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The Typographic Land Mine That is Free Fonts

This article below comes from the lovely people at theFontFeed

Free Fonts: Technical And Artistic Quality

Type Tips, Typography Basics | Yves Peters | July 20, 2010

What comes next may sound biased to some readers, yet I simply can’t help it – it’s the reality of the situation. The vast majority of the free fonts out there are – to put it mildly – of inferior quality. And although a very small percentage is fit for professional use, statistics tell us you’ll more likely stumble upon – to put it mildly again – less successful creations. Because most free font websites are cluttered uncurated swamps, there is no quality control at all. An additional problem is that you don’t even know what you’re downloading. Is it a genuine free font? Or could it be an unauthorised clone, a pirated and renamed commercial font, or a stolen proprietary face? If this seems trivial to you, maybe read through my account of the tragic Hadopi story.

So proceed with caution. Here’s a list of things you definitely need to check when picking a free font for a design.

Artistic quality of the design

Say whatever you want, but the vast majority of the offerings on free font websites are poorly designed. Most of them are well-intentioned efforts by students, amateurs, and beginning designers. You may know what an “a” is supposed to look like, but digitising that “a” using Bézier curves is another matter entirely. To use a metaphor – I can perfectly describe the different parts of a shoe and know how they fit together, but I couldn’t make a shoe to save my life. Very often the design of free fonts suffer from typical beginners’ mistakes: awkward proportions, poor thick-thin contrast, missing optical corrections, clumsy transitions from curves to straight lines and inversely, ill-balanced and misshapen letter forms, … we can go on and on. Before using a free font, make sure to carefully evaluate the complete character set for quality and consistency.

I didn’t do anything to improve the spacing and kerning on the sample above; this is the font used “out of the box”.
The popular freeware font above is a perfect example of a poorly drawn typeface. It may seem acceptable at first sight, but examining the design more closely reveals its many flaws. Besides the fact that the overall design tries hard but ultimately fails – that lowercase “e” and “g”! –, the actual drawings of the glyphs are littered with mistakes. To pick just one character – you can see the bottom of the bowl of the “a” is too high (no optical correction), the lower left part of the curve flattens unexpectedly, while the top left part has a nasty bump. Both the thinning at the top of the bowl, the spot where it joins the stem, and the weight progression in the top arc are very awkward. And there’s another bump where the straight line transitions in the top curve.

Read more about type design on Unzipped:
An Introduction to Type Design | The Type Designer as Artist
An Introduction to Type Design | The Type Designer as Craftsman

Technical quality of the drawing

Of course tastes vary. I myself quite like awkward if it is done well, like Christian Schwartz’s delectable Los Feliz, modelled after vernacular signage found in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. And the whole grunge movement thrived on DIY aesthetics – think for example of Barry Deck’s imperfect designs which were very popular in the late nineties, or the carefully balanced inconsistency of Mr. Keedy’s eponymous typeface. Personally I think there is a world of difference between voluntary and involuntary awkwardness, but truth is we can discuss about this until we are blue in the face.

Los Feliz was inspired by amateur lettering, and professionally digitised.

This free font is a true amateur design. Personally I think there is a world of difference between this one and Los Feliz, but I don’t expect everyone to agree.

However – disregarding matters of taste – technical quality can be assessed objectively. Professional fonts are well digitised, with economic and efficient outlines that adhere to the rules of sound construction. Many free fonts feature glyph shapes with superfluous vectors and node points, faulty combinations of elements, stray points, incorrect overlaps, bad connections, … These technical flaws can cause the files those fonts are used in to behave erratically, and produce errors when processing said files (export to PDF, output on film or direct-to-plate, integration in Flash, …). The font is automatically substituted by a system font, certain characters disappear, counters are filled in, accents are displaced and show up in the wrong spot, spacing is shot to hell causing characters to overlap, … all kinds of problems whose precise origins are difficult to track down, and solving them usually takes a long time and a lot of trial and error. Unfortunately this type of technical flaws is very difficult to detect for the layman. The only advice I can offer here is to run a bunch of tests beforehand, like converting text to outlines, doing test prints and conversions, and so on.

