A serious snootful of 80 proof usually works for me...

do you want something that looks like beowolf? or just something giving a pseudo-random effect?

Pseudo-Random Fonts:

Kosmic from the LettError guys.

Cezanne Pro from P22

Zapfino from Linotype

Local Gothic from Orange Italic

Hopefully I'm not infringeing Just and Erik's copyright by doing this, but here's what they wrote about Beowolf in their Charles Nypels Prize publication:

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RandomFonts

The first LettError project was to make a PostScript font whose lettershapes changed themselves during printing. Traditional typefaces were static copies of physical objects. Digital fonts are programs and therefore dynamic.

It is not clear whose idea it was in the first place. In the only issue of LettError magazine (1989) we propsed the idea of randomFonts, type programmed to change in the printer so that each character would be unique. After simple experiments with a square, we applied the idea to a font. This became Beowolf.

There was much discussion about the name - we felt that RandomFont was the category. Erik Spiekermann proposed Times New Random, but it wasn't Times and Beowolf just sounded gnarly.

Years later, in an article in Frieze magazine, Emily King drew a nice parallel between the typeface and the nature of the Beowulf story (the first known story to be written in English). The story would have existed in many forms until one was written down. Beowolf the typeface exists in an infinite number of possible shapes, but only the printed one will remembered. [sic]

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Beowolf is an extraordinary piece of PostScript language writing. It acts like any other PostScript font in that it has two components: one for screen display, and one for printer rastering. In the case of Beowolf, the nodes which describe the letters were instructed to move around a little. In the types released by FontFont, there were three levels of randomness, which allowed the nodes to move within a small, medium, and large radius.

Have you tried downloading the printer fonts to the printer, and only having the screen fonts "live" on your computer? Is the printer running PostScript natively, or is it emulated by the computer? If it is a PostScript printer, which PostScript level is it?

With more information, Erik or Just might be able to illuminate.

ak

As far as I can tell PS3 fonts don't work in OS X. You can run them in OS 8.6 (maybe earlier) to 9.2.2 but, if I recall correctly, you need to turn off ATM.

Gerald

I thought the issue was simply that ATM didn't display them correctly, but it's been a while! There was also the problem of printing separations where each layer would be a different instance of the typeface, creating a mess. Personally, I think the underlying design is really great and I have told E&J they should take it more seriously, but they don't listen.