use a Donationware license, as Dafont does not collect money on behalf of any of the designers showcased here. If you have a Paypal account, in the Note of the Author section, type Note to Webmaster:, and provide the details about your account. Updates are manually processed, so that information would not be displayed to others on the details page for your font.

If you're using a Free for Personal Use license, you should include a read me document with any future submissions, clearly stating the terms of use. For a font already uploaded where the license is being changed, you can state the terms in the Note of the Author section, including an e-mail address to which commercial use inquiries should be directed.

You should also keep in mind that, even though thousands of people may download your font for free, very few would but a license, or donate. My unscientific study comparing the relationship between downloads and font comments suggests that one comment per 80.000 downloads is about average. Donations and license purchases would be even less. claudeserieux who responded to you initially has almost 10 million downloads at Dafont, but I think he's only received about $100 in donations. Almost no one makes a significant income from Free for Personal Use fonts, so don't let that be your motive. Most of use do it for that one comment per 80.000 downloads!

~bobistheowl

What font are they using for the answers on the game show Jeopardy!?

Thanks,

~bito

@zerodeluxe: I agree completely, after having had the chance to view Surf and Sugo side by side.

Off topic: From the illustrations on the Luc Devroye page, "her" font "Winter", appears to be a good choice for the Warner Brothers font that LooneyTunerian is trying to get other people to make for him for free in another thread in English forum. It doesn't look like his samples, but it looks more authentic, for what he wants to do. I hope he reads other forum threads besides the one in which he posts, or he might miss out on this:



Too bad he won't be able to find a download site, unless he googles better than the rest of us. Maybe if he wrote to her, she could tell him the font's real name?

@drf_: Could I interest you in translating my post #10 into French? I read the language fairly well, but I write it at a level somewhere between high school and babelfish, depending on whether I need to use verbs in the non present tenses. I would enjoy seeing a French interpretation of my prose. rocamaco could do the Spanish, and koeiekat could do it in Dutch, click language, and meow.

I looked at the @ in Surf and Sugo using ScanFont 3, and other than the colour of some of the nodes, they were identical. Some of the vertical metrics were different. Perhaps the spacing between letters may be different. That doesn't take a lot of skill to change. This seems to cross the line between similar and counterfeit.

@drf_: Thanks for the acknowledgement. I've always thought of the word font as a source, to inspire graphic design, rather than an archaic reference to lead type. It's unfortunate that many take that too literally. Many popular fonts here are just a grunge filter removed from a Windows system font.

While the evidence so far seems to suggest that the Kate Ferrara fonts may be dubious in their originality, there is an import point, not mentioned so far in this thread:

There is a huge difference between designing a font, and designing a typeface. Some designers do both, and some do one or the other.

Here's an example involving my own work:

Outstanding by bobistheowl (2012): http://www.dafont.com/outstanding.font

Shadowed Serif by James Fordyce (1994): http://www.dafont.com/shadowed-serif.font

I didn't design the alphabet used for this font, and it's highly doubtful that James Fordyce did, either. This appears to be a 19th century design. His version has numbers, and mine has a small caps lower case, based on the shadow caps. It's also likely that his image sources were different than mine. Both fonts are different digital interpretations of the same typeface. No harm, no foul.

There's nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about different font designers using the same design to make different, unique fonts, provided that one font is not used to make the other.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Bodoni fonts, all designed, or inspired by designs created by Giambattista Bodoni. Bodoni himself did not design any fonts, because he died in 1813. It's not as if the first font maker to use one of his designs suddenly acquired eternal dibs, as if it was a hotmail address. If it were a crime to create and market fonts based on typefaces designed by others, our jails would be filled to capacity with graphic designers, and Elsner + Flake, among others, would be serving life sentences. Two fonts that look identical in a preview panagram can look markedly different when opened with a font editor; the number and placement of the vector control nodes is usually a good indication of how closely related two digital versions of the same source may be. In other cases, the inclusion of additional glyphs, ligatures, or kerning pairs sets one apart from the other.

It's also perfectly acceptable to redraw a typeface of ambiguous origin as a free font, where a commercial version has previously been released. I'll use the example of Alexandra Leopoldovna Gophmann, who has designed a lot of free fonts that highly resemble commercial fonts rendered by others. I think there are hundreds of fonts that are, essentially, Helvetica, with slight variations to the punctuation, and perhaps some additional cosmetic changes.

What is illegal, immoral, and unethical is to create a font by modifying an existing font, then representing the derivative work as an original composition.

Without the option of directly comparing the Kate Ferrara fonts to those they so clearly resemble, we can't tell the degree of similarity.

@PseudoNypho: She's using Mac OS X - that information is displayed to the forum moderators.

@cara farrell: Whatever problem you had with the naming seems to have been fixed. I opened a copy of your font with Studio5, and all of the name fields show carafont.

When you use the update link on your My Account page, the change is manually processed by the Webmaster, usually within 1-3 days; it's not instantaneous.

~bobistheowl

I haven't been able to find a valid link for any page that has Kate Ferrara fonts available for download.

Usually fonts are not accepted if the quality is poor, like if the edges are very rough.

If it's not good enough for Dafont, you could always make a page at DeviantArt or Fontspace. Neither of them has an evaluation process, so anyone can make their font available for download there, regardless of the quality.

@ toto@k22: He's using Mac OS X, if that's any help.

baine Take a look at some of the fonts in the Fancy -> Old School Theme: http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=104&page=1