Available styles

Professional text faces always include all the necessary styles, and often many more. On the other hand, if you want to use a free font for text applications, first you have to consider if everything needed for producing professional text setting is included. Most free fonts are single fonts, not families. Is there an italic style available? Is it a properly designed italic, or merely a mechanically slanted roman? If a bold is included, was it artificially boldened? Is it bold enough, or too bold? Do you need an even heavier weight? Are the glyph shapes clear enough to remain legible in small sizes? And what about small caps and different sets of figures? It is of utmost importance to ask yourself these questions up front. This way you’ll avoid painting yourself in a corner when you notice halfway the production that the font you selected is inadequate. The available styles are very easy to check; however you need a trained eye to assess the quality of italics and bolds.

Read more about type weights and styles in Styles, Weights, Widths — It’s All in the (Type) Family.

Comprehensiveness of the character set

When acquiring professional fonts you can sleep on both ears. They will include both upper and lower case*, numerals, a complete set of punctuation, ligatures, mathematical symbols, and at least cover all North, West and Southern European languages, and often Central and Eastern European and Turkish, and sometimes even Greek and Cyrillic.
* A small numbers of display faces only have capitals.

FF Kava started out as a free typeface called Kaffeesatz, published by Yanone in 2004 during the early stages of his type designing career. When it transitioned from free font to commercial font, the character set more than tripled from 203 glyphs – which already is impressive for a free font – to 747 glyphs. Read the complete story and try it out in FF Kava With Extra Flavour.

Free and shareware fonts however are often restricted to the standard 26 letters of the alphabet, figures, and only the bare minimum of punctuation marks. It is quite common that suddenly you realise you can’t type that French name or that German idiom, nor put a ® next to a brand name nor a € next to a price, or that some punctuation mark is missing. So the first thing you need to do is go over the complete character set – for example in the “Glyph” window in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign – to see if everything you need is included.

Read more about the value of full families and complete character sets in FontShop’s Type Selection: Beyond the Look of the Letter.

Spacing and kerning

Strictly speaking anybody can draw letters – admittedly one typeface will look nicer than the next. However most people don’t realise the quality of a font is in large part defined by the “nothingness” between those letters – its spacing and kerning tables. Without proper spacing and kerning it is merely a random collection of glyphs, not truly a font. Spacing a font well is a painstaking, demanding, and time-consuming activity, and professional fonts also include hundreds of kerning pairs for all the exceptions. Proper spacing and kerning ensure that every single letter combination, every single sequence of characters – as diverse as they may be – are perfectly spaced, so that the text is well balanced and perfectly readable. And this is where almost all free fonts are found lacking.

The message here is again – do extensive testing if you want to use a free font. Set several blocks of text in different point sizes, and “feel” the rhythm as you read. Try to detect stuttering, gaps, anything that hinders the flow. And be prepared to do a lot of this if you want to stick to free fonts, because it will take some time before you find a properly spaced and kerned one.

Steps to Starting a Project

Your assignment for next week, in addition to making your type specimen books beautiful, is to make your swipe book.

The reason why is because swipe is an intregal part to beginning any project

Steps to Starting a Project:

1. Pull swipe
2. Get a color palate together
3. Deciding on typefaces

This will give you a secure foundation for beginning your project:

any questions?

email us

and please dont just post finished work on your blog, post your process too.

-N.

H&FJ's Guide to Combining Typfaces

Here is a great, quick and very basic how-to guide to combining typefaces.

Check out the full H&FJ's guide here.

1. A palate with wit uses complementary moods:

2. A palate with energy mixes typefaces from the same historical context whose families maintain different features.

3. A palate with poise mixes similar line qualities with different textures.

4. A palate with dignity mixes similar proportions while giving each face a different note.

n.

week two typography assignment

great you all got a good start on your type specimen books

a little more time spent would have benefited you, but...

this week, please rework your "books" using images, color, content, typography

cut down to three or four fonts that work to support your content

--expand your content, know what you're talking about, choose information available wisely, cut out superfluous content that doesn't add to your intent

meaning, research your topic,

include your research as part of the content.

don't just pull a text directly from a source.

think about what it is you're setting.

what does it mean?

what are the implications?

