Mark Simonson's Notebook - Page 32
I released the Light and Light Italic styles of Metallophile Sp8 in 2003. The original plan was to add more weights later, but later never seemed to come. When I started getting requests from customers for more weights, I realized that had to change.
And now it has. Introducing Metallophile Sp8 Medium and Medium Italic. These, like the original Metallophile Sp8 fonts, are based on a classic sans serif hot metal face, Spartan, set at 8 points.
My concept was based on the observation that digital versions of classic typefaces look quite different from their counterparts in metal type. The metal faces, printed on plate-finish paper using letterpress printing, had a warmth and texture that was lost in the precise mathematical world of digital typography. It was not only the imperfections of ink on cast metal, it was also the proportions and spacing, which were particular to the size of type. In digital type (with some exceptions), one size fits all. In metal type, every size was custom tailored. 8 point digital Futura looks quite different than 8 point metal Futura, especially in print.
There have been some attempts in digital type at simulating the look of classic metal typefaces, such as ITC Founder’s Caslon, but rarely has it been tried with more modern sans serifs. Metallophile Sp8 Light was an attempt, but without more weights it was limited in its usefulness.
The original metal Spartan Light was paired (or “duplexed”) with Medium as a boldface on the old Linotype casting machines. With that in mind, I decided Metallophile Sp8 Medium would be the best boldface for Metalophile Sp8 Light.
As part of this process, the entire family was moved to the OpenType format, with a greatly enlarged character set, including extensive language support, a full set of math characters (based on the standard “pi” sorts of the metal type days), f-ligatures, a large set of pre-built fractions as well as arbitrary fractions via OpenType. The new fonts also include and alternate two-story lowercase “a” and alternate left quote marks, just like the original metal face. I redesigned the “ß” to give it the more traditional form, but included the more contemporary version I did in the original Metallophile Sp8 fonts as an alternate.
More weights are already in the works, which I hope to release this Summer, but I wanted to get these out as soon as they were ready.
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When I released Metallophile Sp 8 in 2003, the plan was to add more weights eventually. Now that I am converting my older fonts to OpenType format, that time has come. These four fonts should be available soon from my usual distributors. More details to come. More weights later this year.
drawn.ca had an item the other day about a meme that’s going around: draw yourself as a teenager. I decided to cheat and post a drawing of myself as a teenager that I drew when I was a teenager. I’ve added explanatory notes.
At the time (about 1973) I had this idea to draw a comic that featured me and my friends and teachers. It never got beyond a few sketches.
Looking through the list where the meme started makes me feel very old. People in their early twenties laughing at how dumb they were as teenagers only a few years ago. A few years ago, I was pretty much the same as I am now, but I remember the feeling.
Mike Meyer is a sign painter based in Mazeppa, Minnesota. I first knew of Mike’s work from the beautiful hand-painted signs he did for a restaurant in St. Paul called Andy’s Garage. (Unfortunately, the original location where I saw them in St. Paul is closed now, but his signs can still be seen at the Minneapolis location in the Midtown Commons.) Last year, Mike discovered my site and we began corresponding by email a bit. Recently, he sent me some photos of cool signs he took on a trip through the south. With his permission, here are a few of them:
Today I found a photo on Flickr taken by Joe Pemberton, one of the founders of Typophile.com, of his computer monitor displaying a freeze frame from the making-of section of the DVD “The Call of Cthulhu” showing director/producer Andrew Leman, who also makes typographic props and contacted me years ago in response to my Typecasting article, wearing my winning design from the 2002 Typophile t-shirt contest.
Would it surprise you to learn that I am a pack rat? When it comes to things like books and printed material about type, this can be a good thing, as it gives me a rich resource library I can tap whenever the need arises (and it frequently does). When it comes to other things, like old computer software, it is a complete waste of time and space.
It’s not hard to see how it happens. When it is new, software is not cheap (it didn’t used to be, anyway). So, even if you are not actively using it, it feels like it still has value. And how can you tell exactly when a piece of software is no longer useful and the chances of ever running it again are nil? It’s easier to just put it on a shelf and forget about it.
Well, time passes and it becomes much easier to see how little it’s worth to you. But then the question becomes: What to do with it all? I couldn’t bear to chuck it all in the trash (it’s a sickness, I know). Surely there must be somebody somewhere who would be happy to take it off my hands? And so there is: Dan’s 20th Century Abandonware (a.k.a., D2CA). Update: That site is gone now, but the collection can now be seen at Daniel’s Legacy Computer Collections. Same guy.
A few weeks ago, I shipped eight cartons of old Mac software to Dan as a donation. Some of it dates back to the first year of the Mac’s existence (Andrew Tobias’ Managing Your Money). Some of it I bought with high hopes, but never really used (Think Pascal). But most of it simply went obsolete (TOPS networking software).
As he promised, Dan posted a formal thank you on his home page—complete with photos and a listing of everything I sent. Now, if I ever feel a pang of regret, I can go to Dan’s site and still see all my old stuff, comforted that it has found a loving home, instead of an existence of guilty, dusty neglect in my basement. My hat (if I had one) is off to Dan for graciously and willingly accepting my donation.
Of course, this was just the stuff I don’t need any more.