Category Archives: Announcements

FontShop Friday Five: New Faces

August 12, 2011 – 11:10 AM

We know you’re busy and the Internet is a crowded place, so we’ll try to give you a little reminder on Fridays of what’s going on out there. Below please find five recent FontShop-related threads that you may have missed.

Meet David

We’re very excited to have a new type expert on board in our San Francisco office. Meet David here.

Actually Meet David

Join us on August 24 at our Designer & Developer Meetup.

Meet Others

If you’re in The Netherlands in September, Yves Peters recommends you check out the “Now We Are Talking” festival. Then join others in London this October at TYPO London: Places.

If You Can’t Meet, Tweet

Are you following us on Twitter? How about Facebook? Keep the typographic conversations going across platforms!

Or Just Watch a Movie Instead

Yves’ ScreenFonts column returns with some gems, including pointing out a “Crazy Stupid” design mistake.

Friday Five Fonts:  Alda by Emigre and Lush Script by TypeTrust

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in FontShop Products | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

FontShop Swears In David Sudweeks, Type Expert

August 12, 2011 – 12:25 AM

FontShop welcomes David Sudweeks to the San Francisco office. By way of introduction, he answers here a few questions selected by the staff.

How did you land upon being a “font expert”?

Most type people can trace their love for fonts back to their early years and in this respect I’m no different. I always enjoyed the perusal of alphabets available as iron-on letters, chenille patches, stencils, in embossed tape labelers and calligraphic style manuals, etc.. Picking up webpage design as a hobby during the internet’s first coming of age, and my own, led me into the design profession. Working different jobs in print design expanded my ability to identify faces and spec their appropriate use. Around the same time I began pursuing lettering and type design on my own, and this out of necessity got me involved with the Typophile community. Learning to write convincingly about the formal qualities of words & letters, and experiencing the warmth of the type world at events like TypeCon were the final reassurances I needed to know that I could make it in type.

Still, type expert? I guess so; though my first week here reminds me I’ve yet got plenty to learn.

What are you most looking forward to working at FontShop?

I’m here to do good writing and make good art. Anything else, like discovering with the rest of us what a Twenty-first Century type retail service shop looks like, will be icing on the cake.

What are your top three typefaces at the moment?

Williams Caslon from Font Bureau, rather than purporting to be another authentic revival type, is a beautiful portrayal of an idea called Caslon.

Next, Compendium from Sudtipos. It’s so much fun to use! The pains taken to establish a sophisticated fit and care put into character design guarantees this face never to fall flat.

Last, Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch. Folks who know me know that I like a good, deliberate blackletter when occasion calls for it. Rudolf Koch, Europe’s foremost type designer in his day, drew this one—maybe just for me.

And extra last, entry 4 of 3, I couldn’t pass up the chance to mention Marina Chaccur’s recent work out of the Type]Media program. (Permission to mention this just came in.) The Chic collection, comprised of a confident grotesque, a bold romantic display, and some fine lace, is designed to work together like the essential pieces of a well-dressed woman’s wardrobe. Before banging down Marina’s door please note that the collection is presently unreleased. Now bang down Marina’s door.

By David Sudweeks | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Join Us for a Designer/Developer Meetup in San Francisco!

August 9, 2011 – 3:24 PM

Are you a developer looking to make your app or website more visually appealing? Are you a designer seeking opportunities in tech? Join FontShop and the Storek Building for Visual Meets Virtual, an informal evening aimed to connect developers and designers with one another to build beautiful projects together. Register via Eventbrite today.

We’ll have plenty of refreshments and libations for your enjoyment and a brief, informal presentation by members of the design and development communities (with a short Q&A) on how they view the two disciplines interrelating. Attendees will also be among the first to hear some exciting news from FontShop — you won’t want to miss it!

Day: Wednesday, August 24th
Time: 6-9 p.m.
Location: Storek Building, 155 9th St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Agenda:
6-7 p.m.: Pizza & Libations
7-7:45 p.m.: Panel Discussion and Q&A
7:45-9 p.m.: Mingle with our panelists and other attendees

Panelists:

Cary Dunn, CTO, RightSignature. From the temperate and sleepy beachside town of Santa Barbara, Cary is the development and UI steamboat behind the e-signature company RightSignature. He is a crossbreed developer/designer, which means you’ll often find him wireframing in code rather than Photoshop. He lives his life at local coffee shops, spends late nights hacking code, and always has a few new products brewing.

