[CREATE] Font Select Dreams

[Braydon Fuller]

I don't think font selection is that big of a deal, it's usually a 
pretty detailed process to choose typeface for a project anyways, and 
once you know what you want to use, you just need to know the name of it 
to quickly access them via typing, as it's the fastest way to access 
them, like Enso/Ubiquity.

What I see as one of the biggest issues is that many of the digital 
fonts for a lot of the contemporary and historically significant fonts 
in the last 100 years are not open-licensed or public domain, and look 
to be on a copyright renew track to never enter public domain (???).

Some of my old favorites for example:
1. Akzidenz Grotesk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akzidenz_Grotesk)
2. Helvetica Neue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica_Neue)
3. Univers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers)
4. Frutiger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger)
5. DIN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451)
6. Meta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FF_Meta)

The unique characteristics of them carry cultural weight, that can't be 
thrown off ship just because of their not being open-licensed, however 
at some point they need to be public domain in their digital form. 
However one of the things about these typefaces is their expression of 
the printing press, and metal type, and therefore are representative of 
a period and the printing machine. Like many serif typefaces are 
representative of when type was chiseled by hand, and feels more humanistic.

What I am curious about searching for now is typefaces that are an 
expression of software freedom. But not necessarily the licensing of 
free software. A tight integration between software and typefaces, where 
the letter forms have source code like a program rather than just paths, 
etc. So when doing typeface explorations, you may not pull out the 
digital draw of typefaces, but may do some hacking on a typeface source 
code to come up with something new.

Do you know of any projects like that?

Braydon

Dave Anderson wrote:
> An idea struck me and I'd like to get some feedback on it.
>
> There 2 main concepts in the idea
> 1. Make font selection easier by allowing a way to filter font-families.
> 2. Enable an easy way to query, preview, and install open fonts.
>
> Here is a possible extrapolation of these concepts -- my dream of how 
> cool font selection could be:
>
> 1.a. Font Select adds a Tag drop-down box.
> Selecting a tag filters which font-families are chosen for preview and 
> selection.
> An "All" tag shows all installed fonts, as they are now.
> There is also special tag, "Currently Used", for which the app provides 
> a list of all the fonts currently used in its working document.
> An app may set the default working tag.  So, an app can remember the 
> last selected tag associated with a document and set as the working tag 
> next time the document is open.
>
> 1.b. Font Select adds a Manage Fonts button.
> Selecting the Manage Fonts button brings up a user-preferred 
> font-manager.  The font-manager provides tag management.
>
> 2. Font Manager acts as interface with open-font libraries
> The Font Manager allows for querying available fonts from an open-font 
> repository. Available fonts can be displayed intermixed with installed 
> fonts or separately.  There is an install font button when an available 
> font is selected.  (Installing would automatically populate the open 
> Font Select dialog.)
> The open-font repository offers an api to support queries and gather 
> information such as common tags, ratings, reviews, similarities to other 
> fonts, and other properties.  I imagine the popularity, ratings, tags, 
> similarity information are especially useful when exploring available fonts.
>
> Summary
> The grand vision from an end-user's point of view is that font selection 
> is a pleasure and a joy.  Looking for an appropriate font in the Font 
> Select dialog is enhanced by a filter: rather than being overwhelmed by 
> a list of all my fonts, I quickly skip through a small candidate list. 
> When I need more powerful tool, asking for help is just a Font Manager 
> button away; there, I have the entire world of open-licensed fonts for 
> my convenient perusal and font augmentation.
>
> How do these thoughts strike you?
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