The Dingbat's Agenda » Fabulous Fonts

Cyrillic typesetting anyone?

Adrienne — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 03:04:45 +0000

This was a rare request that we were excited to be a part of. While I haven’t traveled out of the US (with the exception of Toronto which I LOVED), working with international clients (or foreign languages) for that matter provides some interesting challenges but also intriguing solutions. A client recently inquired about calligraphy calling cards and wanted us to do her name in Cyrillic. I immediately contact the head of Society of Scribes and emailed probably everyone on that contact list inquiring about a Cyrillic calligrapher. To my dismay, there were none to be found! Google proved fruitless. I tried to hack a Spencerian script but it really wasn’t getting close to what we were going for, and me being the Idahoan that I am was as close to Russia as finding a native palm tree in our state.

So the search ensued. I have system fonts on my computer that have Cyrillic Alphabets but I wanted to show you all a few options that are beautiful if you are typesetting in Cyrillic. I’m sure there are many more out there and maybe I’m just challenged – but a few of my favorites from Veer were these:

If you’ve typeset in Cyrillic, what did you use? Did you like it? How was it different from the English alphabet when typesetting? I’d love to see some wood or lead type in Cyrillic – that would be awesome!

Font of the moment: Phaeton

Adrienne — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:00:40 +0000

Right now I’m totally digging this

NO it’s not garden supplies but look at those swashes and ligatures filling up the lovely pixels on my LCD. Coming to a letterpress poster near you, I can’t wait to show you what I’ve got this going on, have fun imagining!

Plastique

Adrienne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:00:17 +0000

UPDATE : I WON I WON!!!!!! PICS SOON :)

So I don’t generally do this unless I REALLY want it, but here’s to blog promotion at it’s best.

If you want one of these or would like to check out some lovely acrylic jewelery then look into Plastique for some great finds (more suiting to type nerds like me but there’s a little something mod for everyone). Or you can enter a giveaway for the Helvetica necklace or Kern rings over at The Daily Estian. Here’s to hoping I win so I can have an awesome helvetica tan on my neck as this will be worn every stinking day of the summer if I actually manage to win!

ClarendoNeo Pro

Adrienne — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:00:01 +0000

I’ve always loved the schoolbookish look of the typeface Clarendon originally cut in the 1800s, however there’s never been a really great digital version until my recent discovery of ClarendoNeo Pro. There are over 900 glyphs and ligatures to complete this face including a combined text/display weight, swash options, old style numerical options, Cyrillic, small caps, alternate and discretional ligatures, and fractions! Not to mention the gorgeous ornamented letters you see here! If you feel inclined to purchase, FontHaus is offering a new free font with purchase (Gross Pointe Metro) as well. Check it out!

Clarendon has recently been thoughtfully researched and revived in 2007 by the German designer Björn Altmann.

Fabulous Fonts : Celtic Ornaments

Adrienne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:00:41 +0000

I really love Ireland even though I’ve never been there – someday. I don’t know why this crazy obsession, it’s not in my heritage, but I wish it was. I pray for red-haired children. I cherished the fact that kid # 2 was born with it, but dagnabbit when her head got big and she went bald, the red never grew back in. Now she’s just my clone child. I even named her Evelyn.

Celtic art and designs? They are just so…breathtaking. If there are any Irish brides out there wanting a celtic invitation suite I would LOVE to do one for you. I’m calling your name, yes! But Alas, there are no takers right now so I’ll just have to satisfy myself with Celtic typefaces to suit my obsession. Check out these awesome Celtic ornaments put together by Todd Hallock and available on MyFonts.com. I can just picture it now. One of these awesome seals, blind debossed with some awesome typography that encircles it. Printed in green? Maybe I’m going to far…

Bodoni Script

Adrienne — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:54:58 +0000

I don’t generally feel like I MUST BUY certain advertised typeface, as usually it takes a client request or some serious thought. However upon opening today’s email, I was tickled to find Bodoni Script Pro flaunting it’s lovely swashes and alternates at me. I REALLY love Bodoni and other transitional and modern typefaces, so this feels like it might get added to the already outrageous library of 1200 sooner than later. Thoughts?

While we’re on the subject: Fabulous Fonts

Adrienne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:27:00 +0000

Bethany was one of the featured fonts in last month’s Rising Starsnewsletter put out by MyFonts. It has been doing extremely well since, occupying the top spot of MyFonts’ Bestseller list for weeks. As they claim, Bethany is spirited and spontaneous, but has better legibility than many other handwriting fonts thanks to the openness and simplicity of its shapes. I just like that it looks like it ACTUALLY wasn’t tweaked by a computer and that it is the epitome of Sharpie heaven.

Onward ::: Okay, I can honestly say that I love handwriting, but HATE handwriting typefaces. They are all so monotonously predictable. In the 90′s there were a lot of these hideous things floating around. However my thoughts are slowly changing on the subject. With the great technology of Open Type fonts I think the “handwriting” era might be making a pleasing comeback.

Open Type you say? For those that aren’t familiar with this term here it is simply. Old digital fonts used to be limited to roughly 258 characters, or as we type nerds call it glyphs. That meant buying a typeface consisted of have a library of tens of thousands of fonts because with only 258 characters were available. So you had to buy Garamond Bold, Garamond Roman, Italic etc you get the picture.

With Open Type, you can have thousands of glyphs all in one face-place! Why do I sound like a walking advertisement? So now one just buys Garamond PRO!

My point in all this blubbering? The advantages become heavily in our favour for handwritten typefaces coming to full fruition (among other typefaces as well). Now instead of having one “e” that appears every time the “e” is typed, type designers now can have 20 different instances of an “e”. What that means for you my friends? That when you type a large novel like this one, each “e” can be randomly generated and slightly different, thus making it truely genuine. That is if you us Adobe CS4, otherwise you still get to manually select it among the glyphs because CS4 rocketh the Open Type.

There’s my take on the subject. No MORE papyrus!