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Why Did Adobe Discontinue Font Chameleon in the 90s? »

Back in the mid to late 90s, Adobe acquired a company called Ares Software. Ares made font-​related software products, including doing the programming (but not owning or distributing) of Letraset FontStudio, which in its day was one of the best font editors. They are best known for a remarkable application and technology called Font Chameleon.

There is a popular myth that Adobe bought Font Chameleon to kill a threatening technology. Actually, no, removing it from the market was not a motivation for the acquisition. The team that made fonts and would have cared one way or another had nothing to do with those decisions, and were simply not interested in Font Chameleon.

Adobe’s purchase of Ares was done to acquire Font Chameleon technology, and was entirely driven by the PostScript group at Adobe, to use its technology for font compression purposes in PostScript 3 printers. All Ares retail products (not just Font Chameleon) were discontinued as Adobe put the two Ares principals to work on adapting the tech for Adobe’s use.

(Also, Font Chameleon was in some respects massively more powerful than MM, but also had huge limitations. It could only handle the axes it knew about, and could only handle the characters it knew about.)

I joined Adobe in mid-​1997, shortly after the acquisition, and thought it was an interesting tech. I ended up deeply involved in helping make the whole system work (chameleon fonts in ROM including CE fonts, printer drivers, and supposedly matching fonts on end user computers). All the systems were optimized to make an individual piece work in a static environment, according to known schema. Real end-​to-​end testing hadn’t been needed in years. But because there were numerous technical changes being made at the same time to all these pieces, suddenly end-​to-​end testing was critical. I got involved in pointing that out and pushing everyone to make sure their pieces played together instead of all pointing at specs that had been made before any of the pieces actually existed. 

Through some internal asking around at Adobe was able to get my hands on Ares’ Font Chameleon editor: the company’s internal tool used to make a Chameleon “font descriptor” that could be blended with others. These font descriptors as individual files were also super compact, which is why the PostScript team wanted the tech. They relied on a (large) mutatable “master” font , plus the descriptors; the master + descriptors for 136 PostScript 3 fonts were a LOT smaller than the set of fonts themselves, and allowed support for central European accented characters with hardly any size impact.

What was super interesting to me was how insanely fast it was to create such a font descriptor—which could also be exported as a stand-​alone font if one wished, not to mention instantly manipulated in weight, width, x-​height, etcetera. At the time I thought it could have been an incredible rapid prototyping tool. With it I could do in a day what would otherwise take me weeks. But the limitations of the tech, and tendency to encourage some degree of blandification meant… nobody in a position of power and influence within the type group was interested. They had looked at it, and decided it had inferior results and wasn’t worth pursuing.

It is also worth noting that the lead programmers from Ares were freakin’ brilliant, but the code was not entirely stable/​reliable. I certainly had quite a few crashes using the Chameleon editor—although to be fair, that was only intended as an internal app, not a retail/​external app.

So, Font Chameleon died because the Adobe team that bought it wanted it for underlying tech and didn’t do retail products, and the team that did retail fonts had no interest in it, and there was a general perception that maintaining/​developing any of the Ares products would have been painful.

Font Detective forensic typography assistant needed »

Hello, Watson!

UPDATE 25 DEC: Just thought I should say that yes I picked someone (out of many highly qualified—or even overqualified—applicants). They are choosing to stay anonymous for now, but have been doing a lovely job so far!

UPDATE 23 NOV: (1) Good lord, I have a lot of applicants. Application deadline will be Nov 24 at 8 am US Pacific time, and yes that is Thanksgiving for us. (2) By “very occasional, part-​time work” I mean maybe 3 hours, or 6, or 16, all in a week or two… and then maybe nothing for weeks or even months. This is just an occasional brief gig. Over time it might become more. Or perhaps not. The task of sample clipping is the main thing I have come up with, and will be an ongoing one. It is pretty darn tedious, sorry. (3) Added a couple more details in the body.

