Funny, the Microsoft monopoly rears its ugly head yet again. Fine, the type is good looking, but many of the people that care and would use it do not use PCs. I'm not going out and buying a PC for six typefaces. Sorry, MS.

I think this will prove to be impetus for more energy in the open source community to develope better and more universal techniques for using any typeface a website owns through the back end. It's been coming along any way, now linux and mac users will be forced to find a better way. This way, if you have a screen face, or a pixel font, or any typeface you want for headlines, you could use it and maintain your visual system, rather than defaulting to whatever MS mandates.

I think it's great that MS puts an emphasis on typeface design in instances like this, but it's clearly meant to exclude non-windows users. It's fine, they put the time and money into it, I'm not saying these faces should be free. I just think we're gonna see a gear shift, that's all.

It would have been nice to have more choice of proportion -- quite different x-heights for the optional sans or serif faces. Or maybe a wider body option.

Every type designer, I would imagine, given the opportunity to create for such a universal user group, wants to design the ideal face and heads for the average proportions, so as a whole the variety suffers.

Also, where is the light weight sans serif that typographers really need to add some contrast to their screen designs?

(As you can tell, I was not invited to the party.)

>whatever MS mandates

Rubbish. MS doesn't have a monopoly on typefaces. I think MS has done something very good here.

Aaron, this isn't about you. MS is constantly improving readability for 95% of users - sure they do it to gain more customers, but you can't blame one company for the flawed system that is Capitalism. I don't think much of megacorporations in general, but compared to Apple (icky full-fuzz rendering) I think the MS type boys are a godsend. And if this motivates the competitors of MS to make better stuff themselves, that's even better!

Again, I'm not a fan of MS the company.
But I am the biggest fan of fairness.

> I was not invited to the party.

How could a WRBWWRM-er (even one who quite paradoxically liked Peter's TYPO article!) ever be?

hhp

First and foremost - John Hudson -- congratulation. Constantia is really nice typeface.

Second - what is the big deal? and "the Microsoft monopoly rears its ugly head yet again" ?

I'm sure these will be very useful typefaces, I was just pointing out there isn't much range here for art directors. For instance, all the "o"s are semi-condensed. Is this because the 5 fonts are supposed to harmonize, or is it some principle of legibility? Or maybe just the shape du jour? Surely more contrast between letter shapes would be better for reading-- seems like the theorists are scared the letters will get too close together.

>WRBWWRM

That's not actually my philosophy. I've argued against some of your bouma-izing in the past, but that doesn't mean I'm from the "opposite" camp; I think reading is very complex (yes, I'm Hudsonian).

BTW, your concept of the bouma appears to be evolving.

> your concept of the bouma appears to be evolving.

I hope so! In fact in the past year or two it has moved closer to Kevin and away from Peter (although it's still much closer to Peter). Peter (whose views have also been evolving - possibly more/faster than mine) is actually further from Kevin than I am - something some people are failing to realize in their evaluation of the TYPO13 articles...

Reading is indeed extremely complex (which actually casts extra doubt on the existing empiricism), but one place I disagree with John is that improvement is moot. And Kevin and Peter both feel the way I do about that, FYI.

--

Anyway, trying to bring this back on topic: If you put too much emphasis on familiarity, releasing new screen fonts (especially ones that switch from 1-bit to grayscale for text sizes) should be dysfunctional.

hhp

>Is this because the 5 fonts are supposed to harmonize, or is it some principle of legibility?

It's because the fonts are supposed to harmonize. The Web Fonts were criticized because they didn't. I think this is covered in the book. If you don't have a copy let me know and I'll pass your mailing details on to Geraldine.

I hope to have some of the book content, and maybe some new content up on my site in the June time-frame.

Cheers, Si

While I agree with Nick that there could be more variety (in the
names too - why so similar?), this project is another example of
MS leading the industry in online typography. I can't wait to see
what they look like at smaller point sizes on screen.

It's interesting that Apple cares and does so much for design
in every other area but this one. I hope somehow these fonts can
be easily available on OS X beyond a bundle with Office -
knowing not every Mac user uses Office.

Every type designer, I would imagine, given the opportunity to create for such a universal user group, wants to design the ideal face and heads for the average proportions, so as a whole the variety suffers.

