Aehem, Sure, John is right, the sample you posted is 'Mason', from Emigre..
http://www.emigre.com/EF.php?fid=104

( My thoughts were temporary drawn away, because of the 'Morpheus' statement.. )

The font is Parish Light.

This page from the website in English explains where these fonts come from, but the downloads from the links are Mac only.

I assume that this font "borrows" greatly from Mason, but its copyright date shows 1994 and the Emigre site lists a general font copyright date range of 1995 to 2004. Hmmm ...

Parish is more elegant? Hum... I don't think so

Any doubt can be erased by perusing more of A4's offerings, which are similar copies of others' work.

Well, I guess it's a matter of aesthetics then, hehe I still find that Parish looks better than Mason Serif Alternative, especially the little nuances like the serifs in most letters, like the F's and E's, and the consistency of M and N, as well as O and Q, etc... oh well




btw, that's some nice trivia on the "Mason" font... I guess fonts aren't spared from these types of "socio-political" changes, hehe

Lazy dog, indeed...

I gotta admit though, Parish still looks better after all the bastardization, lol

Sorry, Yves. As always, you're quicker...

jmc _=+

Sorry Tolitz, sorry Mike. Maybe the subtleties of the mother tongue are not easy to translate. I was not attacking. This is not my personal style. Even if I don't agree with some practices I always keep away the person who make them. I want a world full of freedom. And, OF COURSE, I was talking about the copy and paste way of "design" not about the free personal opinion of Tolitz Rosel or Mike Freiman or... me.

Tolitz: sorry again. I am sure you are not "the font world's number one enemy". I was talking about the font, not about you. I think I didn't misunderstood you. It was a simple commentary about the font. Nothing else.

By the way, I don't know what "LOL" means.

oops, my server is down

This brings up a curious question for me. Let's assume for one moment that the glyphs are not just hacked up copies of Charlemange (although, that makes me question Mason as well, as it bears a lot of similarities to Chalemange as well, doesn't it?). If I'm inspired by a font I see, and I design a font that uses those characteristics, how is that theft? The laws in the US do not protect type design. They protect the software that allows one to use the font. It's not theft, it's a protected act that the patent office and copyright offices in the US have zero problem with.

I view this the same way I view copycat films in Hollywood. It's lame as an artist to create by slavishly copying, but it's not unexpected or illegal.

(Yes, I know that not everyone here is from the US, and the copyright protection of font design is different outside of our little western nation.)

Well I'm grateful to you all for clearing up the Manson/Mason question. I have the font both ways and could never figure out what the difference was between the two or what to call it. I think I'll keep it as Manson just to be subversive ;-)

I'd like to see a bezier-by-bezier comparison of Ma(n)son, Parish, and Charlemagne to see exactly where the thefts occurred.

For the record, I didn't think Yves' message was a personal attack -- it was an attack on the attitude of laughing (that's what LOL means, Jose -- "laughing out loud") at the idea that after all the stealing, the end result was actually preferable, which connotes a kind of tacit acceptance of the theft.

That's kind of why I'd like to see the beziers -- it's one thing to steal an idea ("good artists borrow, great artists steal") and improve on it; it's quite another to simply steal another's work, customize it a little and then call it your own.

For example, Carol Twombly didn't come up with the ideas for Charlemagne (or Trajan, for that matter) out of thin air -- they're based on forms from history. She built on those ideas and created something both respectful of history and original at the same time.

If the Parish designer printed out the Charlemagne and Mason sets, then traced them, added the Mason-inspired accents to the Charlemagne forms by drawing them on the paper, then scanned it in and did every bezier from scratch, then I wouldn't really have a problem with it. But if the designer simply converted Charlemagne and Mason to outlines, then modified the beziers, I'd be much more upset about it.

Finally, if it is an outright theft, as it looks like it is, it doesn't matter how hard the font is to find. The legal argument about international copyright is immaterial to me; it's a breach of professional ethics, especially to turn around and charge for the theft.

Mark, Tolitz stated herself that the Diablo manual used Exocet. All the more reason to think that the accompanying font was legitimate.

Oops, I missed that, and I agree with you.

If a designer likes a font, they will use it, and don't usually pay much attention to the pedigree. I don't really have a problem with that or even derivative fonts like Parish, in and of themselves. I do have a problem when someone tries to pass off such a font as an original work.

I do think derivative fonts should be allowed to exist somehow in a way that's fair to the original designers. There is certainly a demand for them. The one avenue that is allowed now in some licenses is that, if you have a legal copy of a font, you can make a derivative version for your own use. The problem is when you try to distribute it, which puts the maker of such a font in a very dubious and possibly illegal position. In an ideal world, Carol Twombly and Jonathan Barnbrook would get a cut of the proceeds from something like Parish. Or maybe there should be a requirement that, for example, anyone using Parish should have a legal copy of Charlemagne or Mason. In fact, there's no reason why people couldn't do this on their own now.

It's a little sticky with Parish in particular, though. The basic font data seems to me to have come from Charlemagne. The designer then took ideas from Mason and applied them to Charlemagne. I think taking the basic font data from Charlemagne is very different taking visual ideas from Mason. The first is more to do with software copyright, the second is more about artistic integrity. Software can be protected legally. Ideas usually can't (except by patent). I wonder if

Oh, and for what it's worth, I opened both Parish and Charlemagne in FontLab. The point data of some of the characters in Parish is identical to Charlemagne. In some cases, there are the same number of points, but some of them have been moved around. In yet other cases, the characters have been redrawn.

on a separate note ...
Isn't that Cabarga Cursiva available for free download?
It's listed as Obtuse Highlight, Solid by
Keith Field.

http://www.a4.se/svensk/typsnitt/les_fonts_terribles.html

Glad I got that right -- it was my reaction, too.

At least as I understood it, your LOL remark indicated that you thought it was funny (likely in the ironic rather than the ha-ha sense) that even after you knew the font was a bastardized version of two established typefaces, you still liked it better. You have every right to like it better -- I'm sure the designer did, too; it was his idea to "improve" upon Charlemagne and Mason in the first place. The problem (for me, anyway; not trying to speak for Yves but I did it so well before...) is that I don't think there's anything funny about how he apparently went about it, ironic, ha-ha, or otherwise.

Note: neither I nor Yves suggested that you approved of the practice, but if you end up using the font, you've basically accepted it as a convenience with reservations. Two very different things.

So stealing a design and changing it a bit so it looks
"better" to some people is okay these days? I'm not
LOLing so much, Tolitz.

The problem with these practices is that it devaluates
type design as an art form and a craft. People think
it's enough to nick some ideas from other designers here
and there, and play around with the "found" character
shapes to create a "new" design. So they think: "Is that all
there is to it? Oh, it can't be all that bad to pirate typefaces
then. Why pay these hacks for their work?"

Tell me, I'm interested: what do you do for a living?

Mike I'd like to stress I did not attack Tolitz at any given
moment. I just gave my (strong) opinion about certain
practices in type "design". I have to agree that the last
sentence of my original post, intended as a first step to
a discussion, might've been interpreted wrong.

Furthermore we know from past experience this is a very
touchy subject around here, so accidents are bound to
happen. Sorry if I irked you or Tolitz, no offense.

Oh and THX Chesh for correctly interpreting and clarifying
my LOL comment. That's exactly what I meant. You da man.