Based on some great feedback on Reddit regarding my revisions to Apple’s San Francisco font, I’ve revised my revised double-decker g:
As before, the original:
With a humanist a:
And with the new double-decker g:
And SVG versions: alternate a, alternate g, and an animated version over on tumblr.
Apple’s new San Francisco font is going to be a vast improvement on Helvetica as a system font in iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. But it features a double-story a without a double-decker, looptail, or eyeglass g. It’s always seemed right to me for a font to have either both, or neither, of these special letters.
Turns out the font world disagrees with my intuition. Futura is the only one of my favorite fonts with a single-story a, and while Gill Sans, Trebuchet, Times, Palatino, Optima and American Typewriter all have both double-story as and double-decker gs (left side), Helvetica, Arial, Courier, Verdana, and Lucida Grande (right side) all have mixed double-story as with simple humanist gs.
However, I still wanted to see a more Futura-like and a more Gill-Sans-like San Francisco, and although the font is only available at the moment to Apple developers, I was able to get a copy, and I’ve made alternate glyphs.
Here’s the original:
And here it is with a simple humanist a:
And here it is again with a double-decker g:
And just for fun, here are SVG versions of my alternate a and alternate g, and an animated version over on tumblr.
Update: I hereby release it all into the public domain. Apple, if you’re listening, feel free to incorporate one or the other of these into San Francisco.
Years ago, when I was feeling particularly tormented by Ubuntu bugs, I “fixed” their logo:
It turned out pretty well, so it’s now available as a sticker or a t-shirt.
The Mathematician’s Dice are now for sale to the general public!
The Kickstarter project to get these dice to market was an amazing experience. I plan to write the whole thing up and post it here soon.
A while ago I designed the Mathematician’s Dice (on Shapeways), dice with i, 0, 1, φ, e and π on them. Now I’ve launched a Kickstarter project to get a run mass produced! Check it out, and donate or pass it on to friends:
Hermann Zapf, circa 1967:
Autocomposition, and computerized composition are already with us. Designing types and letters for the new technology will increasingly involve mathematics and the laws of electronics…. Tradition and progress must be logically united. Does the new technology mean the serious lettering artist will be dispensable? No. The alphabet remains. But we will have new tasks to learn. But in learning them, we must take time to observe the world around us, and remember above all the artist’s challenge: to ensure, despite technology and mass production, that beauty is never lost.
The Art of Hermann Zapf from Johnny Dib on Vimeo.
India unveils a new symbol for the Rupee.
Bruno Maag doesn’t pull his punches in this interview about Aktiv, his Helvetica-killer:
…Max Miedinger [Helvetica’s designer] didn’t have a clue about type design. He was the salesman at [foundry] Haas’sche Schriftgießerei for Christ’s sake.
Ouch.
After years of work and months of polishing, I’m happy to announce that five of my fonts are now available for purchase at MyFonts.com! Between now and March 10th, you can get any of these fonts for 30% by entering the promotion / gift certificate code BLOGMAR10 at checkout.
If anyone has any problems whatsoever ordering these fonts or getting the promotional discount, email me.