There was a conscious decision by the project planners that four of the six faces would have the same x-height so that they could be used together in the same line of text with ease. My Constantia type has a smaller x-height and longer extenders (hence, more 'bookish'), and Luc's Consolas monospaced font has a larger x-height; the others are all the same. Remember that the huge majority of people using these fonts will not be typographers, but MS Word users. So we can't expect them to be sophisticated enough to figure out how to visually harmonise different typefaces through relative scaling, so the goal was to simplify this for them by making fonts that are at least reasonably harmonised. For the same reason, the fonts have coordinated vertical metrics, so that the linespacing remains constant whichever of the fonts you employ. Yes, this is at the expense of variety, but variety was not the goal.

"It's interesting that Apple cares and does so much for design in every other area but this one."

MS = crappy browser, decent online type.

Apple = great browser, OK type.

It's a wash.

What's wrong with Firefox?

System font/rendering quality is the core issue.

hhp

Regarding the names of the new typefaces, an MS manager decided that they should all being with a hard 'C'. Not sure if there was some well-thought-out marketing plan behind that, or if it was just how he felt that afternoon. I wasn't invited to that meeting.

Constantia went through several different name options, each of which failed the extensive international trademark search at some point. You wouldn't believe how expensive international trademark searches are. When I found out, I told MS to 'call my font Cxghjrnsjl and let me have the money you save on the trademark search'. They could have afforded to commission another new type family for the amount of money they spent on trademark searches for these ones. Just when you think type designers are getting decent pay for their work, you find out how much the lawyers are making.

> variety was not the goal.

?
Well, I think we still got a good deal of it anyway!

Concerning the naming, I think the one unfortunate thing (not a biggie though) is the situation with the Greek name of "Cambria": in Greek transliteration a "b" sound is marked with mu-pi (right? like in "Corbel"'s Greek name), except in Cambria there's an "m" before the "b"! Which means somebody might pronounce it "Cabria". I assume MS did a trademark search for that too, in case a Greek business tycoon (who can't read the Latin alphabet) somehow gets a wind of this stuff... ;-)

hhp

John, Simon, thanks for your clarification.

I'll read the book and pick up the thread later.

"Just when you think type designers are getting decent pay for their work, you find out how much the lawyers are making. "

The workers in the vineyard!

I would love to explore the topic of why Apple can't seem to even acknowlage their horrible on screen font rendering?
I'm a multi-platform user (currently typing this in Safari on OSX) and I just dread reading small text on MAC. I would much rather read 1 bit aliased text anyday. (I find myself squinting even as I type this).

Why? Does MAC not bill itself as the "designers tool"?

I'm confused.

Hildebrant.

Whenever I hear Constantia, I think of that gorgeous region in South Africa surrounded by the mountains and all the beautiful vistas. I think one of the British royals used to live there, but I forget who. The British certainly did have their way with SA, and for that matter much of the world , but my comments are straying more and more away from the topic as I type. Both Constantias are beautiful. Congratulations John.

Bring back Aeneas.

> would love to explore the topic of why Apple can't seem to even acknowlage their horrible on screen font rendering?

I hear people say this, but I think the text looks great in 10.3 (Panther). Maybe it depends on the monitor. I'm using Apple flat panels and I've set the antialiasing preference to "best for flat panel" which does sub-pixel smoothing. It seems very comfortable to read to me, and I've been using computers for over twenty years. I do sit with my eyes about two feet from the monitor (I can no longer focus closer than about a foot without reading glasses), maybe that's a factor. I do agree that the earlier versions of the Quartz font smoothing were not as good, especially in the initial release of OS X.

I also have a Windows box with a flat panel display, but it's using an analog VGA connection so it looks very smeary, even with ClearType enabled. No fault of the software--just a hardware deficiency. I'm sure it would look better with a digital video adapter, although I'm not sure if the monitor supports it.

"I would love to explore the topic of why Apple can't seem to even acknowlage their horrible on screen font rendering?"

I can never understand such complaints. I'm a recent switcher, and I think OS X's fonts are the nicest I've ever seen on screen. I do find that I prefer "light" font smoothing instead of the medium setting.

For Apple it's all about the quality of the screen...