scientific, political, social, artistic, etc

what cross references can be derived?

ie. the text is about plate tectonics taken from wikipedia.

what has been discovered since that wiki text was posted?

is there activity going on now that is interesting or ground breaking?

what has plate tectonics taught us?

who first labeled it?

who first noted it?

etc, etc

change the size, shape, medium if it applies.

here are some links to foundries:

http://www.veer.com/products/fonts/
http://www.lineto.com/The+Fonts/
http://typography.com/fonts/
http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/
http://www.misprintedtype.com/v4/
http://www.vllg.com/fonts


helpful resources re typography:

http://www.identifont.com/
http://typophile.com/ (join, use, required!)


folks who use loads of typography in ways you may find interesting, useful, beautiful, or ugly:

http://jessicahische.com/typographizes/the-cover-of-the-village-voice-exclamation-point
http://www.louisefili.com/
http://www.aestheticapparatus.com/products.php?subsection=posters&fs_page=1
http://www.non-format.com/
http://www.rodrigocorral.com/
http://ffffound.com/
http://www.manystuff.org/?cat=1

Reading Assignment

what do you think?

http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=30&fid=258

DAVID BERLOW

Some inspiration for your type specimen book.

Look at David Berlow's work from Font Bereau

Here is the link to the David Berlow specimen pdf.
or some other examples of work

type assignment for 9.15/20.2010

hi folks.

welcome to type design, fall 2010

here's your first assignment:

1) make a blog for this course

email your blog link to your ta

Make sure your subject line states the class you are in : (Mon or Wed) (Day or Nite) Type Class

monday type ta: Nicole nicolemrincon@gmail.com
wednesday day type ta: Rosane rosane@gibiteca.com
wednesday nite type ta: Kristie kristieebailey@gmail.com


2) create a type specimen book

using 15 fonts:

3 serif text fonts
3 sans serif text fonts
3 serif display fonts
3 sans serif display fonts
3 decorative fonts*

and a text of your choice

base this assignment on a text you find interesting

please research the text well, cross reference, annotate, etc.

research the topic,

add to it,

interpret it

show us your discoveries in the way you handle the typography, setting and choices

make it interesting, please

set the text and related typographic elements

highlight what you find interesting about the text with typography choices and sizes

set both display type and text blocks

no images for this week

no color

print b&w to size

bind (paste back to back, cover wrap)

bring to class

make us want to read it

this isn't easy, but if well done, it's an excellent portfolio piece

we're looking for how well you use typography both aesthetically and to create and/or highlight meaning in the text

we're also looking to see how well you combine fonts

and how well you solve problems

work hard

have fun

i have a feeling from meeting you all just once this will be a great semester.

i'm already impressed.

yeah!

g.

* you may find the first two chapters of ellen lupton's "thinking with type" helpful. suggest (strongly) that you read or review those chapters.

Can you smell that?

...its the sweet smell of new free fonts.

Fontfabric a Bulgarian based font foundry always churns out gorgeous, and sometimes free, fonts!

All the examples below are from their free font section:

( I know, its too good to be true. Pick yourself and then head to their website)

Call for Entries

Call for Entries!
Posters For Change

Here is the creative brief:

"We want universal abolition of the death penalty in 2010.
It’s simple. The death penalty is a violation of human rights.
Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
How does that fit with beheading, stoning, hanging, lethally injecting or shooting someone?
The problem is that there’s no going back on a death sentence. And in a world where every judicial system makes mistakes, it’s inevitable that innocent people will be executed. Which is simply not acceptable. More than two thirds of countries in the world agree, and have banned executions.
Sadly, shamefully, 58 still persist in killing people in the name of “justice.”
In 2009, countries with the highest number of executions were Iran (with at least 388 executions), Iraq (at least 120), Saudi Arabia (at least 69), and the United States (52).
In China information regarding the death penalty remains a secret, but estimates show that China executes more people than the rest of the world combined.*
But there is hope - the number of people being executed around the world appears to be declining. And in December the United Nations will vote on a universal moratorium on the death penalty. It’s a vital step towards abolishing the death penalty once and for all.
No matter whether you live in a country that practices capital punishment or not, we have to raise awareness across the whole world that the death penalty is a violation of human rights that has no place in modern society."

