Posts Tagged ‘create your own font’

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Font Management Apps: Suitcase Fusion 4

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

We know designers who preoccupy about fonts the same way others consume over old vinyl records. Frequently reorganizing their collections, searching through their back catalogue and adding new acquisitions. OS X’s font management tools are simply insufficient for the task.

Suitcase Fusion is the implement of option. In version 4 there’s a new UI designed to shorten the round-trip between font manager and the countless applications designers’ use, so it’s an important upgrade.

Category                    : Utilities
Developer                  : Extensis
Compatibility             : Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later
Age Rating                 : 4+
Price                          : US$131 (Full); US$65.50 (Upgrade)

Top of the new element list is combination with Adobe Creative Suite. Designers can preview organize and activate fonts straight within Photoshop, Illustrator and In Design. Working on a design project in CS? Download the new font, see how it looks and install it lacking leaving the document window.

The feature supports CS tools from version 3 through to 5.5 – with support for CS6 set to come as a free improve just as soon as Extensis have bashed away the bugs. Quark users aren’t left in the cold also, with plug-in sustain for Quark Xpress 7, 8 and 9.

Adobe’s print workflow tool In Copy is catered for too, with the built in creation plug-in updated to make new fonts instantly accessible.

Suitcase Fusion’s best known for its association tools and these have had a muscular boost. Font favorites let you pick star fonts from your collection, so your fallback faces are always easily available. You can also generate and curate your own custom font lists, for collections of typefaces that fit a job or thesis.

And talking about picking fonts for the job, the preview window enables you to see fonts with your choice of text – headline, logo, and strap – anything you need. Take it a step added and you can even try fonts out with the built in colour picker, with a bespoke background.

One of our own favorite features is Google web Font combination. This online collection of free faces is designed for use in web pages, but includes many fonts that are just as suitable to print and digital publishing projects; there are hundreds to choose from. This element increases web font support introduced formerly through webink.

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National Geographic Gets New System to Direct Its 10,000 Fonts

Friday, April 20th, 2012

National Geographic Society has called on Extensis’ Universal Type Server to manage its records of over 10,000 fonts. Distributing fonts and maintaining licensing control is an essential effort when considering the size of National Geographic’s library and the number of its publications.

Extensis, a provider of font management and digital asset managing software, has already collaborated with many other major publishers as well as Conde Nast and Future Publishing. Vice president of publishing scheme for National Geographic Dave E. Smith describes Extensis’ system as more robust than the before system.

To elaborate, the Universal Type Server will now allow National Geographic to classify, package and distribute the appropriate fonts to the creative directors who need them. Additionally, the system will allow easier right to use to control, track or relocate fonts as necessary. Smith stresses, it’s crucial that we fulfill with font license terms without hindering manufacture work. Universal Type Server allows us to manage font allocation and use across our organization while delegating some control and freedom to our publishing groups.

Smith also suggests that the company’s new system will be most useful for the book-publishing group, because they typically rely on a large number of fonts to produce a variety of book titles. However, the system is a welcome addition across all groups for the reason that Smith says that the fonts are part of our brand, they are tied together.

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Instructions for Multilingual Desktop Publishing

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Publishing in some different languages is always challenging. Luckily, there are a range of translation service providers with Desktop Publishing (DTP) on offer to ensure the entire process goes slickly.

The language translation itself to feel about, but also the desktop publishing issues that come with an international project, such as cultural concerns, formatting, and budgeting and project management. To help content owners and publishers start on the right path, there are numerous guidelines they should take into account when embarking upon a multilingual project – with particular emphasis on desktop publishing issues.

Images:

must be kept to a minimum when publishing material that is to be translated into several languages. Best practice in this situation is to keep the design simple, as too many complicated design features may slow the process down and take up valuable storage or memory space. Images can be exceptionally large files, which can take a long time to electronically transfer during the DTP process.

Design:

When designing a project that is intended for multilingual DTP translation, it’s worth bearing in mind that some foreign languages can take up as much as 30 percent more space than English. Therefore, it’s wise to leave a fair amount of white space to evade forcing the DTP professionals to shrink the font size or rearrange the design too heavily. If images, large sections of text and other content need to be entirely repositioned the project may take longer and cost more.

Fonts:

when selecting fonts, try to find ones that can be used for all the different languages the document will be translated to. Open Type fonts are useful because they can be used on a Mac or a PC – whereas, some PC fonts will not be like-minded with Macs or vice versa.

Cultural Issues:

It is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of translation. It is as well one that publishers may not automatically consider as being important. However, it’s vital that you think about images, symbols, gestures and even the colors you use to make sure they will not be deemed wrong or offensive to any of your global readers.

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The Gentleman behind Your Phone’s Fonts

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

In the first part of our two-part series on mobile phone fonts, we sit down with Steve Matteson, the typography designer for Droid, Windows Phone, and myriad other UIs. No one outside the font world will make out Steve Matteson. No one on the street will forever stop him and ask for an autograph, despite the fact that his designs are seen by millions of people around the world.

If you still used Windows Vista, read off a Barnes & Noble Nook, or played a game on an Xbox, Matteson’s work has already reached your eyes. Open a Word document in your PC and pull down the font menu. He is there — be located in Andale Mono, Cambria, and Curlz.

But it is his charity to two mobile phone platforms that are maybe most well-known. Matteson designed the Droid font, featured in each Android phone before Ice Cream Sandwich. He as well designed Segoe, the typeface seen in Windows 7 and on Windows Phone devices.

Matteson, 46, lives with his wife with two daughters in Louisville, Colo., where he goes mountain biking and walks his two Labrador retrievers. His stop, athletic build matches his crew-cut hair, but he’s soft-spoken. He says he’s a historian at sympathy, and his long, factually dense phrases attest to that. Matteson simply spills out significant years in typeface history, font names and the names of their creators, his colleagues and what they’ve designed, and even the names of his colleagues’ mentors.

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