Lost typeface printing blocks found in river Thames | Hacker News Reader

Lost typeface printing blocks found in river Thames

m.bbc.co.uk

33 pointssjclemmy22 comments

Its a lame blurb, the story of the Doves Typeface is here: http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21591793-le... which is somewhat interesting. That they have found a few more pieces of it is, interesting as well. No need to click the link though and read this :

Printing blocks for a typeface called Doves Type have been discovered in the River Thames.

The font has not been used for nearly a century as the printing type blocks, used to print letters, were thrown into the river in 1917.

And have your screen start talking to you with an advertisement.

I came to provide that exact link ... it's a great article and the fact that they've found some of the type lends credence to the legend (that it had been dumped in the Thames). I can't wait to see this on Google fonts!

It is for sale, not on Google fonts http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/

He abhorred mechanical industry, and only by consigning the type to the Thames, he wrote in his diary, could he guarantee it would never be used in “a press pulled otherwise than by the hand and arm of man”.

Well, that's sad.

now they're being printed and read without anything like a press being involved at all

Are you saying it's sad that he preferred that, or sad that his wishes won't be respected?

More like that the only way we (collectively) can appreciate his work is via the very means that he feared so much as to destroy it in the first place. He'd likely say we're not appreciating it properly, only exploiting it.

If the font is really that old, shouldn't it be out of copyright? Courts have held that faithful digital reproductions of public domain paintings are not copyrightable; could the same apply to fonts?

Typefaces aren't copyrightable to begin with. When you license one, you're only licensing the ability to use the name.

Could you provide a reference for that so we can learn more? That sounds contrary to what I've read previously.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protectio...

Interesting. It sounds like it's still possible for a font file to be copyrighted, though:

However, in 1992, the US Copyright Office revisited its 1988 decision, and determined that the latest digital outline fonts in fact had elements that could be protected as software.[4] Since that time, the Office has accepted registration of copyright for digital vector fonts, such as PostScript Type 1, TrueType, and OpenType format files.

This is part of the basis of the unpublished opinion in Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc., decided in 1998, wherein Judge Whyte found that Adobe Software held a valid copyright for its Utopia font and that it had been infringed by the defendant(s) in that case.

Reading through the story and the site, it looks like it's not a good candidate for public domain because Robert Green arguably has not so much 'recovered' the font (what is he going to do, just scan the corroded century-old lead blocks?) as created an 'inspired by' reproduction, with enough creative input that it's not a good case for the Corel v Bridgman 'mechanical reproduction' exception - too much work and thought put into it.

As cool as the physical recovery is (no one really tried before? what a delicious story), it doesn't seem to have affected his digital version much:

> Since finding the characters, Green has made some minor adjustments to his Doves Type (mostly refining spacing and curves) but says he finally feels the project is complete.

To expand more, from the Economist:

> Mr Green has stared at it longer than most. For three years he has been crafting a digital reproduction of the famous face—the first fully usable Doves font since the original metal pieces were swallowed by the Thames. In search of perfect curves and precise serifs, he reckons he has redrawn it at least 120 times. “I’m not really sure why I started. In the end it took over my life.”

> Mr Green has added to the original type. It had only 100-or-so characters; his digital revival boasts 350. That includes foreign oddities such as the Icelandic thorn and German esset, and modern essentials such as the euro sign and @ symbol. Whereas Doves existed in only one size, near to what is now called 16 point, its digital descendant scales as required. Is the type’s former owner now turning in his grave? “I think he’d admire my tenacity,” suggests Mr Green, hopefully. “Just so long as he doesn’t haunt me.”

This is a better article: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/february/recove...

You can buy a digital version of the typeface for 40 pounds at http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/

The 'Qu' almost-ligature is great. But wow, is font licensing screwed up...."contact us" for > 10K views per month!

Where is the article? Or is it just the blurb.

The "article" is the video embedded in the page. Although it doesn't have much more information.

I wonder what other things are sitting on the bottom of the Thames.

This could be an interesting topic for the Discovery channel.

Oh no - quick hide it, otherwise we will start to see a rash posting of web design blogs swanning around using it and claiming how individual they are, in a copied each other kind of way.

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