This is currently very occasional, part-​time work. Many of my cases from my detective work involve things like time consuming fiddly data collection, which I don’t have time to continue doing all by myself. A particular case at hand involves about a dozen documents. To demonstrate what the font is, part of my method involves taking samples of some specific letters (defined by me) from the documents. This amounts to clipping graphic images (from a PDF or image file, via Acrobat or Photoshop) and pasting them into a table (in Word or possibly InDesign). It is pretty rote work. In this case, like most of them, we already know what the typeface is when we go to do this clipping: the problem is to demonstrate that to the court. So, we take these laborious samples and make a pretty chart. And for a particular case at hand, instead of the usual one document and just maybe two, there are many. And a deadline in December.

I have more than a bit too much total work for the rest of this year, so I am looking for somebody to do this task, on this and future cases. Currently I define which characters are worth collecting samples of, but that is something I could potentially hand off in the future. Or perhaps we both pick some.

This could quite possibly lead to other work; it depends on your skills and what you bring to the table. There are times when I could use somebody to research some issue… I would give an example from a current case, but I definitely shouldn’t say it. Sigh.

The work pays well, and I am happy to share some of that. 

Email me if you have my email, or just use the comment function to give me your email address and a link to your resume or a description of your background. (I won’t publish these comments!) Obviously some design and typography background is a bonus, but then again, this is also pretty basic, for now. Brains are the most important resource. No promise of growth and advancement, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out!

This will require signing a non-​disclosure agreement. I will let you know what you can say about any given case at hand, but it is often nothing, or pretty minimal. Even afterwards, most cases remain largely confidential. The ones we can talk about are a distinct minority.

Font Detective talk in Dublin, 16 Nov 2022 »

This Wednesday night at 6 pm, I will be doing a presentation about my font detective work in Dublin! Come on by—it’s free and no advance registration is needed. (Note however there is no on-​campus parking: transit or bicycle recommended, else park on the street nearby.) 

Location: TU Dublin, East Quad (I am told there will be a sign-​in desk at the entrance)
Time: 6 pm! will run maybe an hour to an hour and a half, with Q&A
Cost: Free!

I am in Dublin to do a Crafting Type workshop (Thurs–Sat) at TU Dublin, before a visit to London for one of my current cases! The good folks with Typography Ireland at the Uni asked me to do a wee talk about my forensic font work….

I shall discuss and show evidence from four forensic cases, including The Case of the Concealed Credits (featuring Justin Timberlake and will.i.am), the Respected Rabbi, the Canadian Caper, and the Secret of the Certificate. I am the world’s only ongoing “font detective”; as a global expert on fonts, typography and printing, I do font-​related document forensics in legal cases around the world. The stakes can be fortune, fame, careers, imprisonment, the family house, or the provenance of one of the world’s most valuable artworks.

Blackletter glyphs from The Secret of the Certificate
a different certificate, the s’micha from The Respected Rabbi

About me: I have been doing font forensics since I testified about a forged will back in 1999. My list of expert witness clients includes a “big three” auto maker and a major California city. I have been consulted on questioned documents by BBC News, The Washington Post, PBS television’s “History Detectives,” NPR, the US Treasury, and many others. I am also a type designer who has created fonts for Adobe and Google. I am the former CEO of FontLab, and previously had strategic/​technical font product management roles at Adobe and Extensis. I was on the board of ATypI, the international typography association, from 2004–20. I have four patents and a medal, as well as an MS in printing & typography from RIT, and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Font Production Person Needed, first half 2021 »

NOTE: The position has been filled! 

Qualifications:

Features

Details

WHAT? I have been commissioned to continue a variable font project I started this year with Google. In 2020, I did a first version with a weight axis, but now I need to do a big expansion in 2021—with two more axes. The work is primarily adding further masters to an existing typeface, not original design work. Given the desired timeline, there is too much work and not enough time for me to do it solo. 

WHEN? This would start at or near the beginning of January and run through May.

WHO? So I am looking for one more person to help work on it in FontLab 7; currently it is me plus some help from Vassil Kateliev. This will be work for hire, and the resulting typeface will be owned by Google (not open source). Vassil is our scripting guru, and can do some amazing things with automation—his contributions in that regard were invaluable in the version 1 project. This time he will likely also have some hands-​on production role. I will do considerable production work myself.

