is this for someone that doesn't have access to proper typesetting software? i guess that could be cool if along side the font size you have a radius entry for programs that do not have a type-on-path tool. i'm just spoiled and have the proper tools so this causes me to tilt my head and ask why
It's not just about curving the baseline, the glyphs themselves curve according to the user-specified curve radius. Check out the second image/gif with curve optimizations on/off.
This is about how each character adapts to the radius, not the path itself. Each character is tweaked so the design holds up as it’s curved. I don’t think you have tools to do that.
FWIW, people have glyph warping text (both on and off paths) using tools like Adobe Illustrator for as long as I can remember. I also don't quite get why one might want a capability that supports one type of glyph warping in the typeface itself.
A font is designed to have certain attributes (e.g. harmony between the letters). It is not clear that this harmony is preserved if you distort the font algorithmically. For this font the designer ensured that it is preserved.
I get that part (I've designed commercial typefaces), but as I understand it, (1) this only works for type on circles or circular arcs, and (2) the typeface has no awareness of the circle/segment it's on, so the designer still has to manually match the Curve property to the radius.
I think this is really cool and interesting work by Nick Sherman. I just wonder if I'm correct about the limited applications, and what could be done to enable the kind of "contextual intelligence" that would enable fonts to better optimize themselves for a broader set of types of envelope deformations.
Ah, I see what you mean. At first it seemed to me (from the top-right sample, “EQUAL AND OPPOSITE”) that the curve parameter did in fact affect all glyphs in proportion to their local curvature, even when the path’s curve varied.
But as I look more closely, you’re right, looks like that effect is achieved with two (maybe three, counting the “O”?) separate text ranges around the two different perfectly-circular arcs.
I still think this is instantly useful to someone like me, whose idea of polish is a little light kerning. I’ll happily twiddle the curvature slider if it’s there, but I’m crude enough that I’ll rarely fiddle with glyph paths by hand.
For that matter, even if I have to do a little sub-selection to adapt different ranges to different curves, that’s still hella easier with the parameter than without.
Do the variable font technologies he’s using here incorporate signals like orientation or baseline geometry? Without that, it seems like the path-conformance stuff might have to be the responsibility of the layout software rather than the font itself, right? A task made awfully easier-to-implement if the layout software can interrogate the font for a specific curvature’s variation per glyph like this…
Because it allows the effect of the curvature to be customized by hand for each letter shape by a skilled designer. Fonts like italics, bold or condensed can also be approximated with simple geometric operations, but I think you would agree that that looks terrible.
Hug of death, it seems. https://hex.xyz/news/2/ has some info about the font.
I'm out of the loop on pricing models for fonts, but is it normal to base it on number of visitors to your site?
Yes, and this pricing is quite reasonable too.
This is consistent with photo licensing, which is often scaled based on the potential number of viewers for both print and digital.
Yes
Depends on the vendor… some also prevent things like subsetting or rely on methods for counting usage that slow down pages (Typekit)
is this for someone that doesn't have access to proper typesetting software? i guess that could be cool if along side the font size you have a radius entry for programs that do not have a type-on-path tool. i'm just spoiled and have the proper tools so this causes me to tilt my head and ask why
It's not just about curving the baseline, the glyphs themselves curve according to the user-specified curve radius. Check out the second image/gif with curve optimizations on/off.
This is about how each character adapts to the radius, not the path itself. Each character is tweaked so the design holds up as it’s curved. I don’t think you have tools to do that.
FWIW, people have glyph warping text (both on and off paths) using tools like Adobe Illustrator for as long as I can remember. I also don't quite get why one might want a capability that supports one type of glyph warping in the typeface itself.
A font is designed to have certain attributes (e.g. harmony between the letters). It is not clear that this harmony is preserved if you distort the font algorithmically. For this font the designer ensured that it is preserved.
I get that part (I've designed commercial typefaces), but as I understand it, (1) this only works for type on circles or circular arcs, and (2) the typeface has no awareness of the circle/segment it's on, so the designer still has to manually match the Curve property to the radius.
I think this is really cool and interesting work by Nick Sherman. I just wonder if I'm correct about the limited applications, and what could be done to enable the kind of "contextual intelligence" that would enable fonts to better optimize themselves for a broader set of types of envelope deformations.
Ah, I see what you mean. At first it seemed to me (from the top-right sample, “EQUAL AND OPPOSITE”) that the curve parameter did in fact affect all glyphs in proportion to their local curvature, even when the path’s curve varied.
But as I look more closely, you’re right, looks like that effect is achieved with two (maybe three, counting the “O”?) separate text ranges around the two different perfectly-circular arcs.
I still think this is instantly useful to someone like me, whose idea of polish is a little light kerning. I’ll happily twiddle the curvature slider if it’s there, but I’m crude enough that I’ll rarely fiddle with glyph paths by hand.
For that matter, even if I have to do a little sub-selection to adapt different ranges to different curves, that’s still hella easier with the parameter than without.
Do the variable font technologies he’s using here incorporate signals like orientation or baseline geometry? Without that, it seems like the path-conformance stuff might have to be the responsibility of the layout software rather than the font itself, right? A task made awfully easier-to-implement if the layout software can interrogate the font for a specific curvature’s variation per glyph like this…
Because it allows the effect of the curvature to be customized by hand for each letter shape by a skilled designer. Fonts like italics, bold or condensed can also be approximated with simple geometric operations, but I think you would agree that that looks terrible.