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=78569

>>
What Apple Is Doing

Apple comes at the issue of readability quite differently than Microsoft does, concentrating on screen resolution and the quality of light on the monitor. Unlike Microsoft, Apple develops hardware in addition to system software and does not commission the design of typefaces.

Siminoff says that Apple is proud of the sharply rendered detail of type and graphics on its Cinema Display screens. He compares the light emitted by the monitor to the normal, ambient lighting that you would find in a home

Si,

That's very kind of you towards Apple, but it is simply not borne out by the facts. Apple only ships 100dpi displays across its product line, while I'm typing this on a three and a half year old IBM laptop with 133 dpi resolution. Similarly, while Apple's displays are 250-270 cd/sq m, you can buy a Sony at 400. Apple has had for many years a strange tendency to advertise the relative technical weakness of their displays as a strength.

There are three factors that go into overall type rendering quality: the software algorithms (ClearType vs Apple's font smoothing vs whatever), the resolution of the display, and the other display quality characteristics (brightness, contrast, viewing angle, color fidelity). Of these, resolution is the absolute most important. In my testing, the algorithm can make only about a 20% difference at most in the effective resolution of the screen: a 120 dpi screen with the most vanilla antialiased rendering will perform about the same as a 100 dpi screen with the most finely crafted font rendering imaginable. Makes you wonder why I'm spending valuable research time on font rendering quality, doesn't it?

Right now, resolution seems to be stuck, but I consider it inevitable that faster CPU's and advances in display tech will bring 200dpi displays to the mass market. The question is: will Apple or MS be the first to do so?

You're probably right - but if like Apple you control the hardware issues like BGR vs RGB, displays not telling the truth about gamma, and analog vs digital should go away.

What's saddest in this quote is "does not commission the design of typefaces" as arguably this is something they used to do very well. It's a shame for the whole industry if they've really abandoned this.

Cheers, Si

Exactly my point. Right now, the OS X system font and by far the best
on OS X displays is Lucida Grande. It comes without italics. Pathetic.

[Staying as much out of the discussion as possible, just popping my head in to clarify Hrant's comment]

Hrant wrote:
<quote>Concerning the naming, I think the one unfortunate thing (not a biggie though) is the situation with the Greek name of "Cambria": in Greek transliteration a "b" sound is marked with mu-pi (right? like in "Corbel"'s Greek name), except in Cambria there's an "m" before the "b"! Which means somebody might pronounce it "Cabria". I assume MS did a trademark search for that too, in case a Greek business tycoon (who can't read the Latin alphabet) somehow gets a wind of this stuff... ;-) </quote>

In Greek the double-consonant mu-pi stands for both the "b" sound and the "mb" sound. Correct pronunciation depends on two parameters: the word root/origin (e.g. classical, Latin, Byzantine, Hebrew, Italian, Turkish, Slavic) and where in the grammatical space from classical Demotic through Standard Modern Greek to more formal structures a speaker positions himself.

Two examples:

- the well known Greek dance «ζεϊμπέκικος» [zeib'ekikos] has Asia Minor roots, and its name comes from the Turkish "zeybek". This is always pronounced with a hard "b"

- the Greek word «ομπρέλα» [ombr'ela] is derived from "umbrella" and pronounced with the mu voiced, followed by the "b" sound.

Depending on the grammatical period, hyphenation may also change according to the above parameters. Speakers/Readers learn correct pronunciation in school, although recent language reforms have diluted the capacity of the written forms to indicate corrent pronunciation.

This summary excludes regional variations and a ton of stuff, but it should help give a basic idea of how things work.

With regard to the MS font names, sufficient care was taken to ensure they will be usable and unambiguous. All Greek readers will pronounce "Cambria" with a voiced mu preceding the "b" sound. "Corbel" will always be pronounced "korb'el" because the mu in mu-pi is never voiced if preceded by another consonant.

Finally, it is a safe assumption that all Greek tycoons will be familiar with the Latin alphabet.

Darrel, thank you for the link. I'm still waiting for a copy of

Come somebody shed some light on how good-looking the old-school hinting will be...

Poor. The fonts are hinted specifically for ClearType rendering, which means that there are no x-direction deltas, and only very basic x-direction stem instructions (primarily to cover the possibility of their use on 300 dpi printers; initially, the fonts were tested successfully under ClearType without any x-direction hinting at all). This could be changed, if there were a compelling need for the fonts to be used in non-ClearType environments, but they were designed specifically for use with ClearType (more specifically, for the version of ClearType that will ship with Longhorn).

