[OpenFontLibrary] [GFD] Tom Phinney on Libre Fonts

[vernon adams]

I've sat on this a few days, just to clarify my thoughts a little.

Browsing the WebInk catalogue, i don't see any evidence of what Thomas's great alternative for web fonts could be, and i'm still not sure what he is effectively saying, beyond simply penning a biased criticism of a particular webfont project. I don't doubt that the products served from WebINk are 'point perfect' (hmm i wonder), but apart from that, many of the products seem to exist in a vacuum. The standard faces can mostly be also accessed from other providers (and i bet that's where users do go! e.g Typekit is waaaay better), and much of what is 'original' or exclusive to WebINk seem to be in a stye no-mans land.  I just don't see any outstanding quality there overall, and i dont see much there that i imagine designers get excited about. To me it looks like a product that desperately needs a shot of fresh blood, or indeed something even stronger, to bring something energising and want-able to the brand. Basic better direction would be a good start. Assuming that the 'technical quality' is a given with WebInk, then Extensis do have at least one good quality to build on. What they need to snap into that regime of technical quality is at the very least some desireable, infectious font faces. That's where the hard work starts though; creative output can allways be refined and improved technically (engineers can do clean up work), but it's wrong-way-round to create the other way. Doing it the other way round is less efficient - the end result is likely well crafted fonts, but nowhere near enough fonts, and maybe no killer fonts.

In many ways the Google font project was an audacious one; rule breaking, taking chances, and a lot of doing things that 'experts' said you should not, or, could not do. That adds up to strategy where 'room for improvement' is built in, it's a system of rolling enhancement, improvement, further innovation, in which the user is an integral part. Playing a bit of 'what if…?' though, i wonder how a project with the same aims and scope would have faired under the management of say WebInk.  I just dont think it would have happened, or, we would still be waiting for it to happen. My hunch is that it would not have had the same wide variety of designers involved, nor aimed at the same wide stylistic and user coverage. It would probably not have focussed on usage stats, adoption waves, and plugging directly into the hub of the other nascent free software communities and products, but instead relied upon the 'expertise' of a few the same old selected individuals. It would have also been slower, or resistant, to try non-expert approaches. I dont think it would have been much of a model.

One thing i can agree on; i would also love to see more creative people making 'better quality' fonts, me included :). My argument with Thomas on this subject is that biasing too much toward 'point perfection' and near disregarding the actual creative input, is a bad approach; it creates a lesser education, and ultimately creates lesser designers. But then i was indoctrinated by the totally awesome British Art School sytem of the 70s & 80s :) I think it's better to start with the creative impulse, get looking, get making and making, filter out, and then head towards refinement and improvement. 

-vernon


On 14 Oct 2013, at 16:20, Thomas Phinney <tphinney at cal.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> I do criticize Google web fonts, but only saying the exact same things I have been saying directly to the two Daves for several years now, in the spirit of constructive criticism, because I care about quality. If I was just out to make a buck I would not have given that feedback privately and passionately long before criticizing publicly.
> 
> BTW, quality is not about elites vs the masses. Everybody benefits from well-crafted fonts, including casual users.
> 
> I happen to agree with you that there are a lot of well-crafted fonts that are stultifyingly boring. But unlike technical quality, aesthetics are a matter of opinion, and I wasn't trying to go there.
> 
> I also happen to think that a lot of creative and aesthetically interesting are done by people who don't know how to make decent quality fonts (or perhaps know but don't care, in some cases). I would love to see those people learn how to make better quality fonts.
> 
> That's why I joined Crafting Type: I am eager to help teach the basics of type design to more people, and to make sure that spacing, point placement and various optical compensations are well covered in that discussion.
> 
> One thing I could have said more clearly in my blog post is that one can get passable but not fabulous quality without a lot more work than the amount required to make crap. Proper point placement and half-decent spacing and so forth are not *that* hard, nor horribly slow once one has the right work habits.