Frustro: The Impossible Typeface
jeanniejeannie.com
jeanniejeannie.com
Elijah Madden: I hope there's a fixed-width version so I can use it for coding.
Typefaces can not be copyrighted. (The actual font file can be, but not the shape of the letters.)
This is a slightly edge case since the letters have considerably more art to them than the typical letter, but they are still letters, and he has no legal ability to restrict what people do with how they look.
If calligraphy can not be copyrighted (and it can not), then this can't be either. So his license does not have any force of law behind it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protectio...
His page mentions that he is from Hungary, and this restriction may have the force of law there, I don't know.
I suspect that most people who would want to create a derivative work would want to reuse the existing files. Manually re-creating a font is quite a bit of work. Finding just the right control points to get the curves perfect is tough. And no, you can't just dump the control points out of the original file; that would be creating a derivative work.
Edit to add: And actually, I believe that the copyright notice on that page is for that sample, displaying how the font is constructed. This is something that is copyrightable. The actual font file doesn't seem to have been released.
> could someone take a bitmap screenshot of Helvetica, product a font from it, and distribute that font?
Yes, and not only can they, people in fact do it. That's basically what Arial is, and there are open source versions as well.
The small modification you make to the shape are not considered enough to give you copyright.
I should clarify, I'm not implying it's a copy, or an unoriginal idea. I'm just saying out loud that I "think" I've seen this before.
Cool stuff!
> Martzi Hegedűs - About 16 hours ago
> -
> Thank you all!
> I'm finalizing the .otf version.
> It is going to be available soon, i hope.Second: This typeface is a creative expression. Readability is but one of many goals that a new typeface can have.
In selecting a typeface, you're also necessarily selecting the font, so why make the distinction?
From an artistic and technical point of view I get it, but from a user perspective the two are not separable quantities.
No, the reverse of that. A typeface of the overall look, a font specifies the size and things like bold, italic.
So what is commonly called the font is really the typeface, and what is called the size is actually the font.
Back when fonts of a specific size were physical thing this mattered a lot - you only had a limited number of fonts for each typeface.
One could argue this is Microsoft's fault, and there's probably some credence to that, but it's kind of beside the point. Far too many sites seem to have been designed on OS X and not tested anywhere else, and it's an obnoxious, lazy, and frankly elitist practice that needs to end.
Another related syndrome are sites designed on professional-grade monitors, with no thought given to how they're going to look on the other 95% of screens. This kind of shit is like engineering a car in California and just assuming it will work well in February in Montreal.
Seriously, if you want pretty font rendering, complain to Microsoft. The problem isn't that the sites are designed on Mac OS, it's just that Windows' font rendering sucks. It's horrific. We can't fix that. What is it you want us to do, put all text in images? That's been the traditional response to your platform's horrific font rendering.
And they're going to blame you for using a custom font, not Microsoft.
I don't understand the point of your sarcasm in the first line. The idea is that Mac users are overrepresented in the web-designer community vs. the user community. So in essence, there exist a significant number of websites that appear to have never been tested in non-OSX browsers, for it they were, it would be apparent to the designer that they look like shit in those environments.
The point of my sarcasm is that Mac users were mocked for years by the Windows crowd when they complained about major compatibility problems and were entirely ignored by most of the tech industry.
I can't help but revel in the poetic justice, and note with great hostility the dichotomy. We're now called "obnoxious", "lazy", and "elitist" because we don't waste time working around Microsoft's dysfunction just so things that work perfectly will look exactly as Windows users wish they would.
But to your "poetic justice" point, is this about revenge for perceived injustices, or about providing the best experience for users? Because the fact is that most sites are overwhelmingly viewed by Windows users. When it comes to professional work, you can't be making decisions with huge UX implications out of spite. Most people haven't even heard of ClearType, and shouldn't be caught in the crossfire of your bizarre crusade against it.
If you're unknowingly using fonts that look like shit in Windows because you're not testing, you're (at best) lazy and unprofessional. If you're knowingly using fonts that look like shit in Windows because you harbor a decade-old grudge, you're an childish asshole who should be out of work.
I never claimed there was any objective standard -- you did.