You're welcome to your opinion, but I have to disagree with the characterisation of these designs as 'mediocre', and plenty of other people whose opinion I respect disagree with your assessment (of course, you have not actually seen the fonts in use). I'm not a fan of Jelle Bosma's Cambria, although it performs very well indeed on screen, but I like the other designs very much and have been using them extensively for more than a year now. I use Constantia as my default broswer font, Candara for e-mail, amd Corbel as my system UI font. Consolas is the best monospaced font I have ever used (an opinion shared by many of the programmers at MS who tested it during development).

I look forward to the free software community's attempt to overtake Microsoft's position as the primary leader in this field, so long as type designers are not expected to work for nothing. So far, all I've seen is talk and Bitstream Vera, neither of which have impressed.

Simon: actually, with BYOKDM, Apple is pretty much on equal footing with the Wintel world. It also looks like there's a mechanism in EDID for displays to communicate that information more or less reliably to the host.

Anyway, I don't want to step into any flame wars, but do want to commend MS for working on font display quality as an overall system, with the ClearType engineers and professional font designers working together. If anyone wants to achieve dominance in the field, they need to start there.

"I look forward to the free software community's attempt to overtake Microsoft's position as the primary leader in this field"

What field? The bundled type with the OS field?

What's the free software community? Do you mean open source? If so, I don't think they have too many ambitions in terms of type.

> I think the text looks great in 10.3 (Panther)

I guess it's relative. Relative to their previous iteration of the full-fuzz approach it's much better. But relative to what MS was doing years ago -much less this upcoming large advance- it's not good enough. It doesn't jive with Apple's claims of visual sophistication and quality. You get the feeling that they'd rather spend the money getting just the right sheen on their titanium...

> Not that I care all that much about it

How gracious...

> lack of typographic style

This I agree with to some degree (only Constantia stands out as a high achievement, while Cambria is quite unappealing to me*, and Consolas is superb if you buy its "foundational" logic, which I for one don't though), and I've been thinking about what might be the underlying reason. Certainly much of it is the "technology-snapping" going on, but I wonder if the rest wasn't a conscious -and perhaps pragmatically highly sound- design decision. There seems to be a certain design tentativeness in the whole, but it might strike just the balance that users need right now. My only real complaint about the overall is that renderings of a glyph vary.

* It really reminds me of that tired old generation of computer fonts, like Lucida Serif. Like a malfunctioning cyborg.

--

Gerry, thanks for such a big fat ;-) elaboration.
Complicated stuff - as befits natural language I guess!

hhp

Darrel, I was responding to Sergej, using precisely the terms that he employed. I presumed him to mean the development of new fonts to bundle with software and, yes, I presume that by 'free software community' he meant open source developers. My response was, I hope you realise, gently sarcastic (certainly more gentle than Sergej's dismissal of the new MS types).

Without getting into the finer points I like the flavor of these new fonts - especially compared with what is generally used now Ariel & Verdana or Times.

If it makes common/average documents less ugly & more readable then I am all for it regardles of any other factor.

Also some type designers were employed - also good.

Maybe Apple will need to comission more fonts of it's own - also good.

And maybe the fonts will eventually become available free for Macs too. Like when verdana & georgia came out. I haven't seen anything that suggests that this wouldn't happen. Granted sales of office on the mac have been less that MS says they wanted & the relationship of MS & apple has been less good in the last few years... Has anybody seen anything that suggests that these fonts are really meant for longhorn only & exclusively?

And If that was the case ( longhorn only) then at least MS would be suggesting that fonts are valuable enough to constitute a real feature in an OS!

Has anybody seen anything that suggests that these fonts are really meant for longhorn only & exclusively?

That is the current plan, and I'm not aware of any change to that. The fonts were designed and built around a specific rendering engine, which is unique to Longhorn, so among other considerations there are quality control issues. If MS can't be guaranteed that the fonts will look as good elsewhere as in Longhorn, they will be concerned about degrading the reputation of the fonts by using them with other rendering engines.

