Tag Archives: font

Boxy FontSpring introductory offer is really cheap

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The Boxy FontSpring introductory offer is really cheap. As my new font family, Boxy, rolls out there is a wonderful intro offer on Fontspring. It currently available at MyFonts, FontSpring, Creative market, and here on this site. As many of you know, normal professional pricing on MyFonts, fonts.com, or YouWorkforThem is $24.95 per font and $74.95 for the four-font family. The FontSpring price is exceptional. Boxy FontSpring introductory offer is really cheap Until mid-February, their price is … Continue reading →

Book design needs titling fonts

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Creative Pro has a good article today about titling fonts. Book design needs titling fonts to make your chapter heads, section titles, and such much better looking, easier to read, and provide a more comfortable reading experience. In general, titling fonts use letterspacing which is too tight to be used at body copy sizes. They are carefully crafted to be more elegant. And often they are condensed—though I usually don’t do that. Book design needs titling fonts & … Continue reading →

Briskly: new font release for Fall 2016

Skilled Workman Posted on by

I’ve put this off for years, but it just seemed time. Briskly: new font release is a font made from one sample of my handwriting. An ASCII font (256-character), it will work well for desktop, Web, and ePUB. The only place you will be able to buy it with included ebook licenses is here on this Website. Briskly: new font release is here! There are some interesting aspects to this font. First, some of the characters have a unique slant … Continue reading →

Book typography: The reality of picking fonts

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The basic parts of type Again, we need some more basic language definitions. You can see above how the point size of the type relates to the ascender, cap height, x-height, baseline, and descender. More importantly, you get a glimpse of things that are important in the world of typography. This illustration is from my font design book, Practical Font Design With FontLab 5, which is available in print as well as ebooks at iBookstore, NookBooks, Kobo, Scribd, and … Continue reading →

On a lighter note: we have a legal replacement for Comic Sans…Comic Neue

Skilled Workman Posted on by

One of the most maligned fonts in recent years is Comic Sans. I’ve never really understood why people (especially type pros) hate Comic Sans so bad. But then, it’s really not a part of my life. This is the new solution: Comic Neue! If you click on the image above it will take you to the page where you can download this for free. The change is fairly radical, but it does have a similar feel to … Continue reading →

Newly digitized Doves Type font designer finds old lead type in the Thames

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Here’s a fun article from CreativePro about the process. Many people do not realize that a lot of the “free type” and a good deal of the professionally designed type is made from or started with digitized characters from printed works using old letterpress fonts outside of the copyright period (normally pre-1940, at this point, in most cases). Doves Press type is one of those   The link to the typespec.co.uk site gives more info on the  discovery. … Continue reading →

Another font for book cover design: Astaire

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Until just after the Fourth, this outstanding font family is on sale for on $9 a font. Astaire has the elegance you need At 64% off, through Myfonts, this is an excellent deal to start your summer by building your font library. This is the annual sale of one of my favorite font families. It is a beautifully stylized set of fonts which are remarkably readable. They work really well for large copy in cover design. Each … Continue reading →

Reminder: PostScript fonts do not work in ePUBs

Skilled Workman Posted on by

 Click to enlarge This capture shows you some of the different characters available in an OpenType font. This font, Contenu Book, has oldstyle figures [lowercase], lining figures [caps], & small cap figures. It also has true small caps, discretionary ligatures, ornaments, ordinals, and more. These things are always supposed to be used in print, even though only InDesign and Quark support such a thing for page layout AFAIK. I assume most of you know this, but I … Continue reading →

I’m teaching a Webinar on troubleshooting the font design process

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Please click here to contact us with any questions Troubleshooting Your Fonts Webinar   Dear David,      Happy New Year and welcome back to the Fontlab webinar series! To start off the new year  (Tuesday, 21 January at 11:00CST) David Bergsland will talk to us about troubleshooting the font design process. For many, if not most, new font designers dealing with the sheer quantity of characters and glyphs is daunting. What is needed is a procedure to get your … Continue reading →

Choosing a companion sans for your body copy

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Use a companion font for the heads & subheads This font family needs to be carefully chosen. It needs to have enough contrast to the body copy font to make the heads stand out. But it must have the same, or a very similar, x-height. This way you can use it comfortably for things like run-in heads, where the first few words in a paragraph are used as a contrasting low-level subhead. Your family choice should probably … Continue reading →