PUBLIC? Unlike some of my/​our recent projects, this isn’t open source, and I can’t yet talk about it publicly. For candidates who seem plausible, I will get you to sign an NDA with Google, and then I can tell you the details, and we can talk more!

MONEY. This involves a fixed amount of money, with the hours dependent on your experience/​productivity. Although I am doing the primary screening and will be supervising the work, you will negotiate pay with Google, and be paid by Google (monthly after the end of each month).

COMMENTARY. This is not artistically interesting work, but it is somewhat technically interesting, and you are working with some arguably nice people. Pay is OK, and it may lead directly or indirectly to future work. It will be a high-​profile project, but I am sorry to say it is not yet known if we will be able to talk about our contributions afterward.

DIVERSITY. Diverse applicants are especially welcome. 

Process:

Contact me with the form below. If you seem like a plausible candidate, I will have Google share a non-​disclosure agreement (NDA) with you; you signing the NDA will allow me to explain the job in more detail.

Note that getting the NDA requires your postal address, and company name if any.

Science Gothic—Design/Production Person Needed »

(UPDATE: Applications are closed. I definitely have enough qualified people to consider! Anyone who expressed interest should have heard from me before 5 pm PST, August 6th, 2019.)

Today I got back a signed contract, commissioning Font Detective LLC to do a new version of the classic American Type Founders’ typeface Bank Gothic (Morris Fuller Benton, 1930–34), for Google Fonts.
UPDATE: We are calling it Science Gothic.

This will be a multi-​axis Variable Font. I have done a fair bit of prototyping, but there is lots of work ahead! And, given the timeline, too much work and not enough time for me to do it solo.

Freelance Type Design — Open Source Bank Gothic, FontLab VI

The new Bank Science Gothic will have an extended Latin and Cyrillic character set (about 1200 glyphs). It has weight, width and contrast axes, plus an oblique axis as well. I am looking for at least one more person (maybe two) to help work on it in FontLab VI; currently it is me and one p/​t person. 

The typeface has 3 x 3 masters for weight/​width, and then double that again for contrast (and again for italics, although that will be basically oblique and largely automated). Luckily the square-​geometric design is well-​suited to this treatment and makes for mostly easier editing.

An initial demo-​ready deadline will be the end of August. Full-​time availability preferred, although the first week or so may be a bit slower. Aiming to have the font final in late November. This will be work for hire, and the resulting typeface will be open source, and licensed under the Open Font License.

More Bank Gothic in use—it’s everywhere! (Avengers Endgame movie title in the film, for instance.) But this is our chance to make it massively more versatile and flexible, and available to everyone.

How to apply: email me directly, or just leave a comment here (I won’t publish it) with your email address. I will send a link to a more detailed job description and more info!

Career Change! »

In early June, I will be leaving FontLab! My Font Detective work continues to grow beyond what works with a full-​time day job. I am also looking for other gigs that are compatible with said investigations!

I am pleased with many things FontLab has accomplished for its customers in my time there, and have written about what we have done over on the FontLab blog. It has been a fun ride, and I wish my colleagues nothing but the best! But the time has come to move on and do other things.

What was once just occasional expert witness and related work has kept growing, and become quite frequent since I launched my “Font Detective” expert witness web site, a year ago—and even more so in recent months due to publicity around a particularly high-​profile case in Canada (see the Toronto Star and National Post articles).

But I can’t keep up with this, while also being full-​time CEO of FontLab. Yet the pay relative to time is excellent for the detective gig, it is quite fun, and I can imagine doing it part-​time into retirement 20 years from now… so rather than restricting it to a sideline, I am now doubling down on it.

This is a bit tricky, seeing as the detective work is incompatible with being full-​time CEO, yet also not quite at the volume/​reliability to fully replace that full-​time work. Hence, I am looking for other part-​time or temp gigs that are compatible with my “consulting font detective” work:

Talking about font detective cases at Typo San Francisco, 2012.
© 2012 Amber Gregory, FontShop, CC-​BY.
Contact Ms Gregory.