That said, according to the Poynter article, there seems to be some vague possibility that another company, e.g. Apple, might be able to license the new fonts. But these fonts are very unlikely to ever be freely licensed in the way Georgia and Verdana were. Georgia and Verdana were distributed in the way they were in order to ensure widespread availability for spec'ing in websites. The new MS fonts are specifically value-added components of Longhorn, intended to improve the onscreen reading experience of Longhorn users.

"The new MS fonts are specifically value-added components of Longhorn, intended to improve the onscreen reading experience of Longhorn users."

::grumbles::

So, how come all their Office apps suck so badly at basic
things like letterspacing?

PowerPoint Screenshot:

Which version of Mac PPT is this taken from? Are the fonts TTF or Type 1? I've been trying to get some info from the team down in Silicon Valley regarding this, following questions raised on the ATypI list.

So far the engineers have said that the rendering is provided by MacOS, with no special PPT code being used.

Cheers, Si

It's Linotype's Trade Gothic, Post Script Type 1 and I've only
encountered this problem in Office apps. (This is the Bold weight
here and not the PowerPoint artificial bold feature.)

>You're welcome to your opinion, but I have to disagree with the characterisation of these designs as 'mediocre' ... <

Of course you disagree, John - or whatever your name is. But why don't you make clear that you actually commissioned these designs? Or is the contest you organized supposed to be some kind of a secret?

>PS. Does anyone know how much the designers were paid?

More than $100,000 per family.

You would think, for that kind of money, that MS could have bought something from someone professional, say Frutiger for example. Oh, but I forgot - they did!

So here is ClearType, _incontestably_ the finest display technology available today. When will its technological prowess be paired with equally impressive aesthetics?

And where does Apple fit into it all?

But why don't you make clear that you actually commissioned these designs? Or is the contest you organized supposed to be some kind of a secret?

Knowing, Bill, that you are not happy unless something can be imputed to be secretive or underhanded, I'm sorry to disappoint you. MS organised the commissioning process. I recommended some designers who had done good work in the particular genres in which MS were seeking designs and, at MS's request, invited these people to submit designs; MS also invited other designers/companies to make submissions. I didn't see all of the submissions until after the decision had been made. The final list of designs selected by MS was not, in fact, my preferred selection. Si Daniels was part of the selection committee at MS; most of the other people were members of the ART team. Sorry this is all so open, unsecretive and none of your business anyway.

More than $100,000 per family.


Wow. No wonder that he's[John] talking about that 24 /7. As Aaron said:
I'm not going out and buying a PC for six typefaces. Sorry, MS.

I think at this point that price tag is speculative.

While I won't go out buying a PC for 6 typefaces, I will be playing with the PCs I have access to as soon as they upgrade...even if they don't like me to change the settings on their machines.

>Si Daniels was part of the selection committee at MS; most of the other people were members of the ART team.

That's correct. Mike took the basic submissions, added some hints and put together some sample texts. I came over to their lab and looked at all the samples on a range of screens (without knowing which designer had done them) and picked the ones I liked the best. As I recall my picks matched those of Mike, Geraldine and others on the ClearType team.

Cheers, Si

Joe - which version of PPT, which OS?

Well, nice that there's a little money in type design.

However, if everyone who buys a computer had to buy the typefaces they use on it, rather than having them bundled free, the type market as a whole would be a lot more diverse, and a lot more lucrative for a lot more type designers. With the big money in retail, not just commissions.

MyFonts, one of the largest font retailers, has just announced that they've sold 40,000 fonts (in 5 years). Compare with the millions of Longhorn font bundles that will be going out.

Of note, script faces dominate the retail market, and they're diverse -- this is a category of type not bundled by Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe. Coincidence ....?

I also think the $100K is a ballpark guess. If you do the math that

Nick, MyFonts announced their millionth sale - and that they offer 40,000 fonts - that means each font sells an average of 25 copies.

Cheers, Si

The numbers are much bigger, Nick. What MyFonts just announced was that they now *stock* 40,000 individual font weights.

They sold their millionth font in January of this year.
http://www.myfonts.com/info/millionth-font/

Maybe we can have this discussion without anybody getting abusive. It's worth a try.