Chris Palmatier is a designer, developer, and artist whose restless muse keeps him bouncing between his text editor, vector drawing software, drafting table, and art studio. Over the past 10 years, he has worked as a full-stack web developer and interaction/visual designer, working to create tools that are both usable and delightful for the University of California, IDEO, and Civic Center/Neighborland.org, to name a few. When not working on Internet design and manufacture, he also works on print design and consulting for clients in the East Bay, designs furniture, and creates abstract paintings and sculptures. Chris holds a BFA in Fine Arts (Painting) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and lives in sunny Oakland, CA.

Gregor Martynus. Having a degree in Media System Design and working for years as developer, designer and in between, Gregor understands the different languages of both sides. Potential gets lost in translation and wrong expectation – let’s talk synergies. Gregor is the founder of minutes.io, an HTML5 app to take & share meeting notes. He enjoys working at coworking spaces and is moving once or twice per year. After San Francisco, he’ll move to Zurich with his wife. Spare time activities include traveling, photography and snowboarding.

Make sure to register here!

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in Web Fonts | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

FontBook App – FAQs

July 21, 2011 – 10:00 AM

UPDATED: December 19, 2012

We announced today that FontBook  has been enhanced as a universal app and will work on iPhone as well as iPad. We’re sure you’ve got lots of questions. We’ll answer some of your burning ones below, but feel free to leave more in the comments.

If I purchase the app, can I use it on both my iPhone and iPad?

Yes, as a universal app, you pay once and you may install it on any of your iOS devices. FontBook runs on iPad 2 (and later), iPad Mini, iPhone 4 (and later) and iPod touch (4th gen. and later)

 

fontbookiphone

Is there an Android version of the FontBook?

Not currently. While we are watching the growth of the Android market, we would first like to experience the transition from print to digital FontBook on one platform.

But what about print?

We want to deliver more information than ever before with the new typeface compendium. Note that the App delivers 620,000 font specimens — 19 times more than the printed FontBook 4. With FontBook 4, in 2006, we had to make compromises to host all available typefaces in one volume. For example, we downsized the showing of FF Meta (26 fonts) from three pages in 1998′s FontBook 3 to one page, despite the fact that the family had grown to 300 weights in the meantime. We did that by squeezing the stylistic sets into four lines of sample text — not a very user-friendly compromise. FF Meta is now shown in its entirety. The app also allows you to combine and compare type specimens — completely impossible with previous editions unless you were willing to tear your book apart.

Can I download fonts on my device?

iOS does not support the installation of fonts by the user. However you can download font files that have been purchased on FontShop with mobile Safari once you log into your account from a desktop computer.

Does FontBook contain the actual files of the shown fonts?

No. The FontBook app delivers raster images of typefaces that are generated and stored on a server. FontBook is an online Browser.

Can I use the FontBook app without an internet connection?

The app is primarily an online browsing application and can only display its full content when your device has live internet access through a WiFi/WLAN or 3G mobile connection. However, if you have no online access, you can temporarily switch the “Include online content” setting to “off”. This will enable the app to display a reduced pool of selected content which will work offline. Whenever you do have online access, you can switch back to the full version by switching the “Include online content” setting to “on”.

app99

FontBook is available in the App Store. Learn more at fontbook.com.

 

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in FontBook, FontShop Products | Tagged , , , , | Comments (99)

The New FontBook Has Arrived!

July 21, 2011 – 9:13 AM

FontShop is thrilled to announce our new FontBook™ iPad app, the world’s most comprehensive typographic reference tool! Download the app for just $5.99/€4.99 at the iTunes App Store.

Moving the book into the online realm allows us to increase the number of font samples from 32,000 to an astonishing 620,000, while reducing the weight of the book by 80%. Use the FontBook app to look up and view fonts by name, style category, typographical subclassification, designer name, foundry name, year of publication, or by similarity of design. Now typophiles can interact with and compare typefaces on-the-go and with the swipe of a finger.

We can’t wait to share more highlights with you in the coming days — stay tuned to FontBook.com, The FontFeed and the FontShop Blog for inside looks all this month.