Reliably Changing Versions of Fonts »

For people who design fonts, swapping versions of your font can be a problem, as your operating system or apps have font caches which may become confused when you replace your fonts on the fly. The app you are using a font in may sometimes still display/​use the old version, even though you replaced it! So for people who need to be absolutely sure they are getting the new version, here are some options. Note that latest versions of Adobe CC apps may recognize fonts swapped on the fly. Office 360 as well, at least on Windows. So if you are not having trouble, and you are swapping fonts some other way, good for you! But if you are having trouble, here are some more options.

Here are some approaches for reliably swapping versions of fonts that have the same internal names, to new versions. This applies to both Mac and Windows, and across all apps as well. When working this way, as best as I recall, in the past 10–15 years, I have only hit font caching problems once! I suspect that was just a failure to apply my method religiously enough. There are two options for fonts with the same internal names on the desktop, plus to avoid the problem entirely, there is an approach to making font names unique, and some links to web-​based test sites.

Option 1: Brute force (cross-​platform)

  1. Close apps that you are using the fonts in, particularly those which cache your fonts, including Adobe CC apps and Microsoft Office.
  2. Then, uninstall the “old” font version from your OS. Don’t just overwrite it in place with the new version! (If you are using a font management app, you can just deactivate, but I usually nuke them anyway, I don’t need 170 versions of the same font kicking around.)
  3. Relaunch those darn font-​caching apps, including Adobe CC apps and Microsoft Office. That’s after you uninstall the font. Even open a doc that uses the now-​missing font! This gives the app and its cache a chance to recognize the font is no longer there and update appropriately.
  4. Quit Office apps (without saving your docs, no need). Note: no need to quit Adobe CC apps, they can recognize newly-​installed fonts on the fly.
  5. Install your new font versions; or activate them in your font manager.
  6. If you are using Office apps with your fonts, you can launch them apps again and work normally.

Option 2: FontNuke (Mac only)

I forgot about this option for a while, but was reminded of it by James Montalbano in a thread on TypeDrawers. FontNuke is a Mac utility that clears font caches, and then reboots your system. It’s available through major utility aggregators like MacUpdate and CNet. I’ve used it occasionally, and it works fabulously. Downside: it requires a system restart. That’s why I ended up tending to go with Option 1. (Also, Mac restarts used to take longer than they do nowadays. Yay for SSDs!) Upside: if your system font caches have gotten messed up, or you don’t want to go through all the steps above, it becomes the simplest solution.

Option 3: Font Naming Tricks (cross-​platform)

Option 1 seem like too much freakin’ work? Or you need something that works on Windows, or reboots suck? I hear you. That’s why as a font designer, I sometimes work with a system where instead of keeping the internal names the same, I actually put the build version number right at the end of the gosh-​darned family name, so it shows in the menu with the version number. I also put it on the end of the file name. I leave it this way as long as possible during development. Sure, this has its limitations, as the new font won’t just automatically substitute for the old one in existing documents. And it has to be changed before releasing the font. But if I am in the midst of frequent font revisions, it also means I can swap out font versions constantly, as often as I like, and not worry in the least about my apps or OS getting confused. That is pretty sweet.

  1. Before generating the actual TTF or OTF font, increment a build number at the end of the font family name
  2. Remember that your existing docs won’t recognize this as being the same font family.  🙁  But you don’t have to worry about caching and conflicts! 🙂

Option 4: Test in the browser instead

If you don’t have to test in a desktop app, you can avoid a lot of grief! There are sites for testing fonts in a web browser. You can drag the font into a browser window and test it there. Impallari’s is great

If you are doing browser-​based font testing—or font testing anywhere, really—with an incomplete character set, consider Miguel Sousa’s Adhesion Text to get useful words for test purposes. (Don’t miss the options for other languages, and more!) 

LA IDUG: Variable Fonts, Color Fonts & FontLab »

I will be presenting to the Los Angeles InDesign User Group (IDUG) on September 20, 2018 in Van Nuys, CA, for their 13th anniversary meeting! Come see the cool and even sometimes amazing things being done with variable fonts, as well as a bit on color fonts and how fonts are made.

Register free on EventBrite!