>However, if everyone who buys a computer had to buy the typefaces they use on it, rather than having them bundled free,

or using shareware. Shareware fonts are extremely popular among the masses who make up the bulk of computer users. At least among the ones who take any interest in fonts.

> the type market as a whole would be a lot more diverse, and a lot more lucrative for a lot more type designers. With the big money in retail, not just commissions.

Yes, in any market if you can magically (or by means of new laws) eliminate the least expensive sources of goods, the demand for what remains generally increases, and the profits go up. Price-fixing and cartels are also effective (and usually illegal) ways to do this. All generally good for manufacturers and bad for consumers, say economists.

> MyFonts, one of the largest font retailers, has just announced that they've sold 40,000 fonts (in 5 years). Compare with the millions of Longhorn font bundles that will be going out.

Besides the fact that your numbers are wrong, even with the right numbers, what do they tell us? Do you really think that the average Windows user is a likely font customer? I suggest that even if Windows only bundled Times New Roman, Arial, Courier, Symbol and Wingdings, and additional language-specific fonts, a large majority of users would still never buy a single font.

But nonetheless, there's no doubt in my mind that bundled OS/app fonts and shareware fonts have an impact on the retail font market. It's natural that companies will want to bunde fonts, and it's only because they think fonts are important in the first place that they invent the standards that the font foundries rely on. Not to mention licensing tools and even source code at no charge. It's a complicated ecosystem, but any portrayal of independent foundries as simply victimized by the big OS and app vendors is at least a gross oversimplification, and arguably just plain wrong.

> Of note, script faces dominate the retail market, and they're diverse -- this is a category of type not bundled by Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe. Coincidence ....?

Hmmm. Lucida Calligraphy (Microsoft), Apple Chancery (Apple) and Caflisch Script Pro (Adobe) all come to mind. So I think the second half of the premise is false.

So, what's your "solution," Nick? Make both bundled fonts and shareware fonts illegal?

Making bundled fonts illegal would have interesting spin-off effects, too. Design templates for graphics and publishing applications would become impractical or have to use the most generic system fonts. Of course, your same arguments against bundled fonts could be applied to bundled templates, which surely take at least some business away from graphic designers. Should they be illegal, too?

Or do you think that OS and app vendors, and shareware makers, should just voluntarily refrain from doing/commissioning fonts, because it would help certain other companies?

Cheers,

T

Hmmm. Lucida Calligraphy (Microsoft), Apple Chancery (Apple) and Caflisch Script Pro (Adobe) all come to mind. So I think the second half of the premise is false.

Not to forget, Zapfino.

I was trying to restrict myself to the letter "C."

Yes, Zapfino is a fine example.

T

>I think at this point that price tag is speculative.

Believe me, Tiffany, I don't speculate.

>I also think the $100K is a ballpark guess.

Would you like to me to get more exact?

In any case, what is clear is that this new group of fonts (with the stellar exception of Meiryo by Eiicho Kono and Matthew Carter) does not come anywhere close to the quality previously achieved by Microsoft with Verdana and Georgia, for example. Not to mention that even Courier looks sensational in ClearType. And not to mention, for example, the ClearType version of Frutiger that was done for eBooks - why on earth can't that be made available for general use when it is so obviously the best candidate for a general purpose ClearType font? It is so much better than these new fonts which are at best uninspired and at worst amateurish.

You know, I really do think ClearType is the best thing to hit computers since - well, since the Mac! Now isn't it a pity we can't have ClearType on the Mac? (Ah! I have the perfect solution! Let MS give ClearType to Apple, and in exchange, let Apple give GX to MS! That way everyone can be happy! Everyone except 'John Hudson'. Well, I have the perfect solution to that, as well! Let Microsoft give the 'Hudson Collection' to Tiro Typeworks, for a peppercorn fee, and let Tiro try to sell them retail!)

>Of note, script faces dominate the retail market, and they're diverse -

But Nick, are you suggesting that the ClearType people should do script faces? To what end? ClearType isn't retail, and is meant to be read on screen. With all due respect, who would want to read with a script font? Even such a very nice script font as Fontesque for example?

