Daxline or Karbon?

[Member Ste…]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Hi everyone,

I'm new here. I'm redesigning the 7th edition of my book How to Cheat in Photoshop, which is set in Rotis (yes, yes, yes, I know, but the first edition came out in 2001 and I haven't got around to changing it since).

So I looked around for a suitable caption/headline font - the captions are all sans - and wanted a spurless sans because it appeals to me. I'd just about settled on Daxline, which has the look I'm after, when I came across a discussion of it here (from 5 years ago) which mentioned Karbon.

I've checked out Karbon, and I really like it. But I also like Daxline.

I've made a mistake buying fonts before, ending up with poor letter and word spacing and no decent kerning pairs. Does anyone have hands-on experience of these two? Can you vouch for them? And, the tricky question: which should I choose?

Also - as a secondary matter - can anyone recommend a good serif font to go with them, for the longer pieces in the book?

Thanks

Steve

[Member hra…]

I'd be quite surprised to hear that either Daxline or Karbon
set poorly - they're both from highly reputable font houses.

One advantage with Karbon is that its designer is alive (in
fact he's impressively young :-) while Hans Reichel sadly
passed away recently - the reasoning there is that if you
ever need any modifications/extensions to the fonts you
could get them done by the original designer.

hhp

[Member hra…]

BTW: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/29343-forwarding
Although nothing is viewable any more...
In fact Karbon (sans) was first aired
during its development on Typophile.
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/12388-forwarding

Also read: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/46138-forwarding
Especially: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/46138-forwarding#comment-347210

hhp

[Member Wil…]

Kris Sowersby is one of the best designers working now, and you can have confidence in his craftsmanship. So I think it's just a question of which font you think will most suit the project and the look you want.

[Member Ste…]

Good points, and thanks for your help.

Yes, I know Karbon was first aired here, and that's one reason why I posed the question here.

The trouble with fonts is that you can't try them out before you buy them, and I really need to see usage on the page before I'll know which is the right one. Ho hum - a difficult choice!

[Member Fro…]

If you buy from the small and independent they can often help with stuff like modifying this or that, fixing errors, setting a test page etc.

[Member Wil…]

Karbon has an extensive PDF you can download, and there is for Dax.

If you contact the foundry, I'm pretty sure they will be willing to set your text in the font, and send you a custom PDF.

[Member Ste…]

Thanks - checking both out.

[Member Jen…]

Hans Reichel was very exact about kerning (as about anything regarding his typefaces), usually he wouldn't allow us to change a single pair ;)

Frode, I'm not sure if I understand what you allude to, but FontFont is certainly »small and independent« enough to fix any errors or provide custom samples settings. For modifications though, there is a charge.

[Member Fro…]

I wasn’t implying that FF can’t be helpful in these matters, Jens. I’m just saying there’s an additional layer (of bureacrazy) between you and the designer. Foundries are often more cautious about potential pirate leaks, but many (some?) designers — if you’ve establish a personal relation with them — are not afraid to create vector files, font files &tc for testing.