Enjoy!

Browse by Family

Browse by Foundry

Combine & Compare Specimens

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in FontBook, FontShop Products | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

Webfont Wednesday: Big News for Web FontFonts

July 20, 2011 – 3:00 PM

In case you missed today’s newsletter, we’ve got a ton of updates in the world of Web FontFonts. In addition to several FontFonts adding web versions, there’s also all sorts of goodies packed into them. Check it out:

Designers rejoice! Comp fonts now included in Web FFs

Once again FontFont is leading the charge in webfont technology and making the lives of designers much easier! It’s now even simpler to involve great typefaces like FF Meta Web, FF Unit Web, or the new FF Sero Web in all phases of website creation. We know that during the design process it may be necessary to create page layouts of the proposed design using applications that don’t support WOFF/EOT fonts. For this purpose, Web FontFont archives now contain corresponding TrueType-flavored OpenType fonts for the offline design phase. As reflected in the amended Web FontFont EULA, these comp fonts may only be used for this specific purpose.

Improved Web FontFonts

Additionally, Web FontFonts have been reworked to ensure you end up with a smaller file size, additional optimization for Microsoft’s rendering API DirectWrite and improved vertical metrics for consistent baseline positions in all browsers. In many of the files, you can also now choose between Oldstyle Figures and Proportional Lining Figures. If you’ve already purchased Web FontFonts, you can enjoy these enhancements; upgraded files are available for download in your account at no additional cost.

FontFont Subsetter

Once you’ve downloaded your Web FontFonts, use Subsetter to create a new, lighter webfont file tailored to the needs of your website. Learn more here.

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in FontShop Products, Web Fonts | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

FontShop Friday Five: Feedback & Foundries

July 15, 2011 – 5:02 PM

We know you’re busy and the Internet is a crowded place, so we’ll try to give you a little reminder on Fridays of what’s going on out there. Below please find five recent FontShop-related threads that you may have missed.

Tell Us What You Think

We launched our 2011 Customer Survey this week and want to hear from you! Click here to take the survey. All those who complete it by Friday, July 29 will receive a promo code for 20% off at FontShop!

Letterbox Updates

Not only did Letterbox recently add new fonts to their collection, but they upgraded their ENTIRE library. Take an in-depth look here.

FontBook is Coming July 21

Looks like there’s been more movement on FontBook.com. Sign up for updates and you’ll be among the first to know how to get your paws on it starting next Thursday!

TYPO Comes Home

We examined TYPO London‘s use of FF Unit Web on Wednesday and gave you the scoop on this exciting event in October.

On the FontFeed

Kylie + typefaces = bizarre/obscure 90s video

Friday Five Fonts:  Alix FB by Font Bureau and Delight Script by Sudtipos

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in New Fonts, Web Fonts | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The 2011 FontShop Customer Survey

July 12, 2011 – 4:29 PM

How are we doing? We want to know and we hope you will tell us. We’ve put together a quick customer feedback survey that will just take a few minutes of your time. Please fill it out by Friday, July 29 and we’ll send you a 20% off discount code to show our appreciation!

Click here to take survey

Header Fonts: CC Clean Cut Kid by Comicraft and FF Dingbats 2.0 OT by FontFont

By Meghan Arnold | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Try Subsetter to Reduce Web FontFont File Size

July 7, 2011 – 3:01 PM

Subsetter was designed with the needs of both web designers and developers in mind. Its purpose is simple — reduce the file size of your Web FontFonts to make your websites faster, optimize bandwidth usage, and reduce high-traffic costs. Subsetter allows you to strip out extraneous glyphs and data that you may not need, like unused language characters, punctuation marks, and kerning information. It will create a new, lighter webfont file tailored to your website.

On July 20, FontFont will be releasing an upgraded Web FontFont collection. To further optimize your Subsetter experience, we encourage you to re-download your Web FontFonts after July 20 to get the improved versions. This will ensure that you end up with a smaller file size, additional optimization for Microsoft’s rendering API DirectWrite, and improved vertical metrics for consistent baseline positions in all browsers. Upgraded Web FontFont files will be available at no additional cost.

You can reduce your Web FontFont file sizes in a matter of moments with Subsetter’s easy, three-step process.