Be entertained and enlightened with the joys of variable fonts and color fonts in InDesign and friends. This demo night unlocks the secrets of OpenType variations, aka variable fonts and color fonts. Learn how they work, how you use them, and why they work the way they do. Bonus: some pointers on font creation and font editing.

You will learn:

Font Creation and Editing:

Color Fonts:

Variable Fonts:

Font Detective Site Launch »

It’s still a sideline from my day job running FontLab, but I have been doing enough font detective work (identifying fonts in backdated documents, analyzing point size, and other font consulting) that I realized I really ought to formalize this whole line of work a bit more. So: a dedicated web site! Plus, I am attending my first conference of forensic document examiners in a week and a half. I did my first case way back in 1999, but this work has been ramping up a lot in recent years and months

Regarding the new site, the formatting and graphics of the secondary pages is still a work in progress, it is in pretty good shape now. I did much of it myself, and hired a talented web designer to get it over the finish line. My initial logo was a bit off for the colors, and my web designer Josh Korwin cleverly suggested simplifying it to be just black-​and-​white, and now it pops! So I am happy with it.

Font Detective logo

Why Variable Fonts Will Succeed »

Third time’s the charm? Why OpenType Font Variations (variable fonts) will likely succeed where predecessors failed.

OK, this is kind of funny: a post I wrote in November 2016 that languished in my “drafts” afterwards when I was busy with work, waiting on illustrations/​graphics that I never did add. Just for fun, I’m going ahead and publishing it exactly as is, showing what I was thinking at the time, just after Variable Fonts were announced. The only other note I want to add is that if you want to play with variable fonts, check out Axis-​Praxis.

OpenType 1.8 was announced in September, featuring variable fonts. In short, variable fonts allow for packaging an entire family of fonts in a single font file, using master designs and interpolating between them, on what are called “design axes.” The type designer who makes the font can use this for whatever they like, but varying weight or width are among the more common standard uses.

What makes this exciting is that in a savvy environment, someone using the fonts can specify any in-​between variation they like, within the “design space” (dynamic range) covered by the font. So for example, in a font with weight and width axes, a user could dial in the precise degree of boldness and level of condensing or expansion they desire.

Font families built as variable fonts are vastly more flexible than before, yet can use less file storage than traditional font families—vastly less if you have large, complex families with a ton of styles.

More details:

Which is all very well, but this kind of tech has been tried twice before: GX Variations (the basis of the new tech) from Apple, and Multiple Master from Adobe. Neither ever got very far. Why should this time be different?

First, I will note that when it comes to traditional design, it is only when there is support for the designer/​user picking their own arbitrary instances from the design space of the font, rather than just relying on pre-​specified instances, is there a benefit to designers. This means that traditional desktop design/​authoring apps need to implement sliders or some user interface to reap the benefits of the technology (although this is not so much of an issue for the web).

Second, the other benefit of variable fonts, more compact representation of large families, was barely noticed the first time out. But with web fonts being a big deal and file size a huge concern, this is a newly important benefit.

So, right off the bat, it is clear that it is more work to make this work with desktop apps, and that the circumstances make the web benefit more and get easier adoption.

Speaking of adoption, it is worth noting that neither all existing nor all future font families need to be delivered as variable fonts for the format to be useful and successful. It may always be a minority of fonts available, yet still be a success with strong niche use in some areas (such as web design).

Why GX Variations Failed

Apple introduced what is essentially the same tech back in 1991, as GX Variations, part of TrueType GX. While many other aspects of TrueType GX survived in varying degrees, I can’t even find a good list of GX Variations fonts. I know only three offhand: the OS-​supplied Skia GX (by Matthew Carter), the Monotype demo masterpiece Buffalo Gals (by Tom Rickner), and Adobe’s Tekton GX (by David Siegel).

GX Variations, in its original instantiation, would have required apps to give up control of their line layout to Apple’s line layout engine. Of course, this would also mean that any such app would have been Mac-​only. Although there are certainly some Mac-​only design apps, the Mac-​only aspect meant that the relevant heavyweights of the era, Quark and Adobe, never supported it.

Apple supported GX with font dev tools, but they were largely command-​line based and hardly designer-​friendly. None of the font editing tools of the era supported GX Variations, either.