And on a serious note - what on earth are we going to do when designers of the calibre of Zapf, Frutiger, Carter and Stone are no longer with us? None of the younger generation comes close to their level of achievement; those who were young ten years ago and are now middle aged do not seem to have matured fruitfully. In a way, one can see that it's the one-man shop problem. There are a few great designers around who know everything about how to make a great typeface, but who can't actually design anything interesting. Then you havve a group of people who have interesting design ideas but who have no idea how to make a consistent and valuable font. Twenty or thirty years ago, the two different types would have been working for the same company and feeding off one another. Now, unfortunately, everybody is on his own. The only four designers I can think of who are capable of consistently and creatively producing excellent type over a period of many decades, more or less unaided, are the four I mentioned: Carter, Zapf, Frutiger, Stone.

Why on earth isn't Microsoft commissioning them? They would all work for rather less than 'John Hudson', I happen to know. Oh! and Berlow! These days, you could get a lot of great type out of Berlow for a hundred + grand. Where is that toweringly gifted craftsman in all of this?

Robert Norton, where are you when we need you ? ? ? ?

Oh, and may I add something?

The Adobe people are such pikers when it comes to type by comparison with Microsoft. When I was doing that MM for them, I think I was getting 4 thou per master, or was it 5? -- a laughable amount compared to what MS is handing out nowadays.

Yet designers a hundred times (at least) better than me would be happy, today, to take $4 thou a weight.

On the other hand, to put it in perspective, when I say 'weight', I mean the old standard set of 220 odd characters. MS asked for quite a few more glyphs out of these poor fellows.

And imagine the humiliation of having to have your Greeks and Cyrillics reviewed by those stern disciplinarians, Zhukov and Leonidas? Which reminds me - I can never forget - how scandalized Robert Slimbach was when I suggested reforming that ghastly Icelandic eth character. 'Do you mean' he shrieked, his voice rising comically in pitch and intensity, 'that you would contradict the teaching of such an extraordinary authority as Gunnlaugur BRIEM? ? ? ? ?' 'Yes, Robert, I would' 'WHAT????' 'The eth sucks. The Icelanders will simply have to get used to a better form - at least if they want to use my type.' 'Well I think we had better not discuss this anymore today! You know, you're very exhausting to work with.' 'Now Robert, I don't think that's fair.' . . . and so on.

Oh, and by the way, before I forget . . . for those who remember . . . it turns out that 'Ohnesorg' comes from a town associated with . . . well, let's just say . . . Max Weber.

So that's $18 to $22 a character - factor in inflation, and the ratio of composites to real work and it looks like that would be $25 in today's money.

You know, Bill, totally ignoring every word you say has served me well for several years, so I'm going back to that policy.

But Happy Easter anyway.

>So that's $18 to $22 a character - factor in inflation, and the ratio of composites to real work and it looks like that would be $25 in today's money.

Whatever, Si. My point is, if you've got the money to spend, why not spend it on the greats? Just look at the amateurism rampant here. For example, the italic and bold italic s in Constantia - the kind of error you'd expect in someone drawing type for ten weeks. Let's take Calibri, of which Lucas, the one actual professional in this group, says 'Its proportions allow high impact in tightly set lines.' Oh yes? Then what is that river of space doing around the u? Why is the right sidebearing about twice what it should be and the left sidebearing about a quarter? Why is the color of each weight, and each weight in relationship to the other, so completely off? Look at the word exclamations in bold in that font - the color is so badly judged that the exc looks like it was smudged by comparison to the rest of the word and the diagonals in the x look too heavy. And how do those clotted g forms aid readability? And why do the bolds and bold italics in nearly all the fonts look a point size too large? You know, sometimes, even a really good designer needs a good art director to tell him where he is going wrong, and there surely wasn't one here, if what I am seeing represents final versions. Look at the italic a in Candara. It's not just that it's too narrow (where so many of the other fonts in this series have letters that are too wide); it just doesn't seem to have any relationship to the other letters in the words; it's like an ugly changeling. And that silly italic e, straight out of a Dwiggins nightmare, and again, problems with all of the s's. What is that silly filip on the stem of the p in Cambria that drags the whole letter out of true? But don't get me started. There isn't any end to the problems here. It's all amateursville, a type bakeoff.

Don't you have anybody at Microsoft who could say to these people - - this just isn't good enough for Microsoft? Let's see another round.

Were there critiques? Was there anyone of the calibre even of a Fred Brady, a Carol Twombley, a Robert Slimbach, to make suggestions?