  1. Upload a Web FontFont.
  2. Strip out glyphs and data that may not be needed for a particular site, like unused language characters, punctuation marks, and kerning.
  3. Download your optimized font file.

Grab FF Nuvo Web for free and give Subsetter a try. Stay tuned to the FontFeed this week for a more in-depth look!

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in FontShop Products, Web Fonts, Website Features | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Our “Type” of Party!

June 16, 2011 – 4:56 PM

Last night we at FontShop’s San Francisco office were thrilled to host a book launch party for Explorations in Typography: Mastering the Art of Fine Typesetting by Carolina de Bartolo and Erik Spiekermann. Carolina was in attendance to sign copies hot of the press and brought Erik along…sort of.

The party was held as part of AIGA Design Week in San Francisco and drew a great crowd of designers and type aficionados. We were excited to host the first event held in the newly renovated space at the historic Storek Building, a technology arts building in the heart of SoMa.

In introducing the book, Carolina had these words of advice for the crowd: “A wise person once told me: ‘Trying to save the world only creates hopelessness’….so, kern your type! Do what you can control, fix your rags. Good typography is a service to people and it makes a difference.”

And what’s a party without cake? Not to make  you jealous, but ours was delicious! And Oakland Bakes did a fantastic job making it look EXACTLY like the book.

Relive the party on our Facebook page. If you couldn’t make it, you can order Carolina’s book via her website. (Warning: actual book not edible)

By Meghan Arnold | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

FontFonter Update: Preview Web FontFonts on Any Site

June 9, 2011 – 1:52 PM

Almost a year ago, we first announced FontFonter, a tool which allows you to temporarily replace sans and serif fonts on almost any website with a selection of Web FontFonts. Since then, FontFont has greatly expanded its Web FontFont selection, and that expansion has carried over to FontFonter: you can now preview over 40 Web FontFonts, ranging from trusty standbys like FF DIN Web, to some of the newer designs like FF More Web and FF Sanuk Web.

The process is simple: Go to FontFonter.com, type in a website URL, and FontFont It! You’ll then be able to specify which Web FontFonts you want to preview in a control panel at the top of the page; below will be the website you entered, with the chosen fonts replacing the default fonts used for that website. You can choose to replace all fonts with a single Web FontFont, or you can specify replacements for sans and serifs, respectively.

(Note that FontFonter doesn’t quite work as expected on 100% of sites. It will not work with secure sites [https], and will occasionally conflict with some sites’ Javascript or other code.)

Here are some examples to entice you:

FF Clan Web on Apple.com

FF Milo Serif Web on Google.com

Lukasz Dziedzic‘s serif and sans siblings FF More Web (navigation, headline) and FF Good Web (body) on Guardian.co.uk

FF Spinoza Web (navigation, headlines) and FF Basic Gothic Web (body) on NPR.org

FF Suhmo Web (headlines) and FF Hydra Text Web (body) on printmag.com

FF Chambers Sans Web on Flickr.com

FF Sanuk Web on tdc.org

By Ivan Bettger | Also posted in Web Fonts, Website Features | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Safari to support WOFF in Mac OS X Lion

June 7, 2011 – 12:36 PM

Steve Jobs announced a whole heckuva lot of stuff yesterday at the WWDC here in San Francisco. Between iCloud, iOS 5, and all of the new features Jobs introduced in OS X Lion, there’s a lot to be excited about.

But the most exciting feature for FontShop and its customers introduced yesterday didn’t make it into Jobs’ keynote. Hidden in this expansive feature list for Lion was this bit of gold:

Support for the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) gives web designers and developers the ability to use a wider range of fonts on websites.

What this means for us and you: soon, your Web FontFonts (as well as the recently released Azuro Web) will be supported in Safari as well as every other major browser, allowing you to comfortably host webfonts knowing that your visitors will view your website in all its typographically fine-tuned correctness.

For the uninitiated: WOFF is a file format which provides lightweight compression and the capacity for additional metadata, which can be implemented on websites using CSS @font-face rules. Developed by Jonathan Kew, Tal Leming, and Erik van Blokland, WOFF fonts are generally converted from TrueType (TTF), and can contain hinting for optimal onscreen rendering. WOFF is a recommended standard by the W3C, and is already supported in FireFox (3.6+), Chrome (6+), and Internet Explorer (9+).