With only a tiny handful of demo fonts, no major app support, and no major font tool support, GX Variations has never seen much pickup.

Why Multiple Master Failed

Adobe developed their multiple master (MM) tech at the same time as Apple did GX Variations, but completely independently. MM is a slightly less sophisticated/​complicated version of the same concept as GX variations, handled as an extension to Adobe’s PostScript Type 1 format. The MM technology was even briefly (1996–98) incorporated in the original OpenType spec, although only for OpenType fonts with PostScript outlines.

MM did a tad better than GX Variations in terms of real-​world use. There were 27 families offered by Adobe in the MM format, one by Monotype, and about eight free families from four different independent designers. Adobe also used MM internally in Acrobat’s font-​substitution technology. Illustrator added “sliders” for MM fonts, but only just before Adobe pulled the plug.

And pull the plug, Adobe did, back in late 1998. Adobe was already moving away from Type 1 fonts, and they withdrew the MM functionality from OpenType. The then-​manager of the Adobe type group, Dan Mills, believed that OpenType adoption might be significantly hampered if we were telling people they had to support this major added complication in order to properly support OpenType. Plus, OpenType ally Microsoft had never been very enamored of MM and had no interest in the tech at the time. So, Adobe pulled the plug.

Why didn’t MM get better traction before that? Well, it was an Adobe invention competing with a similar Apple technology. The folks on the Adobe font team failed to realize early enough how important it would be to actively evangelize this technology to Adobe’s own apps as well as outside apps, and devote real resources to that effort. Because Adobe apps competed with third party apps, this hindered Adobe outreach to third party app developers. And few others were involved and supporting MM, outside the Adobe type team: it was an Adobe thing.

Axis-​based Fonts Behind the Scenes

Although development of new MM fonts ceased around 1998, many type designers saw that axis-​based font technologies were very helpful in developing large families. Crude support in Fontographer followed by more sophisticated support in FontLab allowed type designers to use MM capabilities to design fonts. It is simply easier to design two weights and interpolate the rest, than to design three, six or ten weights separately. If one adds in width variations or other axes as well, that can further multiply the savings in design work. One doubts that Robert Slimbach would have designed 156 styles of Kepler individually!

Even more sophisticated tools emerged in later years, such as Erik van Blokland’s Superpolator.

As a result, even while MM and GX Variations died off, and only about three dozen families used those technologies, scores more families have since been developed using the exact same concepts—just upstream in the design process.

Other Lessons

Two other font technologies have launched later, and were informative in their own ways.

The Microsoft/​Adobe collaboration on OpenType, which later widened further into an open standard, has done well and become the primary font standard for the future. Many choices made in that process reflected learning from the MM and GX history, and it shows.

More recently, the addition of color font support to OpenType has been more disjointed; I blogged about that at some length, explaining how this served as a bit of a wake-​up call to the big players as far as the need to cooperate and collaborate on variable fonts.

What’s Different with Variable Fonts

Variable fonts are being backed from Day One by a much broader coalition than ever got behind MM or GX. The same four players who came up with four different solutions for color fonts are backing a unified approach to variable fonts. Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and Google made the initial announcement jointly (at ATypI 2016 in Warsaw), with representatives of all four companies on stage and presenting. Every one of the major players in type design tools and related utilities (including my company, FontLab) have already started implementing support, many of us having started that work before the announcement.

Assuming Mozilla joins in, this stuff is just going to work in all the latest web browser versions in pretty short order.

Because of the ongoing behind-​the-​scenes role of axis-​based fonts in development of regular fonts over the past 15-​20 years, many type designers already know how to design type families in this way, understand the flexibility and power inherent in variable fonts, and even already have existing type families that could be “relatively easily” re-​issued as variable fonts (with varying degrees of added work).

There are no guarantees. The variable fonts story still has some weaknesses, notably around formatted text interchange, and of course with desktop app support for an interface to interact with the variability. But the odds are good of at least moderate success. The alliance supporting it is strong. There are significant benefits, albeit not as compelling as OpenType as a whole.

Some Predictions

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