Everyone should enter.

Deadline: July 18th noon.

Simply go t the site, register (free) and submit (free).

Even better, Gen is on the jury panel.

Good luck!

Your Business Card is Crap

Enjoy.

Blog Posting Deadlines

Hello all.

Wednesday, April 28th at 9pm

...is your deadline to have ALL OF YOUR WORK posted on your blog. Make sure to clearly label which pieces are yours from your type class (if you use your blog for other classes).

If you need an extension you should email Gen by Noon on Wednesday, April 28th.

Remember:

-Post all your work

-Genevieve will only be grading from you blog.

Meaning: if it is not posted on the blog, it does not exist.

-Deadline: Wednesday, April 28th 9pm

Questions? Email your TA.

Enjoy your weekend.

SWIPE DAY IS SATURDAY IS SWIPE DAY

Classes may be over but don't let that stop you from looking at, finding and making great design work.

Why not make Saturday mornings Swipe mornings?

Here are some of the things I am looking at right now:

Don't Forget

Hey Everyone,

Glad portfolios are almost over?

Please, don't forget that in addition to printing your final projects, all projects must be posted to the blog in order to be considered for grading.

You have a week to put up all your work, and if you run into any problems please email your TA.

Your Grading Information

Here is the breakdown of the grading process for the class

Please make special note of the highlighted text:

*5 points will be deducted from your total grade for not posting weekly

*After 3 absences 5 points will be deducted per additional absence.

New Fonts from FontShop 3.29.10

Lily Wang

Thousands

Standard CT

Nothing

Co Text and Co Headline

sneaker script

and more on the FontShop blog

The Pattern Project

Create artwork based around and inspired by pattern. Sign up and create a piece of art work that uses pattern, repeat, or repetition in it. Send it back and be part of an exhibition highlighting the significance of pattern in art.

There will be an exhibition in Brooklyn at Brooklyn Art Library on June 5th, 2010. Your pattern project will be included in this exhibition. We do not jury entries. We believe art should be accessible to the masses and we therefore include every entry submitted.

Only 1 day left to sign up!

The Pattern Project

Book kits from the Paper Source

Paper Source has variously sized book kits that have all the binding materials included and boards pre-cut.

Getting Your Portfolio Ready

Its portfolio time, for next class lets make sure we:

1) choose projects you want to include in your junior portfolio

including pieces from courses, mine or others, internships, jobs, last year's work you'd like to revise, etc

2) lay then out in an indesign doc.
nothing fancy for this week.
just choose the pieces and lay them in.

3) export to a pdf.

4) print in b&w to size

5) paste back to back in the order you think you'd like to present

6) trim to size.

7) bring to class

-see you then.

Video: The Seed

The Seed from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

"A two-minute animated voyage through nature's life cycle, following the trials and tribulations of a humble apple seed."


This video was made using Abobe CS4 software with a mixture of stop motion papercraft and 2D drawn animation.

It is also in the new information graphics book, Data Flow 2, which I'll post about later on.

Daily Inspiration

Jessica Hische is a brooklyn based illustrator/ typographer/ graphic designer.

She has worked for Headcase design in Philadelphia and Louise Fili Ltd.

Jessica is best known for her Daily Drop Cap project.

Take a look at some of her work below:

Resources for Publishing

Here are some resources for binding your portfolio:

Blurb

great pricing, starts at 4.95

Lulu

BookSurge

through Amazon.

Word-Image Association

New Assignment ( Sorry this is posted late guys)

Word-Image Association:

1) Take a single image of your choice and blow it up to black and white, 18x24 poster size.

2) Choose one word to overlay on the image. You should choose your word based on the statement, emotion or mood you are trying to evoke.

*i don't want a simple description of what can be seen in an image.

content meaning drawing from your sense of humor, intellect, or emotions, pair a word with an image making the pairing mean/signify/represent more then either of the single elements alone.

3) Be very picky with your choice of typeface, your kerning, and your placement of the word.

Here are some examples of impressive word-image associations:

*keep in mind that your assignment should be a single word.

Try to think creatively.