Where is the expertise of a Zapf, a Frutiger, a Carter, a Stone, a Berlow? What about Dennis Pasternak, that wonderful designer who never pushes himself onto internet discussion boards and who really, really knows how to design type? What about some of the great eccentrics who we never hear from, such as that modest Canadian, Jim Rimmer, probably Canada's best designer, who might, with some guidance, have risen superbly to this kind of challenge? Or the wonderful fellow in Massachusetts - what is his name? - Dan Carr - who knows so much more about type and readability than some of the Coca-Cola belt hillbillies on display here?

Was there an art director? Someone of the calibre of a Roger Black, a Sumner Stone? For Heaven's sake, great type people are a dime a dozen, and _this_ is what you have to show for 25+G a weight?

The Sage of Vancouver speaks:

>You know, Bill, totally ignoring every word you say has served me well for several years, so I'm going back to that policy.<

That's OK, 'John' - I don't mind. But can I suggest you extend the policy a little bit? Nothing serious - just - to type?

>But Happy Easter anyway.

What is it with this fellow, pushing this obviously insincere Christian message, like an advert, nearly everytime you post? Are you trying to craft an image as the good ole family values fellow of type? Is there now an evangelical wing of the Type Party? Are you, perhaps, its Chief Ecclesiastic? Is there a business purpose behind it all? Do you really think you are spreading the gospel? At any rate, it mystifies everyone, it isn't in good taste, and it just does not seem to be consistent behaviour in one who might truly aspire to Christian beliefs - I mean this way you have of leaving your supposed Christianity out to hang on every Internet clothesline.

Oops, 40,000 fonts versus a million. (Late night post, sorry). But whatever the exact numbers, it's pretty obvious that Calibri will be on tens of millions of hard drives via Microsoft, whereas Luc de Groot would be a multi-millionaire if 1% of them bought Taz.

>Price-fixing and cartels are also effective (and usually illegal) ways to do this. All generally good for manufacturers and bad for consumers, say economists.

Government intervention is generally a good way to stop megacorp monopolists from giving people cheap crap, say citizen activists.

>So, what's your "solution," Nick? Make both bundled fonts and shareware fonts illegal?

I don't have a "solution", Thomas, certainly not anything as heavy handed as criminal legislation. But objecting to injustice is always a good place to start.

I'd like to see some solidarity amongst type designers. But as a professional group of any size, we're a relatively new phenomenon. It took a while for art directors and graphic designers to organize. There are type organizations, but they are industry-wide.

Pardon me for sticking up for the little guy, but some of us don't automatically assume that what's good for Microsoft/Adobe/Apple is good for the world, ennit?

***
Bill, thanks for the compliment, but I prefer not to think of Fontesque as a script! To my mind, it's only marginally less wonky than the metal Garamond boomers grew up reading in Dr Seuss (North America) and Noddy (UK).

***

>Lucida Calligraphy (Microsoft), Apple Chancery (Apple) and Caflisch Script Pro (Adobe) all come to mind. So I think the second half of the premise is false.

Well, there are exceptions, but I'm really talking about where the action is. There are some brilliant, technically innovative scripts provided by the bundlers. But there are only a few, and they are all extremely formal (even Comic Sans). There is just not the range that there is in bundled sans and serif fonts, and nothing in the hot genres of retro and vernacular.

Wow!!! This is astonishing!!!

Bill do you know any good reporter - The New York Times, for example - that can check this story? I'm sure that Bill Gates is not going to be very happy.

hold the front page - I can see the headline now...

Bill Troop doesn't like John Hudson so criticizes new Microsoft screen fonts based on printed samples

I wonder how people (even objective people) would have responded to Verdana or Georgia if they'd seen samples in print (or scans of print samples) before seeing it on screen at small sizes?

>But Nick, are you suggesting that the ClearType people should do script faces? To what end? ClearType isn't retail, and is meant to be read on screen. With all due respect, who would want to read with a script font?

My point is that there is a lively market in script faces, partly because it's a genre that the bundlers haven't concentrated on saturating. Users' wants and needs for script fonts are not being met by free bundled fonts, so they buy them.

As for script fonts on screen, surely the success of that popular internet font Comic Sans indicates a demand?