New to Typophile? Accounts are free, and easy to set up.
Amazing font design software
Posted by Tama in
22 Sep 2011 — 7:45am
22 Sep 2011 — 7:45am
Some time ago I found a website where a young folk from France was presenting his awesome (work in progress) software. This application could add serifs and manipulate them as well as font weight and x-height so easily it left me breathless. Just with a click.
The thing is, I absolutely cannot remember the website address. Or the name of the projecy. Or anything useful to try a search on google.
I hope someone here has heard of it!
Tx
User login
Support our Sponsors
22 Sep 2011 — 8:31am
It it's not kalliculator …
http://www.kalliculator.com/
… or any other tool from Frederik Berlaen, I would also be interested what it might be. ;-)
23 Sep 2011 — 3:54am
I think you might be referring to this, by Yannick Mathey.
26 Sep 2011 — 2:21am
Thank you!
That really is amazing; and so I hate to say this, but it was about time someone made this. :P
26 Sep 2011 — 6:33am
Very cool!
This reminds me of the philosophy behind the Computer Modern family of TeX fame (or infamy, if you've read a few too many research papers set in it!), where the METAFONT source files are governed by 62 parameters controlling various widths and heights and so forth. I seem to recall reading that Knuth et al. even made the serif, sans and monospace all derived from the same basic structure, simply by changing around the parameters to delete serifs and make all widths equal.
Awesome to see such a concept presented in an interactive, real-time manner.
8 Oct 2011 — 5:57am
You may also be interested in LAIKA & Type Generator.
18 Sep 2012 — 7:41am
to Andrew's first comment
my reply is definitely late, but THANKS! That was exactly what I was talking about
28 Sep 2012 — 2:24am
My pleasure.
28 Sep 2012 — 6:28am
Wow! LAIKA is…awesome!!! I want one for every room in my home…
4 Oct 2012 — 12:35am
"about time"?
I think it is a safe bet you are unfamiliar with Ares FontChameleon. Over 15 years old now, and was very much along these lines in its capabilities.
(Adobe bought Ares because its compact "font descriptors" could be used to cram more fonts into limited printer ROM space, back in the day. FontChameleon-compressed ROM fonts were a standard feature of PostScript 3 when it first shipped, though I believe Adobe eventually abandoned the technology for new devices. I found it much more interesting for its original purposes, myself!)
4 Oct 2012 — 1:22am
I thought Adobe bought Ares FontChameleon and FontMonger just to take a font modification toolkit off the market. I learned something new today.
8 Oct 2012 — 11:07am
Yes, that was a common assumption in the usual retail markets, but no, it was all about PostScript font compression. The type group was relatively uninvolved in the decision except in the aftermath of helping proof the new fonts and to some degree sorting out some of the end-to-end implementation issues.
From a fonty perspective, PostScript 3 in 1997 was a bit of a “perfect storm.” Adobe changed a bunch of things relating to fonts all at the same time: ROM fonts having to be coordinated with TrueType fonts and not just Type 1, supporting CE encoded fonts (both TT and T1), and the Chameleon (Type 14) font compression format in ROM. All these things interacted, and even if some seemed fine by themselves, the implementations had to be compatible....
Cheers,
T
8 Oct 2012 — 11:39am
Type 14?! Wow, that must be like the Area 51 of the font world...
hhp