While we're talking personality and smarts, I include Emigré on my list of type mavens who consistently astound. When I described Mr Eaves to you the other night, you asked if Zuzana Licko designed it. Yes! Yes! Yes! Mr Eaves Sans and Modern are the companion to Mrs Eaves. Mr Eaves had me at the cap "R," but when I saw the cap "Q," I was totally smitten. So far, the client and editor agree with me; they love the look of Mr Eaves Sans, which works as display and as hardworking info. (He's a dandy and a working man!) Note Emigré's witty copy listing pairs.
Type designers are true Renaissance misters and missuses. In real life, Mrs Eaves was Baskerville's companion. In type life, is Mr Eaves Mrs Eaves's masculine self?
Speaking of Renaissance men, Paul Shaw knows every flare and curve of pretty much every typeset and calligraphed face. For a strong sense of Mrs Eaves and other digital type designs, read his history compiled as a look back as prequel to a look ahead, written for AIGA's Voice.
2 comments:
That is some hardcore academia about those typefaces...and such useful information. I often find myself searching and searching to find definitive info about typefaces for my Typography class. That helps mucho!
And yay, Zuzana Licko! I was wondering if there really was a Mr. Eaves, or if he's just a Mister-y!
Paul Shaw is the real deal and is, I find, always enlightening. I'm not surprised that he said that researching the article was more difficult than he'd imagined it would be. Nor am I surprised that he found incorrect info online.
What's striking is that various faces that seem to have been around forever, even to me, are relative newcomers (Georgia, Verdana etc.).
Also striking is that Open Type fonts are becoming the norm. Clients prefer them. Because the Open Type versions are pricier, so lately in a few cases, work coming out of BTD is designed with the PostScript fonts the office purchased aeons ago and then the client, who owns Open Type fonts, is swapping out PostScript for Open Type.
This extract from Paul Shaw's article is pretty accurate (the article was written in 2005. Over the past 6 years, Open Type has gained ground.
"The more software programs that Adobe controls, the more it controls the venues in which type appears. And that will make it likelier that PostScript 1 fonts will soon disappear. Adobe has already embarked on a program to convert all of its PostScript 1 fonts to the OpenType format. The major old-line type companies like Linotype Library and Monotype are following suit as are leading independent type foundries such as the Dutch Type Library and The Foundry. But will individual type designers—especially those just dabbling—be motivated to do the same to their PostScript Type 1 fonts? If not, does that mean we are entering a new age of consolidation in which only profess"ional type designers design type?
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