Mac OS X Lion will be available in July. This gives you just enough time to browse our Web FontFont offerings and pick some new faces for your site in celebration of Safari joining the WOFF revolution.

By Ivan Bettger | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Michael’s Musings from TYPO Berlin

May 26, 2011 – 4:03 PM
First Officer, Michael Pieracci, of FontShop’s San Francisco office, recently headed to Berlin to experience TYPO: Shift. Below are some of his pictures and thoughts from the conference.

The venue for TYPO has been for many years the “Haus der Kulturen der Welt” (“House of the Cultures of the World”) also known as the “pregnant oyster”. It was originally a gift from the US after WWII.

I attended the presentation Emojis, hieroglyphs and typographic mega-niches. New from Unicode by Johannes Bergerhausen and Siri Poarangan. I learned quite a bit about the current state of Unicode, and how there’s much enthusiasm to add old/obscure languages to it. The presenters made an interesting point: adding languages means connecting a culture to the digital/internet realm. The Cherokee language recently became part of Unicode and is now usable on the iPhone. The presenters explain more at their site, DecodeUnicode.org.

Yves Peters, author of the FontFeed, brought his ScreenFonts blogs to life presenting on the typography of movie posters with great slides. I loved the pictogram alternative to Psycho.

Petr van Blokland presented Designer update: what’s next?  on technologies that are relevant to designers today and for the future (HTML5, CSS3, cloud computing), and what’s obsolete (Flash, Word, InDesign).

Lots of attendees, especially students, relaxed and spent time at the drawing table with pens, paper, and blank t-shirts creating beautiful illustrations and lettering. The table had a stack of stencils of the font Fummel, made up of modules to construct any letter. Fummel is available for download on our Free Fonts page.

Did you go to TYPO? What was your experience?

By mpieracci | Tagged , | Comments (2)

FontShop SF Hosts “Explorations in Typography” Book Signing on June 15

May 26, 2011 – 11:23 AM

Explorations in Typography book launch party on June 15, 2011

AIGA Design Week in San Francisco is coming soon and on Wednesday, June 15 a lively crowd of typophiles will be mixing and mingling at an at-capacity event at the FontShop SF headquarters in the historic Storek Building, a technology arts building in the heart of SoMa.  They’ll be celebrating the role of typography in design and the launch of the new book Explorations in Typography: Mastering the Art of Fine Typesetting by Carolina de Bartolo and Erik Spiekermann.

Carolina will be signing books and offering up a beautiful new letterpressed poster of all the typeface combinations from her book. Of course, there will be lots of copies of Explorations in Typography on hand for purchase. Additionally, there will be plenty of refreshments and libations for your enjoyment — even a special typographic cake draped in font-dant!

So how can you get in on the fun? Well, all California customers who purchase fonts featured in Explorations in Typography by Friday, June 10 will automatically be entered to win a pair of tickets to the event!

Don’t live in California, but think you can make it? Email contest@fontshop.com and we’ll make sure you’re in the drawing if you’re otherwise eligible.

By Meghan Arnold | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Congratulations Mladen Balog, Winner of Rocking FontFont’s Free Fonts Contest

May 9, 2011 – 2:46 PM

Contest Submission: Depeche Mode - Violator by Mladen Balog

After a close public competition over the past week, a winner has emerged from the excellent crop of entrants in FontShop‘s Rocking FontFont’s Free Fonts Contest.

Snagging 11% of eligible votes, the creative redesign of Depeche Mode’s Violator album has made Mladen Balog the winner of $500 in credit toward FontFonts.

The illustration submitted is rendered with FF Yokkmokk ‘s v-i-o-l-a-t-o-r glyphs (more than 70,000 of them). We’ll catch up with Mladen in a future post to learn about his process for the design and also what he plans to do with his new fonts.

Thank you to all of you who participated in the public voting process. And a HUGE thank you to those who bravely submitted their designs to the public eye. The Flickr group will remain live for your creative inspiration.

We appreciate any feedback you have on how the contest went, so let us know in the comments. If you liked this little competition perhaps we will have more fun in the future.

By Meghan Arnold | Also posted in FontShop Products, Free Fonts | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 52,090 other followers